Pompidou to Versailles

Pictures from the Pompidou Center and Versailles!

A hanging sculpture in the Pompidou's Modern Collection.

Part of the Exhibition entitled "Dreamlands", about the way we view cities across the world and how we create "carnivals" in society.

The front view of Versailles. Waiting in line on a really hot day!

Me standing in front of the Grand Trianon (to my right) that overlooks the Eastern part of the canal.

A window/doorway looking out from of the King's apartments (I think. It was in the chateau somewhere at least).

The "laiterie" at the Hamlet (awesome, village-like part of Versailles built under Marie Antoinette).

An archway of grape vines in the Hamlet's vegetable gardens.

A swan in the canal of the Versailles Jardin.

The same swan. I just couldn't decide which photograph I liked better. You tell me.

My fellow Versailles-goers: Vanessa, Fatin, and Paulo. 

It was a long day (9:30 am to 7:30 pm) but awesome despite the heat. The grounds of the court are just so beautiful and vast, I honestly could not believe my eyes. I really think I could spend a week walking around there, just picnicking and eating ice cream (as above) or fresh-squeezed orange juice, which we also had (fresh picked from the chateau's orange grove). The opulence is astounding and it's a bit scary to think about all the money that was spent on one castle, but I'm still thankful that it stands just so that I get to bask in its beauty. 

Vive le roi de soleil!

opera, rodin, bastille, louvre, spectacle...not in that order!

These past few days, I have taken a TON of photos. Thus, there are going to be a lot of photos on this post, and I don't really care if there are too many because I'm so incredibly excited to put them up.

First, I want to include a picture of the Bastille concert I went to before heading off to chill on the Seine (this was the night of the 13th, as I mentioned.)

Skip to Friday--field trip with my class. We started at the Opera Garnier, and then walked along some of Haussman's boulevards and visited some of the awesome covered "passages", little shopping pathways covered with glass where "les flaneurs" used to hang out. 

Me and Gus in the Garnier theater beneath Marc Chagall's painted ceiling.

View from one of the rooms of the Opera Garnier, looking out onto the Place de l'Opera.

After the field trip, my friends and I ate lunch at a cafe, and then a couple of us went to the Louvre for a little under an hour. I also bought my ticket for a contemporary dance show that was that night.

An ancient Greek sculpture in the Louvre.

The performance was AMAZING! It was very postmodern--the choreographer (Dominique Bagouet) was obviously heavily influenced by many of the choreographers I've been studying: Merce Cunningham, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown. It was more humorous, though, and combined very technically difficult choreography (weight changes, tempo shifts) with crazy, child-like humor (the dancers talked onstage, got annoyed with eachother. There was even one section where they "silent-talked" to each other from across the stage). I LOVED IT. The venue was a stage built outside in the middle of the Palais Royal. One cool moment was when a man stepped out on to his twenty-million dollar balcony and saw the modern dance performance going on just beneath him. What a lucky guy, huh? My thought was, "Only in Paris!"

The entrance to the performance was in the middle of the Palais Royal, where there is an installation-sculpture by modernist sculptor Pol Bury.

The stage set up for the performance. The balcony (sort of obscured by the lights) is where the man wandered out to find the show going on.

That night I met up with friends afterwards and spent the night at my friend Anna's house, since her host family is out of town. Then yesterday (Saturday) she and I met back up and went to the Musee Rodin together, which was absolutely beautiful. We both did some drawings (hers were amazing, as she is an artist. Very linear but loose, free lines). After that, we walked to this adorable market street, Rue Cler, where we bought cheese and bread for dinner. We then went back to Anna's and made an amazing meal of fresh salad, grilled zucchini and peppers, eggs with camambert, and bread and cheese. We had peaches with creme fraiche for dessert. It was quite wonderful after such a relaxing day. We then stayed in and watched Pulp Fiction, which neither of us had ever seen. It blew my mind, to say the least.

Part of a sculpture (not by Rodin, by some contemporary guy) at the Musee Rodin.

Rodin's The Thinker.                                

The artist's signature.                                 

A sketch I did of one of Rodin's sculptures, Torse de jeune femme cambrée (Torso of Young Woman with Arched Back).

I am now up on a lazy Sunday and am going to shower and head off to the Marais, where I plan to grab some falafel and go to the Pompidou Center. I also am going to see some people from Yaledancers for dinner tonight. It's been a great weekend, and I'm looking forward to the week!

bastille day!

So I'm in the process of making a video, but my computer's acting up, so I'm just going to give you an update of what I did for Bastille Day!

Tuesday night, I went out to a really nice dinner with Anna and Vanessa. We went to this Asian/French fusion place that was in one of my guide books. It was amazing! For my main dish, I got this chicken with avocado that was to die for. Also, the white wine we ordered was really delicious. After that, we went  to a concert at the Bastille for a bit, and then we walked to the Seine and sat on the quais with a bottle of wine. So many people were there, just hanging out with friends and talking and dancing and enjoying the night. There was even a section where couples were doing the tango. I really would have loved to dance, if it had been anything but the tango (which I don't know how to do). 

Wednesday night was even better! I met Paulo at the metro and we went to the Eiffel Tower, where we met other people soon after. There were literally millions of poeple there--it was absolutely insane. Every single inch of the Champs de Mars was covered. The fireworks started almost as soon as we found our friends. They were incredible, the contrast between the colors and the black of the Eiffel Tower was so unexpectedly beautiful. The fireworks went along with different songs (some French, some in English) that played out of speakers that had been set up along the champs. Every explosion matched a note, or a crescendo. It was so much better than the Boston Pops fireworks, which I totally did not think was possible. 

After the fireworks, we had to walk forever to a metro station, since the ones nearby were closed. It was crazy, because thousands of people were all attempting to return to Paris at the same time. We made it to St. Germain though, where me, Gus, and Vanessa went to a bal de pompiers (firemen's ball). There a Bastille Day tradition. It was soooo fun! You walk in to their courtyard, and there's French flag streamers everywhere, a few bar areas, a fireman DJ, and his hot firemen friends dancing with all the young people of Paris! We found some Harvard people that Vanessa sort of knew and just went crazy. We were only there for about an hour, but it was one of the most fun hours I've had in Paris. And there were very few tourists there, it appeared. I caught the metro at around 2 am and crashed at home. 

Today (Thursday) I slept in, went to an internet cafe where I stayed for four hours working on my paper, returned home and worked on my paper more, ate dinner, corrected my paper, and am currently watching French TV as I write this. Boring, I know, but it was really nice to have a lazy day after some more exciting nights. Plus, my paper is better since I spent more time on it. Tomorrow, I have a field trip and more festivities that include (possibly) a dance performance. 

Bon weekend!

the last few days...des bels jours

These past few days have been incredibly busy! I've seen so much, a lot of which is in the video below. Unfortunately, work is starting to pick up, and I have a paper due at the end of the week. C'est dommage! Oh well, though, because tomorrow is the day before Bastille Day, which means tons of festivals and whatnot. I'm meeting friends at the Champs-Elysees at 10:30, which is extremely early for me. Thus, bonne nuit et a demain!

My last 36 hours...

Stayed out til 4:30 am Friday night and ended up sleeping from 4:#0 to 7:30 at Gus's host family's house

Returned home via metro at 8 am, slept til 1 pm

Got up, showered, took the metro to the Marais where I watched A Bout de Souffle with Anna at this arthouse cinema (what a great film!)

Ran into a cafe/bar as it started to rain and had a surprisingly amazing salad for lunch

Walked around the Marais, and crossed to St. Germain

Ate dinner in the Latin Quarter with friends (had steak, much rawer than I normally order it but really flavorful)

Got ice cream at Amorino near the Pantheon

Sat and talked with a group of French girls for an hour at the Pantheon

Went home

Crashed.

Eglise St. Paul - St. Louis in the Marais

Me at the Pantheon in the daytime

More Pantheon tile

Place des Vosges et d'autres choses

I've decided to just skip ahead and ignore the last few days because I really want to stay in the moment. Oh, well.

(Deep breath, starting fresh.)

First, the professor took us on a walk through Paris. We saw where Baudelaire lived, the palais royal, the passages of Paris, and some other awesome stuff. This is a photo of the park in the palais royal. So picturesque.

Today I also finally got to really walk in the Marais, a neighborhood that I've heard amazing things about and that is many people's favorite place in Paris. It has the old, winding streets of le vieux Paris, more intimate than the huge boulevards put in by Haussman. I was not disappointed. The streets are winding and cobblestoned, with tons of vintage stores, boutiques, boulangeries, cafes, bars...and all are designed in either a supremely adorable, nostalgic way or are teeming with posh, graphic images. Somehow, this array of stores and such works together to create a neighborhood that is the Paris that I've always imagined. There are certain streets that are just for pedestrians, so they give the quartier an ambiance of being a village within the city. We walked and walked, and finally ended up at Place des Vosges, a sort of park with fountains that issurrounded on four sides by adorable cafes and galleries, which in turn line the first floor of perfectly Parisian buildings. I loved it, to say the least. Once at the Place, I did a charcoal drawing of one of the fountains. Later, we got gelato and planned our day for tomorrow. Perfection.

And tonight, we are meeting at some bars and going clubbing until the metro starts running again at 5 am. Mind you, this is Paris, so everything starts later, so this is actually not as crazy a feat as it may sound. A demain!

les danseurs

On Wednesday, during my day in Montmartre, we visited the cemeterie de Montmartre. It houses some pretty cool people: Jim Morrison, Edgar Degas, Hemingway, and two people that I found extremely important/intriguing: Marie Taglioni, the first woman to ever dance en pointe, and Vaslav Nijinsky, one of the most important ballet choreographers of the turn of the century. His Le Sacre du Printemps is probably the most influential ballet ever created. It led to the avant garde works of later times and even foresaw aspects of modern dance.

Anyways, I spent forever looking for their graves, since I only had a general idea of where they were and no map. Suddenly, though, I happened upon a statue of a jester-like person, and there was Nijinsky, in all his quirky glory. It was SO incredible, to know that this dance genius had been laid to rest right in front of me.

Nijinsky was cool, but Taglioni was even cooler. Hers was a lot harder to find, but when I noticed the decaying pointe shoes laid over a modest grave, I knew it had to be her. History was right in front of me! Even though she first stepped en pointe nearly 200 years ago, dancers are still paying homage to her, bring pointe shoes and flowers to remember her by. One pair of pointe shoes had even been stripped of their satin, to signify how Taglioni had danced without the reinforced burlap and canvas that was laid bare. She merely stuffed her flat shoes with a bit of cloth, and stood on her toes. It's quite amazing, when you think about it.

I'm trying to catch up on posts, but I need to go meet my class for a walk at the Ile-St. Louis, so I'll try to finish later. Bon weekend!