the feet were semi-back in action on friday. right foot, all good. left foot, still has issues. i put on my burgundy chucks, and off we went to the rodin museum. which is nearby enough to walk to. there was no line when we arrived, and, anyway, we had our passes, so we bopped on in. it was supposed to rain, but it only really spit a few drops, despite forecast (french weather prediction is shit, like everywhere else). but it was at times very windy and cool. it's good it wasn't raining, since a lot of what there is to see is outside. there weren't too many people around, relatively speaking. i took the above picture of the thinker (thinking very dark and cloudy thoughts, apparently). and some photos of the lovely roses along the paths that lead to him. i tried out my "flower close-up setting" on the camera for these.
we saw the burghers of calais, which deb liked a lot. it's very famous and shows an incident from the hundred years war (which actually lasted 116 years (or possibly longer); i guess they rounded down?). and there's more about it at the link. around the bend in the path from that happy bunch are adam and eve, and the gates of hell. at that point i decided i needed music, so i put the dandy warhols' thirteen tales from urban bohemia on the ol' ipod. in part to enjoy the irony of listening to "godless" while staring at the gates of hell. it's a big, tall black sculpture shaped like (duh) a doorway. figures reach out of it and pop out toward you, and the whole thing is framed in human suffering and demon revelry. some of the figures that became sculptures unto themselves show up on top of it and around it. it was quite fascinating.
i stood there for a while, staring at it and imagining it could be a portal if you touched it. which i didn't. b/c you never know. but it was slightly disturbing to see some images of babies around the gates; i thought babies didn't go to hell. whatever. i'm no expert.
anyway, there were just tons of sculptures. i quite liked this one of victor hugo, situated in a quiet grove of trees.
the garden and fountain of the museum would have been very peaceful, except that there were workmen breaking down some kind of major party/event set-up from the night before, so the whole time we were there we were treated to the sound of forklifts rumbling and a stage being taken apart, and banging and pounding of various sorts. that kind of sucked, but whatever.
inside the museum was the famous the kiss, and another amusing romantic one called eternal idol, with a man kneeling and kissing a woman's naked chest. i wasn't sure if it was personal (like, she's his eternal idol) or universal (like, about woman in general). either way, it was kind of hot.
but after about 15 million rooms of art, i got bored and annoyed. there were tons more people inside the building (i guess b/c it was cloudy and slightly rainy? not sure, but i much preferred the noisy bleak gardens to the human-infested building). the ipod is an effective device to help dampen the audio chaos -- i just put it on really low, low enough to hear the music like background, something orderly to override the constant multilingual babble of people. being a tourist is hard when you're a misanthrope. but somehow i manage.
so, of course we went to the little shop, and then left the rodin museum and went to a little cafe for a quick espresso before heading off to les invalides to see napoleon's tomb. dude has a big-ass tomb. this is not surprising.
this picture is not mine; it's by eric pouhier. i found it on the internet. but i did take this one of les invalides from the garden of the rodin museum:
the golden dome of les invalides harbors some serious memorials -- including one for napoleon's brother. downstairs in the circular, uh, vault, is a series of bas reliefs enumerating the emperor's various achievements and conquerings (and battles in general -- he didn't win 'em all). the tomb is massive and made of many layers -- including wood, tin, lead, and ebony -- and the final layer is porphyry ... but it's not actually porphyry. apparently nappy's peeps wanted it b/c it was used for the roman emperors, and so it would be an appropriately regal entombment for the emperor. but the romans got theirs from egypt -- and apparently there wasn't a suitably sized chunk of the stuff available from egypt. so they turned to russia for it, but i guess there was some bad blood b/w the two, b/c the russians were like, "oh, you want porphyry? yeah, we got that." but what they sold the french wasn't really porphyry. it just looked like it. eh, whatev. it's not like napoleon knew what was going on anyway.
after we went back upstairs, we were looking at one of the side tombs, and this young muslim woman totally gave me the hairy eyeball. i mean, like, she GLARED at me. i wasn't doing anything but standing there, talking to deb. and quietly. the woman probably heard me talking, so she probably tumbled that i am american. idk, but it was weird. she was all covered up and with the full-on muslim-lady raincoat (ankle-length) and stuff (as opposed to some muslim women who wear the scarf but otherwise have on western dress ... and of course some are french, and some are tourists, and you can't really tell which is which unless you hear them talking). deb said she was just jealous b/c my hair wasn't covered, etc., but i dunno about that. maybe it was cuz i was wearing black, had black hair, and was speaking american -- a devil woman from the devil country. oh, well. whatevs. i'm ok you're ok, lady. take a chill pill!
now we're back in the room. we're going to finish off the foie gras we got yesterday, have some wine here, and then maybe go off to one of the neighborhood joints for actual dinner. we are debating going to versailles tomorrow, depending on the weather. this involves getting up early, which i'm sort of opposed to, but the squirrel insists.
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