Marcus' Modern Art

19 March

I woke up this morning at the obscene hour of 5.30, an impressive feat considering that I haven't beaten the sun out of bed since winter. Unfortunately, Paris did not share my eagerness to seize the day so I rolled over enthusiastically and went back to sleep.

Descending from our apartment at 7 o'clock, we learnt that Parisians don't do early mornings because no shops were open. Eventually we came across a bakery that was in business from which we acquired our petit déjeuner: a healthy balance of chocolate, pastry and raisins. It's a good thing we do a lot of walking.

Supplies were still required for our regular déjeuner so we headed to the supermarché only to find out that they wouldn't be opened for another two hours. And as much as I love camping outside supermarkets until they open, we instead returned to the apartment and Skyped back home.

Today's plan was to head over to the Centre Pompidou, the modern art museum that we missed out on the day before. Upon returning from our grocery shopping at the supermarket, we realised that the museum wouldn't be open for a further two hours which must be some sort of conspiracy but was mainly just a little bit inconvenient.

We arrived at the musée just before opening time and were greeted by a gigantic queue going for a hundred metres out the door. Because waiting in line is for suckers, we went for a stroll around the Beaubourg area to wait for the crowd to dissapate. However, this stroll around the pleasant district only served to let more people get crammed inside the building before we got there and didn't do a lot to shorten the queue, so we dejectedly lined up when we got back.

The Centre Pompidou is a big, quirky building that looks kind of funny surrounded by all the old Parisian architecture (you're gonna have to Google this cos I think we forgot to take pictures of the outside). The inside is pretty cool, big and modern.

As it turns out, the Pompidou experience is mainly a series of standing in queues: you stand in line to get in the door so that you can line up to get a ticket which enables you to line up for the exhibitions.

The top floor of the building has a panoramic view which I must say I enjoyed a lot more than some of the works in the gallery.

The first gallery we visited was called 'Danser sa vie'. I don't know what that is supposed to mean and the literal translation doesn't make sense to me either. The exhibition itself was just as confusing, featuring works of art that were somehow related to dance with some Picassos thrown in for good measure. People milled around through walls and walls of video displays and there were a lot of naked people (in the video displays, not wandering around the exhibition), but having spent the previous two days at art galleries I guess I should have seen that coming.

Following that, we headed downstairs to the modern art gallery. I quite enjoyed that, there were plenty of interesting displays and bright colours to hold my interest. Dad got some really cool wallpapers for his phone out of it as well

One piece I did take issue with, however, was called something stupid like 'navy blue canvas' and it was literally just a canvas painted entirely in navy paint. Now I'm no art buff, but I'm pretty sure I could do that and no one's commissioned any of my work to be hung up in a fancy gallery.

Après ça, we sat by the Stravinsky Fountain and ate baguettes. They were yum.

Following this, we went to take a look at l'Hôtel de Ville below.

Nôtre Dame below.

And then a wander through the Latin District before heading back home for a microwave dinner and salad.

Later in the evening, we caught the metro up to the Arc de Triomphe and walked down the Avenue de Champs Élysées, stopping by the Mercedes dealership and the Virgin Megastore (as in the CD shop, just to clarify) and eventually ending up at the lit up pyramid at the Louvre.

Then we returned back and I ate some Snickers bars.

Marcus out.