Until yesterday, I had never visited Versailles.  And I’m not talking about Versailles, Missouri (which exists, by the way, and is pronounced “Ver-say-leez”).  I’m talking about Chateau de Versailles, built by Louis XIV in the 1600s.  The fact that I’ve never been there is rather shocking considering that 1) I’ve been to Paris several times, 2) tourists who visit Paris for only 4 days manage to visit Versailles, and 3) I’m an architect and I studied the building in school.  Yesterday, I went to Versailles.

Here’s how Versailles came to be:

King Louis XIV had a finance minister who built an impressive chateau called Vaux-le-Vicompte.  Louis went to the housewarming party, got jealous of the nice house, threw his finance guy in prison, and then stole his designers to build an even bigger and flashier house.  Fifty years later, the project was finished.  And then Louis died.  The end.

On the way to Versailles, we met some Americans who were vacationing in Paris and headed to Versailles as well.  One couple was from Kansas City and the other from Dallas.  We spent a good hour chatting with them on the journey and discovered that we had lots in common.  Well, most of that “common” stuff was me.  I grew up in Missouri and my brother and my childhood best friend now live in Kansas City.  The two women in this group are court reporters and their husbands are lawyers; my brother and friend are both lawyers.  I lived in Texas for several years, attending undergrad and grad school there.  One of the couples had a daughter who went to my alma mater, Trinity University.  It is a small school, and most people have never even heard of it, so it was fun to make that connection.

Once we reached the train stop for Versailles, we walked the 10 minutes to the chateau, chatting all the while.  At the entrance, we said our goodbyes.  Chad and I had to buy tickets, but the other couples had pre-purchased online and were able to walk right in.  I’ve gotta tell you, for as big as Versailles is and for as many people were there, we bumped into those folks several times.

I took pictures of Versailles from the outside, but they are terrible – not because I’m a terrible photographer, but because it’s simply impossible to take pictures of that place because it is so big.  You just can’t capture what it’s really like.  As Chad says, “It’s like trying to take pictures of the Grand Canyon.  What’s the point?”  To give you an idea of how big this place is, when it was in its heyday, 20,000 people lived there.  20,000.  20,000!  That is a lot of people in one house!

However, even though it’s impossible to convey in photos, here are some photos:

Approaching Versailles. Everything you see is the chateau and it’s all one building.

Again, this was one dude’s house. And the roof was trimmed in gold. The sun came out at this moment and illuminated the gold which was appropriate, because Louis XIV was known as The Sun King.

The ticket lets you see the main rooms of this humble abode.

This room was crazy for all of its paintings on the walls and ceilings. One of the designers that King Louis stole from his imprisoned finance minister was a painter.

This is the famous Hall of Mirrors.

Okay.  I’m going to be honest here.  Maybe I’m just jaded, but I wasn’t that impressed with the chateau.  Not that it’s not an impressive place to visit, but I think I had built Versailles up to be something lifechanging, and it kept reminding me of other chateaux and palaces and museums and cathedrals that I have seen elsewhere.  Don’t get me wrong; I realize that Chad and I have been fortunate in our travels.  However, the hordes of people were stifling, and the pushing and jostling got to me.

Our one reprive from the crowds was lunch.  The chateau has 3 food venues inside – a sandwich/salad/soup counter, a cafeteria, and a sit-down restaurant.  We chose to eat at the restaurant because it was the most expensive option and would take the most amount of time, thereby ensuring that it would be the least crowded.

Ordering lunch while seated in the Baby Prince’s Room. I thought this was pretty cool!

When I say that the restaurant is in the chateau, I mean in the original chateau.  We were seated at a table in the baby prince’s room.  Lunch was a little expensive, but we’ve come to expect that in Paris.  Plus, the food was pretty good.  After lunch, we made a beeline for the exit to see the chateau gardens.

For me, the gardens were the best part.  People make such a big deal about the chateau itself and the grandiose architecture, but the gardens are just stunning.  I’m sure part of the reason I liked them so much is that I had no expectations for the gardens and that we could escape the crowds.  And by “escape the crowds” I mean, “how far do you want to go?”  The Versailles property is larger than Manhattan.  No, I don’t mean larger than Central Park.  I mean larger than Manhattan.  Um, yeah.

The gardens are traditional French gardens with manicured hedges and trees, long vistas, and fountains.  There’s not a lot I can convey with words about the gardens, so here are some photos:

This pathway was called Allee des Eaux – Alley of Water – and there were beautiful fountains on both sides of the path all the way down

This fountain made us laugh because it looks like the dragon is about to eat the pigeon.

We rented a boat and paddled around “Le Grand Canal,” a lake in the Versailles gardens.

Our favorite find was this little area called the Queen’s Hamlet.  This was built for Marie-Antoinette in the 1760s as a getaway for her and her closest friends.  It was a pretend English village where they could escape the structure of the chateau life and do as they pleased.  We particularly liked the English-style gardens which are less manicured and more wild.

Typical English garden design with a “folly”. A folly is a false greek or roman “ruin” that was built into French and English gardens when people actually spent time outside before being distracted by televistion.

A little house from the Queen’s Hamlet. Note the vegetable garden in the yard.

While walking around the “jardins anglais” (English gardens), I was wondering what it was like to be royalty in the 1600s and 1700s.  There would be no privacy.  It sounds like Louis XIV had every minute of his day scheduled.  Chad told me that if France depended on my public “waking schedule” (which Louis had), the country would be in dire straits.  (FYI, I’m not a morning person.)  And did the gardens provide escape for those who were always in the public eye?  A way to hide just around the curve of a hedge?

Chad on one of the walkways through the Versailles gardens.

But then I thought about the gardens and how beautiful they are.  The grounds are so big that you can’t even try to see everything as a tourist in one day.  There is something that makes me wistful about that.  What if I could tune out the siren song of the iPhone and the computer and the web and, instead, spend hours walking around the gardens of Versailles talking with my friends or just listening to the thoughts in my head?  Reconnecting with people?  That sounds ideal.  But then there’s a little part of me that thinks that Marie-Antoinette would have giggled with glee at the idea of Facebook…

Today was a cold, rainy day in Paris.  Chad was a little more motivated to do things than I was, so while he ran an errand this morning, I sat around in my pajamas and read my Kindle.  I started out by reading a book about the moral, social and environmental impacts of eating meat, and then I was all, “What the heck am I doing?  I don’t want to be reading this!  I’m on vacation.”  And I switched to a good mystery.

Chad’s errand took him to a famous kitchen supply store.  (Is anyone out there surprised?)  We had stopped by that store last week just to see what it was all about, and it was pretty cool.  It was like an old hardware store, except with cooking stuff.  You name it, they had it.

This kitchen supply store in near the Pompidou Center.

It is this style of product display that made me think of a hardware store.

And then we saw this:

The holy grail of copper pots.

We’ve been talking about getting new pots and pans for our kitchen, because most of what we have is old with a non-stick coating, and the coating is deteriorating.  Which means the coating is going to get into our food.  Gross.  Well, Chad returned from his errand this morning with copper saucepans in 3 different sizes, and the price was very reasonable.  Cheaper than Williams-Sonoma, even with my 20% designer discount.

Once Chad stopped gloating about his new pans and I changed out of my pajamas, we braved the rain and headed over to Lot of Wine.  This is a wine store/bar in our neighborhood that we ran across on Saturday night.  The owner, Nathalie, was very helpful and knowledgeable about wine on Saturday night.  When I had asked if she had a wine list, she said, “C’est moi!  Je suis la carte de vins!”  (It’s me!  I am the wine list!)   We headed over there today for a light lunch.

At Lot of Wine – caviste et bar a vins

The walls of this tiny place are lined with cubbies displaying the wine.  You can buy bottles to drink there or to take home, or you can get certains wines by the glass.  We had some cheese, some foi gras (get over it, it’s France, for crying out loud), and some wine.  We then bought 2 bottles of really great white wine to bring back to the apartment.  (I almost just said, “to bring home,” but who am I kidding…  those wines will be in our bellies long before we head back to Atlanta.)

On the way home, we stopped off at the cheese shop.

Cheese display in the cheese shop

The white on this cheese is mold…fluffy, fluffy mold. If you look closely, you can see fingerprint indentations in the mold from the guy who placed it on this display board.

Next was a stop at the produce store to pick up some salad fixings for dinner.

I thought this produce display was very pretty.

This was also around the time that I realized that the soles of my shoes weren’t waterproof and that my toes were feeling “squishy.”  So, next stop was home to shed the wet shoes, dry off, and warm up for a few minutes.  Then we headed back out to go to the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie which showcases contemporary European photography.  It’s free on Wednesday evenings, and, as I mentioned in my Parc Floral post, we love things that are free.  Apparently, a lot of other people do as well, because the line to get in went around the block.  We decided to go sit somewhere for a while and wait out the line.  We popped into La Cidrerie du Marais, and after being there a little while, we realized that we had had lunch there when we were in Paris in 2009.  How random is that?  The Cidrerie specializes in cider (kind of like beer) and crepes.  So we shared a small jug of cider to pass the time.

The cider was served in the small pitcher into these cups

When we headed back to the photography venue, the line was even longer, so we decided to skip it.  We headed home via the rue des Francs-Bourgeois, window-shopping on the way and then passing through Place des Vosges.

Place des Vosges is a beautiful example of urban planning and architecture.  It takes up about 4 city blocks and is this huge park/square/plaza space.  When you enter from our street, rue St-Antoine, you see this entry:

main entry to Place des Vosges

For some reason, I think it’s pretty cool that cars drive through that central arch.  Anyway, here’s another view of the Place:

Can you imagine living in one of the apartments in those buildings?  I don’t even want to know how much those cost.  And here’s a final image of the arcades that ring all 4 sides of the Place at the ground level of these buildings:

These arcades are lined with cafes, restaurants, jewelry stores, art galleries, very high-end places…

Now it’s evening.  While I write a blog post, Chad is watching the A-Team in French.  Does anyone remember the A-Team?  I remember it being pretty cool when I was a kid, but now it’s pretty awful, even when they all sound so sexy speaking French.  It’s terrible, but it’s on every weekday night in all its glory.  And there is something fascinating about watching Mr. T strut around while hearing French voice-overs.  Yes, it’s exactly as you might imagine…

In Paris, the first Saturday of October is the Nuit Blanche arts festival.  “Nuit blanche” translates as “white night,” and it is inspired by St Petersburg’s “white nights” when the celebration of arts and culture keeps the population entertained during the summer nights when the sun does not set.  Nuit Blanche in Paris had its 12th annual event our first weekend here, with events in 5 neighborhoods around the city.  The interesting part of this festival is that it starts at 7 pm and goes until 7 am the next morning, with temporary art and cultural events going all night long, and people are out and about very late as they wander about seeing art.  Who knew that art at midnight could be so much fun?

This was a woman at the Swedish Cultural Institute doing ice sculpture carving with a chain saw.

And this was the pop-up pavilion at the Swedish Cultural Istitute. It’s a blow-up building. Seriously. If you look closely, the walls are inflated like balloons.

For 2013, one of the Nuit Blanche neighborhoods was Le Marais.  Our neighborhood.  Excellent!  We were able to wander around and check out some crazy art installations without having to go all over the city.  It was a lot of fun.  If it hadn’t been so dang cold and windy, Chad and I would have stayed out longer than we did.  As it was, we came home around midnight.

Here’s a storefront turned into a temporary art piece with a cartoony collage of technology “stuff.” You can see a black and white cartoon cell phone on the left side, there are also 3 real video screens in the storefront. This one was pretty cool.

These are paper flowers illuminated from within. Nighttime art is all about lighting.

These “ghosts” changed colors as the lighting changed.

And now the ghosts are pink.

Our last “art” visit was to this apartment facade.

It was a fake facade set up in a small plaza.

It was like everyone was home for the evening with their curtains drawn, watching TV, except there was horror movie music playing.  But then when you walked around the side to the back, you saw this:

Scaffolding.  Scaffolding and curtains.  Contempoary art.  Midnight.  Fun.

In the southeast corner of Paris, there is a park called Parc Floral.  We there on Saturday to see the Expo Champignons.  However, I would recommend it to everyone who visits Paris, regardless of any mushroom expositions that might be happening.

French ducks. Also known as “canards.” And if you’re in a good restaurant, also known as “delicious.”

When you think about visiting another city and being a tourist, you probably don’t think about going to city parks.  Chad and I have developed a thing for parks and botanical gardens when we travel.  We started this habit during our 2009 sabbatical.  Back in 2009, we were on a very tight budget as we traveled around Europe.  As a result, anything that was free automatically made it onto our must-see list when we hit a new city.  One of the cool things about seeing the free stuff is that you take time to appreciate aspects of a city that most tourists never see.  For example, free things include parks, churches, strolls through out-of-the-way neighborhoods, picturesque plazas, farmers markets…  You get the picture.

Anyhoo, back to the subject at hand, Chad has declared Parc Floral his favorite park ever.  I agree that it is pretty awesome.  What was surprising was that, even though it was a Saturday morning, Parc Floral was pretty empty.  It was quiet and beautiful, a great place to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and just 10 minutes from our apartment by metro.

Check out the giant leaves on this plant behind me.

So, what was so cool about the park?  Well, we had no expectations whatsoever except to go visit the Expo Champignons.  However, there were 3 parts of the park that stick with me.  First of all, when we entered the park, we stumbled upon the Chemin de l’Evolution which was a garden with a prescribed path, and as you walked along the path you saw plants in the order that they evolved biologically.  Sounds goofy, I know.  However, take a look at these photos:

I enjoyed the groupings of plants by color.  I recognized some plants as similar to what we have in Atlanta, and others were new to me.  (Did I mention that I am Science Girl?  I like plants.)

There are approximately 25 small pavilion buildings in the park.  Some are empty, some are used for temporary events like the mushroom thing, and some have permanent exhibits.  We came across one pavilion which had a bonsai exhibit.  The funny thing was, we walked up to this building and the door was unlocked, but there was no one around.  Were we allowed to go in?  We weren’t sure.  So we just went in.  It was so cool!  The room had several different bonsai trees on exhibit, and then there was large courtyard out back with even more trees.  I had never been very interested in bonsai before, but after seeing that exhibit, I have a great appreciation for the art.  There were different species, sizes, shapes, displays…  This might have been the moment when Chad said, “This park destroys the Atlanta Botanical Gardens!”

The final, most breathtaking part of the park for us were the dahlia gardens.  These flower gardens were jaw-dropping.  When we first walked up the garden, we just saw a few plants with lots of colorful flowers.  Then we walked up a couple of steps into the heart of the garden where we could see further, and holy moly it stretched on and on!

In addition to the sheer number and variety of plants, I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of dahlias.  For example, this is a dahlia:

And this is a dahlia:

And this is a dahlia:

And this is a dahlia:

Chad and I each kept finding our favorite flower, and then we would walk 2 more feet and find a new favorite.  And then a new favorite.  Now I have about 157 favorite kinds of dahlia.

The other interesting thing was that one of the gardens was an annual international competition.  Dahlia plants from around the world had been submitted and planted in the garden, and prizes had been awarded both for critics’ choice and people’s choice.  Why does America have hot dog eating contests instead of dahlia cultivation contests?  Looking at dahlias is way more interesting.

Early last week, I saw an ad for “Expo Champignons,” and I knew I had to take Chad to this Mushroom Exposition.  I know, I know, it sounds silly to get excited about a mushroom festival in some random park in Paris, but let me tell you, when you are on vacation in Paris for a few weeks, you have the time to get excited about a mushroom festival.  And you go.  Partially because it’s free and partially becuase you’re all, “Meh, what else are we going to do today?”

We had no idea what to expect from this mushroom event.  Would there be mushrooms growing in the ground?  Would there be mushroom tastings?  Would there be large guys wearing mushroom hats and proclaiming the benefits of mushrooms?  For there record, there was none of this.  However, the mushroom expo was still awesome!

The expo was held in Pavilion 18 in Parc Floral.  Here’s a shot of the pavilion:

There were hundreds of species of mushrooms on display, each in its own tray with its own label.  Okay, okay, so I’m a total science girl, but even I was way nerdy into this expo.  I had no idea there were so many different types of mushrooms!  So many shapes and sizes and colors.  The labels that have a green stripe at the top are “good for cooking.”  The labels with the yellow stripe have “no cooking value.”  The labels with the red stripe indicate mushrooms that are “toxique” or “danger du morte”.  Yeah, I didn’t touch those bad boys.

It looks like just a bunch of tables with stuff on top.  But then here is the good stuff.  Did you know that mushrooms could look like this:

And this:

And this:

And that mushrooms could have red caps white spots in real life and not just from cartoons:

And… now you know why I nerded out.

However, my absolute favorite table was the one labeled “Odeurs”…smells.  Each mushroom on that table was labled with what it was supposed to smell like – candles, soap, garlic, and several words that I didn’t recognize.  One word that I did recognize, however, and which was a very true smell, was “anis”, licorice.  I tell you what, these blue mushrooms in this photo smelled just like black licorice.

It was unbelievable.  And now do you understand why I am so happy that I visited the mushroom exhibit at the park?

As I mentioned in my last post, we are staying in the 4th arrondissement in a neighborhood called Le Marais.  Here’s an excerpt from our guidebook:

<<Jack Kerouac translated “rue des Francs-Bourgeois,” the Marais’ main east-west axis along with rue Rivoli and rue St-Antoine, as “street of the outspoken middle classes,” though the original owners of the mansions lining its length would not have taken kindly to such a slight on their blue-bloodedness.  It was not until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the Marais became a fashionable aristocratic district.  After the Revolution it was abandoned to the masses who, up until some fifty years ago, were living ten to a room on unserviced, squalid streets.  Since then, gentrification has proceeded apace and the middle classes are finally ensconced – mostly media, arty or gay, and definitely outspoken.  The renovated mansions, their grandeur concealed by the narrow streets, have become museums, libraries, offices and chic apartments, flanked by trendy fashion outlets, interior design shops and art galleries.  Though cornered by Haussmann’s boulevards, the Marais itself was spared the baron’s heavy touch and has been left pretty much unspoilt.  This is Paris at its most seductive – old, secluded, as lively by night as it is by day, and with as many alluring shops, bars and places to eat as you could wish for.>>

So, imagine that you are me back in June, and you’re doing research on Paris and trying to figure out where to stay.  Then you read that delectable tidbit in the guidebook.  I was all, “Um, Chad, I don’t think I need to do any more research. Le Marais sounds awesome!”  And, as it turns out, it is indeed awesome!

In addition to being centrally located and within walking distance of so many interesting parts of the city, I have never seen so many restaurants, cafes, bakeries, cheese shops, wine stores, fruit and vegetable stores, butcher shops, and other food vendors in such close proximity.  And don’t even get me started on the number of shoe stores within shouting distance of our apartment.  In fact, Chad and I have barely left our neighborhood this week because we have been busy exploring everything that is close by.  Here are some images from Le Marais:

view of Rue St-Antoine – our street

This is a library in our neighborhood – a library that looks like a chateau! How cool is that!

Ok. Here’s a building with ivy growing up the whole facade. I took this photo for a friend who is a landscape architect.

So this is a big church in our neighborhood called St-Paul.  There is a metro stop right in front called, surprisingly, St-Paul.

Interior of St-Paul church. Notice chairs instead of pews/benches.

Okay.  And then here is a wacky piece of architecture below.  I couldn’t figure out what type of business was in this building.  I could just tell that it was a new piece of architecture.

And then there is this canal:

Did you know that Paris has canals? Why, yes, Paris has canals.

Having an afternoon drink at a cafe…

The produce market across the street!

The fruit display at the produce market – mixed berries on the right, figs on the left, and something called kaki in the middle that looks like persimmons.

Seriously, why would you ever live anywhere else except here.  It’s awesome.

So now that we’ve been here for a week and a half, I’m sure everyone is curious about where we are staying while we’re in Paris.  We’ve rented an apartment in a neighborhood called Le Marais.  Paris is divided into 20 arrondissements, and we are staying in the 4th, very centrally located.  We are about 15 minutes walk from Notre Dame, 20 minutes from the Latin Quarter, 20 minutes from the Louvre.  We can also walk to the Eiffel Tower, although that would probably take 45 minutes to get there.  In any case, we love being in the heart of the city.  During our last visit, we were in the 10th arrondissement which was further out, and while we liked the cultural diversity of that neighborhood (lots if immigrants made for interesting sights and foods), we had to take the metro to get to most of where we wanted to be.  It’s nice to be within walking distance of so many things this time around.

I can’t remember if we rented our apartment on Air BnB or vrbo.com or another rental website.  In any case, when we travel, we prefer to rent apartments rather than stay in hotels.  Of course, on this trip, we never would have been able to afford to stay in a hotel for such a long visit.  However, even when we do short weekend trips in the States, we frequently will rent an apartment.  Apartment rentals are great because you can have more room to spread out than in a typical hotel room, you don’t have to worry about housekeeping interrupting if you want to spend the morning reading or writing blog posts, and you can prepare meals at home instead of eating restaurant meals 3 times a day.  Also, for me, a big reason for this particular trip was to “live” in Paris and be a parisienne, if only for a month.  What better way to do so than to stay in a cozy apartment, go to the grocery store and markets, and develop some daily and weekly habits to go along with it all.  Speaking of weekly habits, our apartment has a washing machine, so one of the weekend tasks is to do laundry.  (See first blog post about traveling lightly.)  Doing laundry is not a glamorous job by any means; however, there is something pretty awesome about being on vacation long enough that you have to do laundry to get through the next week.  I know plenty of people who would hate to do laundry while on vacation.  From my perspective, though, I would much rather do laundry in Paris than in Atlanta.  I’m just saying.

So, here are some photos of our apartment, starting with the exterior.

Our apartment is above the yellow awning on the 4th floor.  You can see Chad in the open window on the left.  What’s interesting is that our apartment is in the yellow-awning building, but we get to our apartment through a door in the building to the left.  If you look closely, there is a guy entering the door behind that dude who is wearing a gray sweater and jeans and waiting to use the crosswalk.

Once you enter the building, you go past the mailboxes and through a gate.

Then you go up some old, tight, uneven spiral stairs for 3 flights and get dizzy.

Inside our apartment, we have 4-ish rooms – living room, bedroom, kitchen, and a bathroom.  To get to the bathroom, you walk through a “bonus room” (in American real estate terms) which is not really a habitable room but which has some storage space and a closet.  Here’s our living rooom:

Here’s the bedroom:

The kitchen:

And then there is this extra room with storage:

In the back left corner is the door to the bathroom:

We also have some great views from our apartment:

The apartment is not huge, but it’s larger than the last apartment we had in Paris which was a teeny-tiny studio apartment in the attic of a building on the 7th floor with no elevator and a sloping roof that you would hit your head on while preparing food in the kitchen.  In any case, Chad and I have shared enough tiny apartments that we can live anywhere together.

When we woke up this morning, it was rainy and cloudy and generally “blech” outside.  So, what do you do when you’re on vacation and it’s yucky outside?  If you’re Juli, then you go to a museum!  You get to spend some time inside out of the rain and you feel like you’re making good use of your time in Paris, getting some “cul-chah” while looking at some artsy-fartsy.

We started the day with breakfast in the apartment – baguette with jam, some yogurt and a glass of juice.  First of all, if you have never eaten a fresh, warm baguette in France, then you have never eaten a real baguette.  Gently crispy on the outside, light and airy on the inside, it is so good.  And it costs the equivalent of a dollar.  Let’s compare this with a “baguette” in the US.  Hard/crunchy, shreds the roof of your mouth, chewy instead of airy on the inside, and costs, what, 3 dollars or something.  Yes, I am a food snob and, yes, I’m sure my brother is reading this and rolling his eyes right now.

Anyway, to get back to the artsy-fartsy.  We debated between the Louvre and the Pompidou Center for a few minutes this morning and then decided to go to the Pompidou because 1) the Louvre seems awfully intidimating and 2) we can walk to the Pompidou from our apartment.  So off to the Pompidou.

The Pompidou Center was built in the 1970s and was the subject of much controversy from the beginning.  First of all, the architects were chosen via competition, and this was the first time that international architects were allowed to participate in a French architectural design competition.  Not only that, the architects who won were NOT FRENCH.  Scandale!  Well, that was only the first scandal, because if you have ever seen the building, you will understand the real scandal.  Here’s a view of the Pompidou Center from down the street:

And here’s a view from the plaza in front of the Pompidou Center:

That worm-looking thing going up the side of the building is the public escalator of the museum.

This is a building where you either love it or hate it.  The genius of the building is that the insides are on the outside.  This means that the mechanical ducts, plumbing, circulation (stairs, escalators, elevators) are all on the outside of the building.  This design frees up the interior of the building completely so that the entire interior can be devoted to gallery spaces for the art, putting the guts of the building on the outside of the building.  Some people consider these exposed guts to be an eyesore, and some consider them to be art in themselves.  For me, I’ve gotta tell you that I love the design in theory, but there are a lot of horizontal surfaces on the outside of the building as a result, and let’s just say that there are lot of pigeons who live around the museum.  And the escalator “tubes” are clear and horizontal or nearly so.  So you can see through the roof above.  With its decorations of pigeon poop.

Anyhoo, we saw some interesting contemporary art today – 1960s to present – Warhol, Kandinsky, Rothko, a bunch of people I’ve never heard of…  I’m pretty open when it comes to contemporary art, so I loved it.  There were some pieces that made me say, “Um, okay, whatever,” but for the most part, I enjoyed it.  Below are some of my favorite pieces.  And I can share these with you because, in France, it’s oddly okay to take photos of art in museums as long as you don’t use a flash.

Here’s a piece of art with a grouping of fluorescent signs all hanging together.  There was something very calming about this art.

Okay.  This next artist is known for painting extracted images of ordinary things on walls.

I’m going to reproduce this on the wall in our basement rec room:

And also this, just for giggles:

This is a significant piece of art where I forgot to write down the artist’s name but it’s made out of pantyhose and bean-baggish things.  I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

This was a “room of art” that you could walk into.  It was titled “Winter Garden.”

And…this is the most contemporary of art, as far as I can tell.  White-tiled interior of a shipping container with a large image of a skull with magnificient lighting.

And by far, my favorite part of the museum exhibition, was the architecture portion.  Surprise!

In 2000, I interviewed for a job in Porto, Portugal with an architect called Eduardo Souto de Moura.   There was an entire room dedicated to him at the museum.  He’s one of my favorite architects – super-cool clean and modern design that merges the indoors with the outdoors.

I honed in on this project because it was under design when I interviewed with him and it’s now built.  It’s a soccer stadium set in a crevice in a hill.  Here’s the architectural model:

Here are a couple of sketches.  Dang!  Wish I could sketch like this!

Since my interview with Souto de Moura in 2000, he has won the Pritzker prize.  In essence, this is the Nobel prize for architecture.  I knew I had good taste when I interviewed with him.  :)

So, I am on vacation, but I am still doing some work from France.  My deal with my firm was that I would continue to do some work and keep my finger on the pulse of the projects while I am in Europe.  But more than that, there’s a part of me that is tied to theses projects and I want to know what’s going on with them.  I’m more than happy to stay in the loop.  In addition, I don’t want to brag, but I’m happy to be on a conference call to discuss the projects that I love, especially when I have this view from my new, temporary home office:

Life is terrible in Paris.