One Day in Paris

A week ago, I convinced the girls that we didn't have anything to do in Semur and should thus spend a Saturday enjoying Paris.  My reasons were mostly selfish: I had some friends visiting from town and knowing that my time here is winding up fast, I still had a few things that I still have never seen in Paris.  Plus my walking shoes had just broken and I needed to buy new ones before going to Morocco in a week.

As we were leaving Semur at 5:45am to take the 18euro day ticket to Paris, I was expecting a great day and thought it would be fun to make a type of photo journal of my day.  I knew I wasn't going to necessarily have a super Parisian day at the Eiffel Tower or anything, but realized how blessed I am to be able to hop a train 2 hours and hang out in Paris for 11 hours just about any Saturday I want (if I can get a ride to and from the station).  The day turned out very little like what I had planned, bit of a bummer, but I still managed to take some pictures.

Moi, Moni, et Jie, on fait les betises

The worst cup of coffee in Paris,
perhaps the world.

Vir was sick and Klara was "economise-ing", so it was just Monika, Jie, and I for this trip into Paris.  Small but good group.  Things, however, quickly turned somewhat disappointing, beginning with perhaps the worst cup of coffee I have ever had, and on the Champs-Elysees no less!

Meeting up with friends turned into a bust.  One friend, on vacay from the US with her husband and brother/sister-in-law, had my contact info but didn't get a chance to get in touch.  The other friend, visiting from Belgium, was meeting up with her bf and our schedules didn't cross.  In the last few days of the big winter soldes, I couldn't find a pair of sporty yet cute size 41 shoes that I liked enough to shell out 30+euros for.  The Centre Pompidou, like much modern art, was both underwhelming and overwhelming and succeeded in somewhat depressing me.  Zumba, while exercise and a free "trial" class, was less than stellar, in a class of Taiwanese novices (and a pregnant instructor?) where everyone spoke to each other in a language other than French or English.  It was, suffice to say, a weird day.  Highlights?

Le Petit Palais

Part of the permanent
collection

After our terrible machine-made coffee (made by girls I'm sure failed out of lycee pro), we stopped at the Petit Palais, a building remaining from the Parisian World's Fair that I had never checked out.  They have a permanent collection we perused, but we were really there for a fabulous photography exhibit called "100 Photos" (or something like that) from Reporters Without Borders that focused on the lives of two famous photogs.  The pictures showed everything from wars in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, to celebrities and a look at Yves St Laurent's last show.  It reminded me why I love photography and yet again made me sad I don't have a decent camera here or a chance to pursue my love of the medium.  There were articles around in French and English, one of which was particularly interesting.  It was from an old TIME magazine (I think), and it talked about how the French photographer was amazed when he first visited the US because all American women smile so freely and warmly, unlike anywhere in Europe.  It provided insight into my own culture and how natural smiling is, but I know French (women, esp) get a bad rap for always looking so angry while Americans tend to look dopey.  This article just talked about it being "refreshing."  Who doesn't want to hear that?

Centre Pompidou

After enjoying the exhibit, I do what I normally do when we go to Paris,
which is separate and try and check out some new things and meet up with friends in town.  Not the best decision this time.  My eventual destination was the Centre Pompidou, via Les Halles/Chatelet and a chance to find a good sale on a new pair of shoes before going to Morocco.  For various reasons, I basically avoided the winter soldes here in France.  Twice a year the soldes take over the country with great and ridiculous deals on EVERYTHING.  Not that I didn't want to enjoy them, after spending too much money this summer on random pieces of clothing, I didn't want to do the same, plus saving up for Morocco, and gearing up for other things.  This Saturday was to basically be a purposeful exploration of the soldes, hitting up discount stores and a myriad of shoe stores, but in the end I walked away (mostly) empty handed.  A few hours after parting from Monika and Jie, I arrived at the Pompidou, already somewhat frustrated, for my first look at the world of Parisian modern art.

View from the Pompidou,
looking out at the Sacre Coeur

I made a similar mask in
elementary school that
hung in my room for 15 years,
but this one is world famous?

I'll be honest, I normally stay away from modern art.  It's not that I don't like it all, there's just a lot of it that I don't quite "get", or like many a culturally ignorant person, think if I had only stuck with art more seriously, I could do something better.  There are obvious exceptions, but still.  I instead normally choose to spend my time at the Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, or other place where the images in the paintings are more discernable than I few brush strokes.  In my many visits to Paris, including Summer 2006, I had never once entered the Pompidou because I didn't want to pay so much to see something I wasn't really that into.  As an English Assistant, I have a fabulous Pass Education, which gets me into any national monument or museum gratuite, including the Pompidou--meaning that now is the time to see anything I haven't already.  Honestly, I'm very glad I finally saw the Pompidou, but I'm also very glad that I didn't have to pay to see the permanent collection.

This is cool.

The permanent collection at the Pompidou consists of two floors: the upper stuff a little bit older and perhaps more well-known and the lower very new stuff.  There was some good works, some more thought-provoking, many disturbing pieces, and then others that just confused me (a video of a kid riding a bike?).  Some exhibits were clever, like an awesome set of sculptures that were related to wine, but not in an obvious way.  Many just kind of confused me.  There were Picassos, Matisse, Salvador Dali, and many other famous modernists I knew of, but then hundreds upon hundreds of inconnu to me.  As with any museum, I do what I can to see every piece  and make sure I don't miss anything, but this may not be the best strategy because it only served to overwhelm and slightly depress me.  It may have been the gray weather outside, my terrible shoes and heavy purse, disappointment about not meeting up with my friends, or something else.  No matter, halfway through I was ready to be done, but forced myself to finish.  There were some clever gems though.

Part of an exhibit about male-domination
in many art museums, very funny.

Paints or an installation?
I'm not sure, but it still got
me thinking.

 For me, any art museum is a very introspective experience.  As a child, I was very into art and even thought I might some day become an art teacher myself.  I first loved painting and drawing, then watercolors, photography and collage, pastels, ceramics, mixed media, and dance.  With the exception of a photography class in high school, I did very little art between middle school and discovering the art department at AU my junior year of college.  I like to travel with pastels, but didn't bring any to France, and for much of this winter have felt my creative juices flowing with nowhere to go.  I love getting into the photographer mindset and finding awesome shots, even with a teeny tired camera.  Art museums, of all sorts, call out to that hidden artist in me that wishes I were brave and focused enough to pursue these interests more regularly.  Even the Pompidou was no exception.

Kind of reminds me of a pediatrician's office

 After finally finishing the permanent collection (and noticing the crowds trying to get in, was glad I ate my sandwich en route and avoided the lines), I was feeling heavy-hearted and downtrodden.  I passed a few more shoe stores, nothing, and one rando, discount department store where I walked in, saw a cute long dress for 5euros, and bought it without trying it on.  It was screaming "perfect for warm weather!"  :)  It made me feel a little bit better, as was the idea of heading to a free Zumba class!

The dance studio for Zumba

My last day trip to Paris, in January, was fabulous because I met up with my friend Danielle and we hit up a rockin' Zumba class in the shadows of Notre Dame, en francais, with real Frenchies, before meeting up with some AU people.  I guess I was hoping for the same experience?  The instructor had emailed me a few weeks prior to tell me about this free trial class and how to get there, which I was stoked about.  It would be my last activity in Paris for the day and feeling slightly down about things, I knew Zumba would perk me up.  It usually does.

The metro popped me out across town, in a residential neighborhood in the 13th.  After walking through the rain past a sign that I assumed was where I was looking for but didn't look like what I was looking for, I called the instructor.  Her husband picked up in French and I asked about the class.  A few minutes later, Nisa opens the door and leads me up and down several series of stairs in an apartment/dance studio complex.  We start chatting in English (she's Taiwanese and married to a Frenchie but doesn't really speak the language) about how funny exercise classes in France are, and then I start to put details together about the class as the other two students show up.  Yes two.  And I was the only non-Taiwanese, and just a foot shorter than the ceiling.  I noticed Nisa rub her stomach a few times in that tell-tale way.  Hmm, this was going to be interesting...  In the end I enjoyed my free workout, but it was not nearly what I expected.  We did perhaps 7 or 8 songs--definitely not the Healthbridge Zumba I am used to, but that's a blog for another day.  The girls were very nice and I needed the bougement, but I don't really intend to go back and it didn't quite pull me out of my modernist art and rainy weather mood.

As the return train was going to depart in an hour, I headed back to the train station to meet up with Moni and Jie.  Rather than go straight to the station out of the metro, I turned right on a search for a light dinner and BAM!  I discovered the cheap eating section of the neighborhood, full of panini and crepe stands.  The crepe man was super friendly and wished me a "Bonne soiree Mademoiselle," as he handed me my 1.90euro egg crepe.  Perfect.

I grabbed a double row on the train for us and waited for the girls to get back.  They had a less disappointing/more fruitful Paris voyage than I did, but I'm still glad we went.  I saw two new museums I had never been to, met some new people though I will probably never see them, and developed a new appreciation for the ginormous Louvre.  Not everyone can take a day trip to one of the world's cultural capitals, wander centuries old boulevards, and eat crepes, so that's pretty cool!

I'm pretty sure I'm making the Senegalese disagreement noise while wagging my finger, but why?  I don't remember.