Somber excitement at finding Manray's grave
Lazing in the Versailles grass
Making friends
Versailles Gardens...some of it.
anti-art
The futurist tinkertoy jumble of metal that is the Pompidou
The famous cafe where Sartre and Beauvoir drank espresso and smoked cigarettes, now a ritzy, over-priced tourist attraction.
Ani outside the D'Orsay
Ali: We just couldn't get enough of art museums in Paris. The day after the Louvre, we hit up D'Orsay (unfortunately cameras are a big no-no there, so no inside pics). The collection was amazing, Van Gogh, Degas, Matisse, Cezanne, Jean-Leon Gerome, even some Camille Claudel! Our art kick didn't end there. On Saturday we went to the Pompidou, which houses some of the most famous modern art pieces in the world.
No trip to Paris is complete without a tour of the Versailles. Incidentally, We ended up making two days out of Versailles. We forgot to check when the Palace is open and came on a Monday, which is the only day it is closed. Fortunately the massive gardens are still open, and free on Mondays too. Ani had a very close encounter with a swan. That was probably the highlight of the day. Otherwise it was quite refreshing to relax on the green grass after hitting the pavements of Paris for a solid week.
The Palace Versailles itself is also rather impressive. It actually wasn't as huge as I imagined it and it looks rather stumpy from the outside I think. Once inside though, I found that it is a maze of chambers and ante-chambers. It was pretty amazing to think that the floors I was walking on were the same floors that Marie Antoinette and Napoleon daily traversed 200 years ago. My favorite chambers were the Dauphin's apartments. They weren't as pompously ornate as the main chambers, but absolutely adorable.
I also think that no trip to Paris is complete without a trip to some cemeteries. They are actually tourist hot spots. We went to the Montmartre cemetery, Montparnasse Cemetery, and of course Pere-Lachaise cemetery. Be warned (as we were not) that maps are not provided for the first two, and we had quite a bit of trouble finding the tombstones of our favorite personages. No luck finding Jean-Leon Gerome, that's for sure. At Montparnasse we had more luck finding Sartre, Beauvoir, Beckett, and Manray. Pere-Lachaise was a city of graves, even with my rough, hand-drawn map, we were still able to find Frederic Chopin (the greatest piano composer that ever breathed), Oscar Wilde (with his lipstick graffitied tombstone), and Edith Piaf (the little troubled french songstress).
