The View Through The Lens: Paris Days 4-6

Okay so it is now almost midnight Paris time, tomorrow is our last day and we're leaving at 4:30 am on Tuesday. Starting a blog entry that covers three days of an "action" packed trip (if you call slowly wandering about numerous art museums action) at this time is probably not the wisest move ever, especially as Google seems to have [unwisely] changed the image uploader to clear the cache of images every time you select an image to upload, making the process of uploading (and annotating) pictures from three days a major pain and a time-consuming process. So I'm not particularly optimistic about finishing this blog post in one go...but you'd never know that because you won't realize that I started writing this just before midnight Paris time if I don't post it until tomorrow morning. So here I am having cross-time conversations with a reader which may or may not be effective and it's impossible to extract oneself from such a situation gracefully. So now I could just delete the above little bit but then what's the point of my typing this out? Ugh. I think I need a new venue for pictures...or I could just shut up and show pictures without text. Also, I'm going to try interspersing smaller versions of pictures that, while not particularly awesome in any way, serve to illustrate what I'm talking about.

Moving on. Day 4 of the trip we caught a train to Giverny, the area where Monet lived and painted a lot of his works. We rented some bicycles to make the four kilometre journey to Monet's house and garden. The only problem (for me especially) was that the bicycles were not mountain bikes, which I'm used to using, and thus their top gear was still extremely slow and made my little job of racing ahead from being with Patrick and my mom to Uncle Glenn and Jordan and Abigail and back again to deliver messages a real chore. With all my scurrying back and forth I probably rode double the distance. Add to that the problems of my bike having a bashed up basket in front that kept swinging down to the side, the brakes being practically useless, and the handlebars so loose I could never be sure that turning them would turn the wheel, and you have a very interesting bike ride. The ride was very nice, however, despite the cold and awful bike; the scenery was just amazing.

Japanese Bridge Monet 1899

We got to Monet's house and garden and took a tour of it. I must say; I'm really thankful my uncle is here now and I'm not the only one taking forever with pictures...especially with having to switch macro filters every few shots. Anyways, in the garden we got to see the famous waterlily pond and the bridge that Monet painted. It was pretty cool to first see the paintings in the museums during the days before and then see the subject in real life after. I spent a good fifteen minutes waiting for the bridge to be devoid of humans to take a picture of it without people. The best part? Just as it emptied and I was about to get the shot I had been so patiently waiting for who should walk onto the bridge but my uncle and sister who had given up on waiting about a minute prior. Oh so frustrating. I did finally get a shot that has the bridge pretty empty...I only have half the bridge in the shot; the other half being covered by trees.

Japanese Bridge Me 2010

Monet's house itself was next. Only one word: WOW! The place was HUGE! We only were able to see half of it legally but even so it was massive. What was cool was in one room they had a picture of Monet standing in the room...you could see that all the furniture was basically the same. So awesome.

The Inverted Pyramid

Day 5 we visited the Louvre. This was not a very picture intensive day; only 25 shots. This is partly because A) taking pictures of artwork in a museum never works B) once again there was an unlisted ban of tripods (leading to an interesting series of events with security, the bag deposit, and getting lost) and C) does anyone else feel awkward taking pictures of artwork depicting nudes? The Louvre itself was pretty awesome, though. The building is massive, and then the glass pyramids built in the front courtyard relatively recently look cool as well. Interesting fact: the architect who designed these glass pyramids was a firm believer in balance and yin/yang, so there is actually an inverted pyramid as well which is in the centre of mall area underneath the Louvre. Fun fact: the points of the inverted pyramid and the little one underneath don't perfectly line up. They're off by a centimetre or so. Yeah only dorks like me notice stuff like that. :-P

The artwork: fantastic. By now I'm starting to be a little sick of paintings and art but even so I could appreciate the incredible artwork I was seeing. We also got to see the original Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci. Coolness. What's interesting is the reason it is actually famous; it's not so much the painting itself, but it got a lot of publicity when it was stolen back in the early 1900s. Apparently, the only person who noticed that it was missing at the time was an artist who was copying the artwork. Just think: if some idiot hadn't stolen the painting, it's only claim to fame would be that it is one of twelve paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci.

Umm...what?

Day 6. Today. Well, yesterday now...it's 1 am now. We went to Versaille. Like the Louvre, it was all artwork, but at least this time most of it was the building itself. Unfortunately, there was a Japanese modern art exhibition going on so a lot of the rooms had these ugly statues in them that makes one wonder "Why the bloody heck was this ever even considered to be allowed in here??" Half the statues looked like something from Salvador Dali's worst nightmare while the other half was tacky as ---- and probably stuff Gaudi would regard with disgust. I originally wasn't going to take any pictures of them but halfway through decided to get just one to show you guys just how bad it was. So I didn't get any of the "Dali's worst nightmare" ones. For those just imagine a little midget thing with legs, arms, a head, three eyes (all looking in different directions), a slightly evil smile that looks like a D, and fangs. Oh and are also completely random in colour. Or imagine something that looks like a rainbow threw up on it, has more arms than that Hindu goddess (whose name escapes me right now), and looks like a fungus sitting on a toadstool. And also looks like it will kill you while you sleep (okay I should stop I'm scaring myself with the memory of it now).

Back to the actual artwork of Versaille. First there was a seventy minute wait in line in freezing cold weather, then it was the security line (where once again I had to leave behind my tripod...at least it was actually announced before hand...also, is it just me or are security guards very condascending in their manner?), and then into Versaille. Finally. The paintings, murals, statues, rooms, etc. were all just amazing. I couldn't imagine living in a place like that; I'd be afraid to breathe for fear of breaking something. And imagine going to sleep in a room with about a hundred people painted on the ceiling. No thanks. I did get some pictures inside, though they're not really that great. Poor lighting (but better than the Louvre), lots of people, and no tripod aren't good combination. And again, a lot of the images were a wee bit awkward to take pictures of.

After going through all of Versaille that we were allowed to see, we went out of Versaille and through the garden to get to [name of place that I'll edit in tomorrow, hopefully]. Now here's a clever moneymaking strategy/royal nuisance; Versaille and [name of place that I'll edit inmorrow, hopefully] have free admission for those under 18. The garden, however, does not. So we had to pay to get through the garden to get to [noptieit,h]. I can't decide if that's sheer brilliance or pure retardedness. Also taking up a prominent place in the garden was this gigantic gold-coloured piece of Japanese junk I mean art. It looked like a thistle had become alive and was contemplating something...probably how to best kill you in your sleep (the question is again, WHY???). The place we were going to was Marie Antoinette's "farmhouse" where she and her children could "live like farmers". Well. All I can say is that I'd have been right up there with the revolitionaries. The "farmhouse" was a lavish three-story house with golden embelishments on the walls, marble floors, and tons of expensive art and furniture. Honestly? Just wow. These French aristocrats really were pigs.

Finally, we came back home and after dinner my uncle and I went out to get pictures of the Eiffel Tower at night. Even though it was freezing outside and we constantly had to switch the tripod attachment from camera to camera (which became increasingly painful as our hands got number) it was a lotn to just be out there taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower all lit up. We each got some great shots from it. :D I only wish that it was summer and we each had our own tripod. ;-)

Monet's Garden: