January 2, 2007

• Chilling at the Louvre

  Um, this was going to be one post about Christmas Eve, but I'm gonna have to split this up. You'll see why!

  For whatever reason, it was cheaper to fly into London, get a train ticket to Paris and fly out of Amsterdam than to go round-trip to Paris. We shot over to Paris through the Chunnel in the dark and worked from Gare du Nord to our hotel/hostel only to find it was closed for the night! Locked up! Good night! Bye! It was pretty bad, plus her phone didn't work outside the British Isles, and the pay phones wanted credit cards with chips not stripes. About to ask someone in the street to borrow their phone, Esther realized she had the instructions to unlock the front door in her hand the whole time! We punched in the code and had our first of many amusing attempts to speak French with someone who only had "Good night" in her English vocabulary. Anyways, a pic of the place is above for posterity.

  So the French have this art gallery or something called the Louvre. NOT pronounced as it's spelled, as it turns out.

  

  
  Zee controversial pyramids in front of the traditional building. The home of the art is just as impressive in so many ways. The goofball in the red jacket is me.

  But to say that the art itself didn't speak to me would be an injustice.

  

  This moved me to tears. The Mona Lisa did not. It's a stupid little painting with awful flesh tones. Leonardo da Vinci did much better things in his lifetime. The tweaking ladies are much more interesting. Actually, there was a lot of nudity.

  

  Venus of Meatloaf's clothes fell off, but I bet if she had arms, she would've covered up. Esther has pictures of this occassion with everyone gathered around the Venus de Milo, but it must've been amusing to see a couple hundred tourists snapping pictures then me standing head and shoulders over most of them with a camera and lens the size of Rhode Island. I'm so glad I brought the equipment that I did, though - and truly, the continuous double takes of passerby-camera-look away-back at camera-look away-back at me were pretty priceless.

  Moving right along, the other picture above is from the Assyrian empire, I think, at least it was in the Islamic art part, I think, at least it was in the Louvre hors d'oeuvres. The debate rages on when countries make legitimate claims to the artifacts in the museums of present and past Imperialist nations. The whole time I'm walking through these ancient exhibits, I'm thinking about how this piece of Egyptian heritage and that piece of Iranian history isn't remotely French. Although Esther did point out that the Iranians couldn't care less about pre-Islamic history and are destroying it en masse. So in some cases, I can see where keeping it in a museum is best, but if a country and a people value something of their own, they ought to have it.

  

  

  
  Esther likes paintings, I like sculptures. They're more fun to photograph! But seeing a painting in person is much more meaningful because you can see the layers of oils and the brush and finger marks left behind a thousand years ago. With sculpture, there's a definite visual prominence, but you can capture quite a bit in a picture.

  
  Paris at dusk. We hit up the Champs-Elysées and saw the Arc de Triomphe, but I would imagine they are far more gorgeous in spring. But the Christmas lights were everywhere, making the sights special in their own way at this time of year.

  
  Paris had a subway just the same as any other big city, but it wasn't as intuitive as London's system where you might make one transfer on an entire journey. In Paris, we'd be hopping from train to train even between the most popular of destinations. Who cares, though, they have vending machines with peanut M&Ms. =)

  Next up is the Eiffel Tower.

  • 12:16 pm
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