Day 53: Magical Mystery Tour

I moved to new accomodations yesterday and the plan for today was to use my rail pass to pop around to some of the towns around Paris and get to see a few of their highlights while staying away from all the crowds and tourists. The two places I spent considerable time in today were Orléans and Blois, and a general theme for the trip arose - and no, it wasn't related to the Beatles, but it did have lots of magic and mystery.

Orléans is best known for its role during the 100 Years War between England and France, when Joan of Arc helped break the siege the English had on the city after being given direction/inspiration from God. I've always had a bit of a fascination with Joan of Arc, and the town is close to Paris, so it was an obvious choice. It's pretty clear walking around the town that they don't have too many other claims to fame. There is a Joan of Arc street, square, shopping mall, and a good number of hotels, restaurants and shops named after her. The town is a decent size, over 100,000 people, but it seemed extremely quiet when I was there. It must pick up more on weekends, but the streets were mostly empty and a good number of the shops were closed. I went by the main square - which of course has a big Joan of Arc statue, and went to the Cathedrale Ste-Croix. The cathedral was finished in 1329, and is now sort of dedicated to Joan with her as its saint. Her story is told in the stained glass windows, but even with the Joan connection aside these old gothic cathedrals all have pretty impressive architecture.

Before leaving town I stopped at a bakery for a quick lunch, and when I saw they had Baguette Canadien I decided to try that out to find out why exactly it was a Canadian sandwhich. It turned out to just be a baguette filled with a lot of cheese, some chicken, and a few pieces of green pepper, so I still have no idea why it was Canadian.

Next it was onto Blois. Prior to yesterday I knew absolutely nothing about Blois, but when I was hunting for interesting things to do in nearby towns I learned of its Robert-Houdin House of Magic. Eugene Robert-Houdin was one of the fathers of modern magic/illusion (Harry Houdini's name was based on his name in honour), but he was also a watchmaker, engineer and inventor. His success with magic was largely based on his ability to construct cutting edge equipment for illusions. The building itself was divided into different sections ranging from optical illusions to marionettes to magician props. A lot of it was more geared towards kids, but they thankfully had all the history stuff posted in English as well, which was very interesting. It was cheap admission and included a 30 minute magic show in their theatre, so overall a fun time out. It also had mechanical dragons that burst through the windows thrashing about and snorting smoke every hour for a few minutes, which gives a bit of a kick to the quiet cobblestone square its in.

Blois also had some nice parks and small gardens set up. The park had a really nice statue of Diane that I had never seen before. Diane/Artemis is probably my favourite of the Roman/Greek pantheon, and I'm pretty familiar with all the major statues/sculptures of her, but this one wasn't a classical one but one designed in the 1950s, and a much different style than I'm used to.

In both towns the ratio of english speakers was down a lot from Paris, so my french got a good workout. It is pretty amazing how fast things come back to you and improve when you have a bit of stimulation. Now it's time to leave France and let it all erode again. Quite a bit of time on the train tomorrow as I head east through France and into the Alps. Hopefully there is some nice scenery along the way and it won't all just be going through forests or something.

Day 51: Versailles

Today was a bit crazy. The plan was to go to Versailles for the day. Weather reports kind of indicated a chance of scattered showers, but it didn't look like anything too serious and I figured the chance of rain might just keep crowds away some. Everything went pretty smoothly in getting there by metro and train, although fully half of the people on the train seemed to have the wrong type of ticket when they came around to check. It's not that difficult to read signs and follow rules and it annoys me when people just ignore instructions because they can't be bothered with them. It's the same with foreign languages. I totally understand that it's impossible to always speak the language in places you visit, but it annoys me when tourists have the expectation that locals will speak their language, and get upset when they don't. (ok, rant done)

Anyway, I got my ticket and went to the palace. The person that gave me the ticket warned that the line into the palace itself would be really long until early afternoon, so suggested I spend the morning in the gardens instead to let the line die down. It was overcast but there was no rain, so I headed into the massive garden and started looking around. About ten minutes in it started to drizzle. Drizzle turned to rain, rain turned to hail, and hail turned to a bombardment of ice accompanied by thunder, lightning and bitter cold wind. I tried taking shelter under a tree for awhile, but it wasn't offering much cover and I was already soaking wet so I just decided to take what nature threw and push on. There were two silver linings in all of this. First, I basically had the massive gardens to myself, and second, I had the foresight to wear my brand new water-resistent quick drying pants, so they got their first adventure. Unfortunately I hadn't brought my warmer jacket since I hadn't anticipated things being quite so cold and wet, and my hoodie really offered no protection. I didn't take any pictures during the worst of it as my camera would have been soaked in seconds, but here's some pictures from just as the action was starting and the aftermath. I lost track of the poor cat, but hopefully it found better shelter than I did.

There were a lot of sculptures in the gardens, but the most amazing part was the fountains, which were by far the coolest I've ever seen. They weren't running, but just the figures rising out of the water in elaborate arrangements and battles was very imipressive.

Little archers riding swans fighting a dragon - definitely a lot cooler than a jet of water shooting up in the air.

After about 2 hours in the rain things finally started to clear up, so just as people were starting to hesitantly creep out from the safety of the palace I came striding up from the thick of the garden, wet and covered in mud but in high spirits. I wouldn't want to spend every day like this (and hopefully I don't get sick again, just as I'm finally healthy again) but the part of me that loves challenges and adventure just sparks up at these challenges nature throws at you and the more ridiculous the weather gets the more fun trooping on through it gets.

The inside of the palace was still crowded, but the audio tour was one of the better ones I've had, and the rooms were roped off to give a clear flow so things moved pretty well. Some of the paintings and ceiling artwork were really nice, but I found the famous Hall of Mirrors a bit dull (and too crowded). The fancy furniture in some of the rooms was another highlight, such as this globe from the chambers of the Dauphin.

Switching hostels tomorrow to another in Paris for 2 days. I had planned to use my Eurail pass to tour around some small nearby places tomorrow, but I'm a bit behind with planning so I think I'll take it a bit easy tomorrow and try to do the train things Thursday.

Day 50: The Sorbonne and Pants

My target area for today was in the south part of Paris, around the Sorbonne. The reason for this area is because it contains the largest (as far as I can confirm) comicbook store in Paris, and is the location of Au Vieux Campeur which my sister had directed me too as a possible source of the elusive pants I've been hunting for. It is also the area of a few other neat things (like the Sorbonne itself) so I figured it would be a fun day out.

First was the comic shop, which was actually two shops across an intersection from each other. One of them was entirely French comics, and I was incredibly tempted to buy one of the rare paperback volumes by my favourite writer and one of my favourite artists, but eventually talked myself out of it. The other one was more diverse, containing models/figurines, english comics, and french translations of english comics. It's collection of resin statues was particularily impressive, as was it's diverse selection of Harry Potter wands.

Next, it was just a short walk down the street to Au Vieux Campeur. Wait, it's over there too? And there??? It turns out Au Vieux Campeur isn't so much a store and like 12 stores with identical signs spread over 3 blocks. Not all together, but with random little cafes and other things between them. One of the shops was just dedicated to maps, and another to rope and pitons, but unforunately multiple had pants, so my search wasn't over just yet. After comparing pants in a few shops and walking back and forth between them I finally settled on the perfect pair of pants. Unfortunately the perfect pair of pants was like 200 euros, and I didn't want to spend that much, so I settled on the almost-perfect pair of pants that was only 50 euros. (Thanks again Jessica, your advice on this saved me a lot of time and effort). No pictures yet, but I plan to put them to work in Switzerland, so hopefully I'll get a picture there.

In general, there were a lot of really cool shops in the area. I imagine that a lot of it had to do with catering to a community of young academics, when I myself am somewhat of a young academic. There were bookshops everywhere, board game stores, more comic shops and lots of small independent clothing stores.

I also stopped by the Pantheon, which is now used for French to stash famous dead folk they are fond of, before heading to the Luxembourg park/gardens. The gardens were a pretty cool hang out with lots of people sunbathing and playing tennis. It also contained some intense petanque matches that evoked some childhood nostalgia.

I planned for that to be it for the day, but while hanging out at the hostel in the evening we met a newcomer who is only in Paris for two days and was nervous about heading out at night herself, so two of us took her out on a whirlwind night tour of a few of Paris' most famous sights before getting back just ahead of the metro closing. This also allowed me to see the Eiffel Tower up close at night for the first time, and to see its sparkle show that I somehow missed before.

Day 49: New Paris

On Sunday in Paris a lot of shops in non-touristy areas are closed, so all the tourists tend to swarm to those tourist zones and museums. I felt like getting away from the crowds for a bit, so in the morning I took the metro system as far west as it goes, to just outside the official Paris city limits at a place known as La Défense. La Défense reminds me a bit of Roppongi in Tokyo in that it's a purpose built district that combines shopping, housing, offices, entertainment and transportation into a neat package of modern buildings. There are no roads in the interior of the district, only pedestrian and biking boulevards, and the main access point is through trains and metro that meet in an underground station beneath one of the shopping areas. It has a really nice atmosphere walking around because you can't hear any traffic at all and the architecture, landscaping and decoration are all very modern and clean looking. It's pretty amazing that an area that's such a commercial hub (the shopping mall there is the largest in continental Europe, and almost 200,000 people are employed in the area, either in shops or the many large office towers) can be such a relaxed, quiet place. These planned urban communities have always interested me and I think they will becoming increasingly popular in the world as people try to deal with increasing populations and growing cities. True arcologies aren't far off!

I spent a couple hours in the huge shopping mall there (it, at least, was open on Sunday) and then started walking the 10km back into the city center to check out the Musee d'Orsay. It doesn't allow photos, and I have too much respect to violate that rule even though plenty of other people didn't seem to care. It has a large impressionist collection that it's most famous for, but has a nice mix of other artwork, furniture, design and of course sculpture. Some highlights for me were a Pan sculpture by Louis Rouillard, a collection of whimsical architectural drawings by François Garas and a good number of the non-impressionist paintings such as Gustave Caillebotte's 'The Floor Planers', Fernand Cormon's 'Cain' and Thomas Couture's 'Romans during the Decadence'.

Here's some random pictures of the day, from my walk and from one of the balconies at Orsay:

Day 48: Paris Street Art (Part 2)

Next we visited a spot which was the highlight of the tour for me. It was this beat up old squat with a big gate in front that was chained up and covered in graffiti. As our guide was telling us how it's always locked up, but a squat that's home to artists and musicians that do street art and put on impromptu punk rock concerts, a girl a nearby doorway that had been watching us came over to talk to us. She told us that a developer had bought the property and all the squatters were getting evicted in the next week, and how we were witnessing the end of a major cultural establishment in Paris. She offered to unlock the gate and let us have a look around.

The walls were covered with some of the best art of the entire tour, and just getting a glimpse into the lifestyle of some of the artists was interesting. Of course most street artists are broke people squatting together, but despite the lack of money and the obviously run-down nature of the place you could really feel that it was a great incubator for creativity and the sharing of art. I took a lot more pictures of the art in here, including a rather funny painting of a giant My Little Pony with herpes, that I'll eventually get on Picasa.

The final spot I have pictures of was an empty lot that was another big mix of art.

That's another massive ZOO Project piece at the top, but just to give an idea of some of the detail put into the other bits, here's a close-up of one section:

That's it for the tour. Only one city left to complete the Big 3 of Europe! Tomorrow I'm planning for a day of a few more museums/galleries and some shopping (or at least browsing), then doing starting to do some trips out of the city early next week.

Day 48: Paris Street Art (Part 1)

I enjoyed the street art walking tour I did in London so much that when I got to Paris I checked to see if it had anything similar, since it is also one of the big street art capitals. It did - but what I didn't know is that it's basically brand new. I did the tour today, and apparently it's only the 4th one to run so far. What was even stranger is that when the guide for it showed up he recognized me, and swore that he'd met me before. I couldn't see how he'd know me as I've only been in Paris a few days, but after chatting a bit, we eventually figured it out. The guide (Demian) used to do the London tours, and while he'd moved to Paris already when I did my tour in London, he was back in the city visiting and is friends with the guide I had for it (who was replacing him), and I guess came along to check out what was new in the London art scene, so we actually met 6 weeks ago on that London tour. Small world.

There is definately a different vibe for street art in Paris. A lot of the art seems to be more decorative, and the culture isn't as developed as in London, which is both good and bad. Paris has a lot of "free areas" where people can legally paint, and which tend to have a very high turnover as people are constantly painting over earlier paintings. There seems to be more of an appreciation by the average person in the city for street art that looks nice and some arists like Invader are almost universally liked (and there isn't the market London has that leads to all his pieces there getting stolen and sold). We were shown one wall, known simply as Le Mur where different street artists are invited to paint a mural. The artist(s) spend Sunday afternoon painting it while people gather around and watch, and then at the end they all drink some champagne and have a good time. The painting then lasts for 2 weeks until the next artist comes and paints a new piece over top. The entire collection is online at http://lemur.asso.fr/ if anybody is interested.

Now for some of the art:

This is a piece by Nick Walker from Bristol. A lot of his stencils use a figure in a bowler hat known as The Vandal. Here the Vandal is releasing mini-vandals with spray cans.

Another stencil piece. Not sure who it's by, but everybody loves Jawas!

Lots going on on this wall. The big one with the eyes popping out is by a reclusive artist known as ZOO Project. The guy lying in the hammock (as well as the umbrella, rabbit and bird) are by a highly respected first generation Parisian artists known as Nemo. There are also a bunch of random other bits, and I didn't even capture everything on the wall as there were some tiled mosaics higher up. Speaking of tiled mosaics...

I had to get at least one Invader piece in, it being his home turf.

In general, the art was less dense than in London, which meant more walking to get from place to place. Luckily it was a gorgeous day, and walking through the back alleys of London you didn't run into parks with random people slow dancing around a violinist.

(continued in Part 2)

Day 47: Champs-Élysées by Night

Things started off slow today. It was raining most of the day so I stuck around the hostel talking to people and trying to arrange some of my tours for later in the year. When I went out for dinner I decided I wanted to go for a bit of a walk so I took the metro to near the Louvre and hung around there for a bit. When the sun set and the lights came on I walked up Champs-Elysees stopping in at various shops. I'm looking for a very specific type of pants, but haven't been able to find them anywhere so far. By the time I got to the end of the street it was around 11:30 so I took the metro back home. Not a very exciting day to write about, but it was a nice break and I have plenty more time in Paris still.

Day 46: South of the Seine

Yesterday all the places I went to were on the north side of the Seine river, so today I decided to hit the south side. Before that, I had to go to the train station to reserve some upcoming rides. Everything should be booked up and ready to go until Venice, although there will be at least one early morning in there to avoid another reservation.

Once all that was taken care of, I hopped on the subway and headed to the Eiffel Tower. One of the lifts up to the third level was broken, and they charge even to go up the first two levels by stairs, so I passed on going up and just wandered through the park and enjoyed the view. It was the hottest day of my trip so far, 29C, and I was carrying around my messenger bag because I had things in it for the train reservations and didn't want to make another trip back to the hostel. I emptied out much of the weight in the morning, but with the heat it did cause some extra effort. On the positive side, I also had my water bottle clipped to it (thanks Jessica!) so I kept filling it up at fountains through the day.

After a bit of research following the anonymous tip on vertical gardens (I can't really see anybody other than my mother or sister knowing about them and knowing I'd be interested in them) on stuck around near the tower to hunt down the vertical garden at the Musee du Quai Branly. This is one of the older ones in Paris, but it still looks amazing. I might try to hunt down a few more of them, but this one was easy since it was close to my route.

I headed east along the river a good while until I reached Île de la Cité, which is an island in the Seine. It has a couple of things I wanted to check out. First I went to Sainte-Chapelle, which has my favourite interior of any gothic structure. I doubt most people even have a favourite gothic interior, but most people didn't have to memorize long lists of gothic architecture and the features of each place for art history. Sainte-Chapelle is basically a cage of light, and it was lucky that it was sunny out today. Unfortunately 3 of the windows were boarded up for renovations, so I didn't get the full effect, but still not too shabby.

The other stop was to the more famous gothic structure, Notre Dame de Paris. Apparently Thursday and Saturdays are free admission, so I wandered around the inside of the catherdral (ground floor only). The real highlight of Notre Dame is the exterior though, with all its gothic features like flying buttresses and the rose window. Also, it has gargoyles. Lots and lots of gargoyles.

Finally, here is some random other tower that was nearby. No idea what it is, but lots more gargoyles!

Anyway, since it's very hot in here right now I'm going to go get a beer and head outside where hopefully there is a breeze and relax a bit. Don't have a plan for tomorrow yet, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Louvre Pictures

Since it feels wrong to only include one picture of all the art in the Louvre, here's some more!

I'll put the rest of what I took on Picasa soonish. I'll warn you that it's like 75% sculpture though.

Day 45: Defeating the Louvre

Today was the extended hours day at the Louvre, so I planned to get there early and get as much time out of it as I could. I know that spending my entire first real day in Paris in a museum seems a bit silly, but I find it's a good idea to accomplish your top destinations early since you never know what might happen afterwards. My plans changed a bit in the morning because it was fairly nice out, and after spending yesterday sitting on trains I really felt like giving my legs a stretch. Instead of going straight to the Louvre I took the subway to the Arc de Triomphe and walked from there down the Champs-Élysées to the Seine then following the river to the museum.

The lines hummed along nicely and it only took maybe 10 minutes to get in and get a ticket. People say that you need to dedicate at least a couple days to the Louvre to see everything, but they're apparently wrong. It only took me about 9 straight hours to get through the entire thing (11:30-8:30) - but I didn't buy one of the portable guide things, which I'm sure would have added more time to things. The highlight for me - as usual - was the sculpture, which the Louvre has an amazing selection of. Three of my top favourites are at the Louvre (Nike at Samothrace, Cupid & Psyche and a random Artemis statue nobody else cares about), but there were a lot of other great newer pieces as well, especially French and Italian.

There are certainly a lot of paintings as well, but I wasn't too blown away by most of them. For the most part I found the architecture and paintings on the ceilings more interesting than a lot of the paints actually held in the room. The Mona Lisa was as underwhelming as I expected, but there definitely were some pieces that I liked a lot.

It was a really nice evening out by the time I got out, so after watching a pretty comical chase of two police on rollerblades trying to catch a group of people selling cheap souvenirs on the museum grounds, I hit the streets and started heading in the direction of my hostel by foot. It's quite a distance away, and I didn't really plan on walking the entire distance, but I figured it was a good direction to start in. Normally I make a mental directory of fancy buildings to navigate by as I spend more time in a city, but in Paris there are way too many fancy buildings. It seems like every few intersections there is some elaborate palace or museum. I don't even know what half of the big decorative buildings I see are for. The sun was going down though, which made directions easy, so I just kept heading north-east taking detours as things caught my eye. I found myself below the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur so I headed up to check that out and enjoy the view of the Paris skyline. By this point I was getting a bit tired so I took the metro back towards my hostel to call it a night.

Because of scheduling/booking issues I've pretty much given up on my original plan of spending a few days in Lyon after Paris. I think I'll just book a couple more days in Paris, and since I still have some flexibility with my eurail pass maybe take a few day trips by train down to check out some nearby cities and towns. There seems to be ample to do around, so it should work out fine. I still need to start booking things in Italy though.

Day 44: Trains

I spent most of today on trains or waiting for trains as I skipped all over avoiding train reservation fees. I finally got checked into my hostel in Paris sometime after 5:00, and now I'm planning to just take it easy for the evening and do some planning, and then venture out tomorrow. I probably need to visit the train station again tomorrow to reserve my route to Switzerland/Italy, and Lyon is proving to be a headache, so I might pick some other place in France to visit after Paris. At least the public transit here is ridiculously cheap. No pictures today, but I am going to try to finally bring Picasa up to date with the ones I've been taking since Amsterdam.