Saturday, January 24, 2009

Paris - Day 2

Today was our first full day in Paris. We went to the Louvre and the Musee D’Orsay. We were going to go to the Rodin Museum but when we got there the museum was closed. A huge police blockade was stopping traffic and blocking off a section of the city where there was a protest against Israel (and where the entrance to the Rodin museum was.) I tried to get closer to the protest to see what it was like but there were literally 30 to 40 police vans lining the streets and blocking off the section where the protest was.

On top of missing out on the Rodin museum, I also left the memory card for my camera in my computer again (I did that once in Rome too,) so I wasn’t able to take pictures of anything today. To make up for it, here is another picture of the Eiffel tower from last night.


So far I have been surprised by how happy and friendly the French people seem. The city is a lot cleaner and more open than Rome is. That also means that it has less personality than Rome. It is a cool city though. I think that it would be really easy to live here (if you could afford it, it’s pretty expensive.) I honestly think Paris may be the foreign city that is most like the U.S. that I have ever been to.

The Louvre was a cool museum, but it is so big that it is overwhelming. It is probably the biggest museum I’ve ever been in. There are three different sections and each section is as big as a normal sized museum. The most famous things that we saw at the Louvre are: the Venus De Milo, the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory of Samothrace and Michelangelo’s Dying Slave. The coolest thing may have been the statue called “Cupid and Psyche” but I did think the Mona Lisa was pretty cool. I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but there is something about her smile. I whenever I looked at her it seemed like she was just about to or just finished smirking.

After a stop at Starbucks we headed over to the Musee D’Orsay, which was really great. I was worried about time since I wanted to see the Rodin museum too, so we started at the top floor and worked our way down (the top floor has the impressionists.) They had some great and really famous paintings by Manet and Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, Gauguin and Pissarro. My favorite paintings were by Van Gogh and Degas. Even in a museum section that has all the great paintings that this one did, the colors in the Van Gogh’s were just amazing, the only things that were even close were some of the pastel drawings that they had up there. And Degas had some really cool paintings too, I even got a print of a painting called something like ‘Blue Dancers’ (the title was in French, so I’m guessing.) But maybe the best thing I saw in the whole Musee D’Orsay was a statue of a little girl ballerina by Degas, it was amazing. If I had my memory card with my camera I would show you a picture of it, but as things are you’ll have to trust me.
It turns out that we had plenty of time to see all that we wanted of the Musee D’Orsay, it’s not nearly as big as the Louvre, so when we all had our fill we headed off in our ill fated trip to the Rodin museum.

After our unsuccessful attempts to get close enough to the protest to see part of it we walked back up to the Eiffel tower then up to our hotel and rested for a little bit. After that it was off to dinner (tonight was McDonalds) and then over to the Eiffel tower. In general, the Eiffel tower is just way cooler than I thought it would be, especially at night. It’s awesome. We were able to make it up to the top tonight and the view of the city from up there is breathtaking. I didn’t get any pictures of that either, I will try to get some that other people took and post them.

That was it for today. Tomorrow we’re going to try to catch a church service at Notre Dame, go into the Catacombs at Notre Dame, and maybe climb up the Arc de Triumphe. For my birthday tomorrow night we’re going up to Montmartre (the bohemian part of the city) to find a cool café to have dinner in and then we’ll head over to the Sacre Coeur. And then the next day it’s off to the airport and back to L.A.

As always thanks for reading. Until tomorrow…

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