Où est la toilette?

For the second half of our stay in Paris, Liz and I went to the "interesting" museums. We didn't want to overdue our art intake, so we settled for Musée d'Orsay and Centre Georges Pompidou--not the Louvre, crazy, I know. I don't know much about art, so Liz easily convinced me that it was full of boring, old art, and all anyone really wants to see is the Mona Lisa. She's held that enigmatic expression for 500 years, she's not going to reveal her age-old secret anytime soon, so instead of standing and pondering and admiring that which has already received so much admiration, we decided to go spread our praises on some other paintings.

We did walk around the Louvre, though, and looked artsy in front of it.

and went to Angelina, a great little cafe, per the recommendation of one of my professors.

We ordered the chocolat a l'africain, as my prof advised, which we're pretty sure was just melted chocolate bars. The two of us were not able to finish a little truffle and a cup of this hot chocolate, split between us; that is how rich and delicious it was.

Liz won for the longest line spoken in French on the trip by either of us when she flawlessly asked the waiter, "Où est la toilette?" She couldn't understand his answer and wound up wandering around searching for it anyhow, but I think she was too proud to really mind.

Ok, so, now a little bit about the "modern" "art" that we saw. I put both in quotes because some people may not consider the late 1800s modern, and because some people may not consider the images you are about to see to be "art". I will start out with the g-rated stuff, and warn you all that this gets pretty racy.

Musée d'Orsay had quite a line outside, but was definitely worth the wait. Our international student id's got us in free of charge! C'est supercool.

Liz is pretty artsy, and she loves the Impressionism art, which is a well-titled movement because it impressed me. The textures were very intriguing. Here's a peaceful Monet for your visual enjoyment; I found it quite aesthetically pleasing.

While we were browsing, a blonde girl came up to us when she heard us speaking English, and without even an introduction asked in a southern drawl, "Where ya'll from?" Surprised to hear an unfamiliar accent that wasn't French, it took us a few seconds to respond. After we informed her of our respective home states, she asked us if our accents blended in when we talked to the French people, because she found that hers did. Liz and I looked at each other dubiously, and explained that we didn't speak French. I don't know if the blonde misunderstood and thought we meant that we didn't speak to any of the Parisians at all, but she advised us to talk to as many people as possible, because "They give ya free stuff. I've gotten about a dozen roses just fer talkin' ta people."

Confused, we thanked her for this interesting advice, and moved on to even stranger things.

The exhibits we viewed next focused on Naturalism, Surrealism, Psychedelia -- l'Arte Nouveau.

The Psychédélisme room was filled with album covers such as the Beatles and Jefferson Airplane; LSD inspired art.

Here's a piece that took us a bit by surprise:

Degrading, non?

So this was all fun, but the next day provided even more new sights and sounds. The Pompidou was too pompous to accept our international student ids, rejecting them on the grounds that for all they know, we could be studying in Australia (the ids are rather unspecific), and only European students get in free. So we dished out some euros and made our way to the first floor.

We were greeted with strange films of fat women dancing around naked, posters saying that Pamela Anderson is the new face of feminism, sculptures of feet, silverware displayed in glass cases; what in the world was this place? Liz and I agreed that neither of us could ever imagine our families visiting this museum; that would be awkward. Accordingly, we photographed almost nothing.

A little dazed, we stumbled up to the second floor, and relaxed a little when we saw some recognizable names: Magritte, Pollack, Picasso. We even found the Monopoly guy.

All in all, the museums were interesting. Paris definitely was a wonderful introduction to Europe, and we loved getting to know the Howards. However, it was time to fly south for the rest of the winter.

The night before we departed for Sevilla, I called Delta to tell them I needed to change the delivery address for my bags. The representative responded, "You can't; they just went out for delivery today." Ecstatic that they had found my bags, but irritated at the timing, we set the alarm for an hour earlier, and hoped we'd find them at the airport before our 11AM flight.

Sadly, this was not the case, but I was able to change the delivery address, and when I arrived at my new home today, there they were, safe and sound and full of clothes. :-)

coming up next: Sevilla!!!