wednesday was a seriously packed day -- which was good after tuesday's relative lull, but there was a price to pay. i wore my better-made shoes, but my period was raging, so i was all bloated, including my feet. the blisters were holding out pretty well thanks to fancy belgian stick-on fix-ups, but by the end of the day my dogs were pretty wrecked.
we started off with a bit of shopping, b/c deb had shoe issues of her own. went to a place called red cross square, where there are a lot of fancy designer stores, and also more reasonable ones. she found some shoes, and we decided to go to le bon marche and check it out.
also began to notice that the men in this city wear suits. nice suits. and they look v. nice in them. old men, young men, middle-aged men -- men walking on their own, men walking in groups, men riding scooters, men on motorbikes. men on the metro, men in taxicabs. men standing in doorways smoking; men walking with sandwiches, eating. it's totes awes. however, as lovely as they are, it mainly just makes me miss my very own personal man in a suit: 00soul.
so we went into the department store, and after some struggle (of the language variety) i purchased a pair of black footless fishnet tights to go under my dress. i've seen a lot of women wearing footless tights, from solids to patterns and black to bright colors. and my feet of course couldn't stand to have anything on them. then we rambled around for a while and checked out the stuff. deb was quite taken with some orange pucci prints, not to mention this amazing orange suede long jacket lined with orange fleece. on the ground floor, i lingered over a lovely long black gauzy scarf embroidered with paisleys. it wasn't too expensive, but i decided not to get it. i don't totally regret it, but a little...
finally we decided to go to the louvre. on the way we nipped into this bakery, where deb got a chocolate croissant. i had a bite -- it was quite tasty. we sorted out the metro and took a detour to l'orangerie to see the really big monet water lilies. they were in two long oval rooms that were sort of dark and cool, very peaceful. not too many people in them, considering. we sat and looked at each of them for a while. they were all quite beautiful but i liked the dark, dark nighttime one and another one with a willow tree the best.
then we went into the little shop, and i got a few postcards with details of the paintings on them, and a refrigerator magnet too.
after that the squirrel guided us to the metro and then to the louvre -- oops! nope. it was the grand palais and petit palais. "how did that happen?" she asked in bewilderment. my feet just groaned. we trudged across the street to a metro station, got oriented, and got to the louvre. then we found the museum-pass entrance, sliding in just ahead of a huge tour group.
but the museum itself wasn't all that crowded -- proportionally, it seemed like the d'orsay had been more hoppin'. we were hungry, so we went to the cafe marly and had lunch first. i had a croque monsieur (toasty double-decker ham and cheese on white bread) and she had a croque madame (the same, but with a fried egg on top). and wine. we sat on the terrace, and the sun came out! we watched three young men wearing camouflage and carrying machine guns amble over to where a car was parked on a crescent-shaped driveway. (we'd also seen an armed soldier standing watch in the airport while on the way to the baggage claim, and some other guys, more like SWAT dudes or something, converging on some building or other in full body armor while walking to invalides the day before.) "no trouble here!" we said (like we did whenever we saw such sights). and also joked, "no flash photography!" the docents at l'orangerie had been quite militant about warning people against using their flashes on the monets, but at the d'orsay the place seemed overwhelmed, and quite a few flashes went off despite the prohibition. the squirrel was getting pissed about this. b/c all that flashing damages the artwork, fucking idiot tourists!
i really wasn't up to the walking, but the louvre tour in the day by day book suggested seven things to see, and i was gonna by-god see 'em. it was fairly late in the day -- the museum is open late on wednesdays. but we had time, so we organized our assault and headed off. first to see vermeer's the lacemaker. it is small but quite lovely. then came the amusing the card sharper, georges de la tour's charming portrait of a naive young man being fleeced in a card game. then we saw the turkish bath, ingres's lush, busy take on boobies, with women all crowded together, chatting, having tea, getting their hair perfumed, gettin' a little busy, lounging in the bath, etc.
then we went to the ground floor. we followed a bunch of signs, and then the roar of the crowd. we ambled along a hallway ... and then there she was in the distance -- venus de milo. just standing there, looming over everyone's heads. looking amazing even without her arms. we approached, and i couldn't take my eyes off her. there was a tour bunch to my left, and as i got closer i heard the guide say "...she seems to breathe ... there is some magic to her ... ." and i looked at her chest, like i really expected to see her breathe. and then i looked right in her face, and i nearly lost it right there. it's hard to put it into words, how it made me feel. her face is perfect, and there's a sort of light that comes from her. there's a majesty to her, but an approachability that deb noted was possibly b/c of the pose that seems so naturalistic, not like a posed statue-type thing. whatever it was, i was nearly overcome.
i took two pix of her, the one above (angle suggested by the squirrel), and this one:
neither one does her justice, but i had to take them. i walked all around her and gazed in amazement. from every side, she's magnificent.
from venus we moved to the italian sculpture wing, where we saw canova's cupid awakening psyche. "it is love carved in stone," says the guidebook -- and it really is. this one also made me slightly verklempt. it seems to glow with an inner light -- not like venus, who seemed to gather light to her. but this was just seriously lit from within. i didn't take a picture; too many people around. it made me miss 00soul a lot.
we also looked at michelangelo's the dying slave and a bunch of other stuff that was pretty nice, but not as intense as cupid and psyche. although psyche seems to have been popular -- there was another cupid/psyche sculpture, and an ebony black one of mercury flying away with her ... i don't think she wanted to go.
then it was on to ... the mona lisa! the crowd here was even bigger than the one for venus. the experience of seeing it was nowhere near as transporting. in part, maybe, b/c the painting is small, and you can't get very close to it. it's behind glass now. the guidebook says that's b/c a vandal slashed it in the 1990s. (wtf is WRONG with people?) i didn't know that at the time of seeing it and thought that the glass was to guard it against the endless flash photography. anyway, here's my shot (sans flash and blown up):
while we were wandering around the galleries, i noticed some weird shit. like, in a corner of the room where the vermeer was, there was a plastic turtle and a plastic tomato. in an adjacent room was another plastic turtle, facing the other way, and another tomato, carved like a jack-o'-lantern. and some other tabletop-high replicas of battlefields in wide square boxes covered with fake beetles. "wtf?" i said, and became extremely agitated and confused by this strangeness. deb explained that it was part of some installation by jan fabre. i think that this banner was also part of it, and i took a picture of it expressly for anthony miller, b/c i thought he would dig it:
anyway ... the last thing we saw was winged victory of samothrace. wellll, the last thing on the tour list, at least. you kinda can't help seeing boatloads of other stuff, as the louvre is packed with art. like, packed. anyway, this headless statue also seemed quite majestic and incredible, although it didn't move me as much as venus did. another close-up from the original...
we exited through the egyptian stuff and then it was off to the little shop. i just got a couple of postcards and magnets. including a postcard of a (and i mean "a") painting by the only woman artist whose work we saw (which doesn't mean there aren't more women in there, of course), louise-elisabeth vigee-le brun. it was in this huge hall with a bunch of work by david -- including his massive capturing of the crowning of napoleon as emperor. which bonaparte did himself, taking the crown from the hands of the pope. like you do. the painting is amusing b/c of the expressions on everyone's faces -- sort of these forced smiles, like they're all muttering either, "yeah, great, now he's EMPEROR. whatevs" or "OMG DID YOU SEE HIM GRAB THAT CROWN FROM THE POPE?!?" and in the lower right corner i noticed a couple of altar boys, stuck behind a row of adults so they can't see shit, and they're much more interested in the sword of this nobleman standing in front of them. i had impure thoughts about that and decided i've been way too exposed to fandom.
anyway, by the time we were done with the little shop, i was well and truly damaged in the feet department. we went back to le carrousel de la louvre (ie, the mall of the louvre). the squirrel stopped for a starbucks espresso, and we made our way to le metro ... i was so messed up i forgot i wanted to take a picture of the fancy metro station sign that looked like the one in the tom baker who ep where he and romana II go to paris. le metro was tres crazy, and deb was squirreling out -- at one stop she darted onto the train and literally dragged me with her. at the next one, i was all set to line up with a set of doors, and i nearly lost her due to the squirrel-like randomness of her movements.
while on the train headed for our final destination, these dudes were getting a little weird. i think they were harmless, but the one dude kept eyeing us, and i was getting a little bit of radar up. suddenly, at the stop before ours, the squirrel goes, "we have to get off here." i was startled, b/c i'd just looked at the little map, and i thought i had it sussed. but i also had been idly thinking stuff like, "if these dudes follow us i'm totally gonna drag deb into a restaurant," etc. so i didn't even argue with her, partly b/c i was all, "eh?" and also b/c i thought it was her master plan to get away from the dudes -- after all, she understands more french than me, so i thought maybe she'd heard something. it turned out that she was just a little bamboozled due to also being weirded out by the weird dudes. so we waited three minutes, and another train came. she said that the one guy had actually been telling his friend not to lean on her hand (cuz we were holding onto the vertical rail by the doors and standing up). but she was also getting a weird vibe. so, whatevs. sorry, paris dudes.
we were pretty wiped out when we got back to the hotel, and i couldn't have walked too far. so we picked one of the cafes on the corner, cafe central, and went in. the maitre'd was, er, rather friendly. we split some foie gras -- not as good as la terrasse, better than cafe constant. i had steak frites -- when i ordered it medium rare, the guy's face lit up. like, "FINALLY a fuckin' american who knows how to eat a steak!" deb had another salad nicoise. we had some wine, and decided, due to my maitre'd BF, to get the cheese plate for dessert. the bleu was the best, but the other two (goat and something else) were also delish. we stumbled home. the squirrel's checking her email and fretting over the penguins being about to play the next (possibly last) stanley cup game. soon i will crash.
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