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04.12.2003 | Paris - Day Three
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The third and final day of my Paris trip -- the Louvre, the Centre Pompidou, and off back home...
The Louvre, with I.M. Pei's glass pyramid. Count me firmly in the supporters camp on that one -- I found everything about the entire museum to be architectually magnificent. A gorgeous place in every way.
I didn't compose this one as well as I should've, but this is from the subterranean lobby of the Louvre. That spiral staircase sticking incongruously into the frame wraps itself around the coolest elevator I've ever seen -- a piston which rises in and out of the shaft depending on the floor it's going to. Nifty.
The Code of Hammurabi. It kind of made my head explode to think that I was looking at the object which created the concept of laws.
Hercules fights a snake while Spartacus looks on intently. Coolest Greco-Roman crossover EVER!
A wider view of this sculpture hall, which I found (a.) overwhelmingly gorgeous and (b.) strangely erotic -- well it
was filled with beautifully sculpted (in every sense) naked men. Go easy on me. Sculpture had always bored me before this trip, but somehow I found myself really impressed with it this time around... (Plus it photographs much better than paintings, so in creating this document I found myself much more drawn to it.)
This is actually a lightish crowd around the Mona Lisa. I sort of promised myself I wouldn't go see the Big Tourist Three at the Louvre, but I did it anyway. All in a row.
The Winged Victory of Samothrace (I had a better picture of this, but someone walked into it at the last second and I just couldn't reproduce it)...
...and the Venus de Milo. Wish I'd remembered to take a picture of this, I remember being quite amused to learn what her hair looked like from the back.
The remains of a cherub stuck to the back of a nymph. This was easily the most strangely haunting thing I saw the whole trip.
And on to the Centre Pompidou! It really is a pretty neat-looking building, IMHO, especially the way it's kind of tucked away on side roads, unlike all the other monumental architecture of Paris where the road system emphasizes the building...
Part of a neat mini-exhibition on the history of the paperback book, in the lobby of the museum.
The view inside one of the famous escalators.
A goldfish in front of a TV screen; there were five of these next to each other. It was pretty awesome, though I don't remember the artist or the name of the work. It was a bitch to get this little man to float himself into a compositionally sound position, so in the end I just gave up. His name is Bubbles, by the way. Because I say so.
For Pol Pot, which is awesome. And not just because it has Ghost Rider, Morbius, and the cover of
X-Men #18 in it. OK, maybe just for those reasons.
The absolutely beautiful restaurant on top of the Centre which I thought about eating at,
on Stuart's recommendation, but it was a bit pricey and nothing on the menu really sang to me.
One last parting shot of the building, and then it was off to start walking to the Gare du Nord (I could've subwayed, but I had time to kill and was curious to see as much more ground as I could before leaving. Too bad it's not exactly the loveliest part of Paris between the Pompidou and the station. And too bad my ass was killing me for the whole walk, but hey.)
04.12.2003 | 02:38 PM
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Comments.
You're a huge fucking dork, but the Spartacus/Hercules crossover really does rule. I need a goddamn digital camera.
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Great minds think alike (or are attracted to the same things). I must've taken about 10 exposures of Spartacus, from different distances and angles. Wow. I never gave much of a damn about sculpture until I visited that sculpture garden. And fell in love with Spartacus! Spartacus makes me start having pygmalion type fantasies.
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That restaurant on top of the Pompidou is called Georges, and it's one of the Costes Brothers' restos, along with Costes Hotel, Cafe Marly (at the Louvre), and Cafe d'Esplanade (at les Invalides). It's good food, but you'd really haffta to be more than hungry to lay down a cool 50E for burgers and fries.
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