Day 3. Fri, 2-Oct-09
3rd day of our Paris journey was devoted to its cultural part, i.e. the pearl of the Museum World - the Louvre.
We got off at "Palais Royal - Musee du Louvre" and followed the signs leading us into one of the exit tunnels. Actually, metro in Paris deserves a whole separate story on its own comprising of dozens of chapters about metro lines and RER, about long tunnels and numerous numbered exists and, of course, several chapters to be devoted to people for whom metro became part of their lives - either as just a transport part or as a way of living (e.g. Anya told us that she had been seeing several times a band from Ternopil playing at Charles de Gaulle-Etoile).
Back to the art (smile). I don't know if system just worked well or we were lucky to buy the tickets and get into Louvre pretty fast. We decided to start from Denon where the main "attractions" were on the public display. I'm not the art expert so will share some thoughts, observations and some photographic representations of the paintings I liked (smile).
2 things out of several that I liked about Louvre:
1) I saw lots of student groups with a lecturer who studied art or history (or whatever they studied) sitting next to the original "thing" which I thought was quite cool. The same we had seen in Hermitage. Felt a bit jealous about that missed part of someone's education.
2) There were quite a few artists placed in different parts of the museum who were re-producing the famous paintings. It was quite overwhelming to observe those people in the midst of their creation stage. It was also great to see the different "stages" of the painting and artist's style.
Pieces of art I liked (and remember the names) - statue of Victory (Nika), quartet of Giuseppe Arcimboldo's "season" paintings, Delacriox's Liberty, Venus di Milo, Rembrandt's auto-portraits, Rafael's & da Vinci's works and quite a few others. Posting here some of them, so you might find something familiar (smile).
Definitely it was cool to see "Mona Lisa" and Venus di Milo as those are the most famous painting and statue in the world. It's hard for me to evaluate those from the expert point of view, but the feeling of being close to something great (even though the feeling is most probably has been created by fiction novels, stories from the textbooks, TV, etc.) is great and somewhat eternal (smile).
We liked Louvre a lot and could have spent more time there but didn't have much of the desire to do so. At certain moments all of the "greater things" become distant and all you want is to sit on the sun and enjoy your sandwich (smile). There was one more museum I'd definitely love to visit in Paris the next time - Musee D'Orsay with all the masterpieces of French impressionists of 19th century and my favourite Georges Seurat.
After such and intensive & extensive experience the best thing was to sit next to a fountain in Jardin des Tuileries just in opposite of Louvre & its pyramids and enjoy Sunday afternoon. Kids playing with ships, us having a snack, metal chairs (same as in Luxembourg garden) incredibly comfortable... and faces of the months (Yuliya with March, me with April - looked matching (smile)).
It was already getting a bit dark, so we decided to explore that place of modern art during our next visit to the French capital. The building itself looked quite cool and the area around was full of cafes, lively streets with lots of souvenir shops, street artists, lots of small squares contained fountains, churches and other interests. We walked around a lot and enjoyed couple of happy-hour beers in a nice small pub. Great area for handing around evening time.
During those 3 day we experienced Paris in a certain way. To add to our experience one more perspective we decided to take an evening boat tour along Seine. We got out of the metro at "Alma Marceau" and walked towards Bateaux boat "station". 10 EUR per capita and in 15min we were enjoying an evening cruise in Paris. Except of the "Europe anxiety" and photography passion of a large group of Chinese tourist, the ride was really nice and relaxing. It was a great piece of the last evening in a very romantic and wonderful city.
We decided to add one more special piece to the great evening puzzle by getting back to Notre Dame, place which became quite special to both of us (hope the story is coming in the next post) during that trip and, for sure, for a long time after it. We took another walk in the area between Saint-Michel and Boulevard Saint-Germain enjoying the evening business of the narrow streets and two pints of 1665 French beer.
Day 4. Sat, 3-Oct-09
Half of the cloudy Day 4 was spent for 3 things.
1. We saw the original statue of Liberty which stood on Ile aux Cygnes. As we still hadn't been to NY, this piece of America in Paris looked quite cool (smile).
2. We met Anya Kucherenko, another AIESECer from Kyiv, and went together to the Montparnasse cemetery. We didn't know who was buried as we got attracted only by the name (smile). We were quite excited to discover the "last homes" of a great Ukrainian Symon Petlyura and great French Jean-Paul Sartr whose literature both Yuliya and I like. Before that day we actually hadn't known who Simone de Beauvoir had been but were surpised to discover notes addressed to her on the gravestone together with the messages to J.-P.Sartr later we read that she was quite an interesting lady who contributed a lot into the feminism movement.
Then we walked back to Jardin du Luxembourg to enjoy a part of our last hours in Paris, said "thank & bye" to Anya near Odeon and headed back to Cite to tell "good-bye" to Notre Dame and whole Ile Saint-Louise, the "second" Paris island which we didn't explore before the last day.
Great time, great memoirs and peaceful French landscaped were saving us from realizing the result of our decision to take a 14h bus ride back to Prague (smile).
What a 3.5 days those were!
Back to the art (smile). I don't know if system just worked well or we were lucky to buy the tickets and get into Louvre pretty fast. We decided to start from Denon where the main "attractions" were on the public display. I'm not the art expert so will share some thoughts, observations and some photographic representations of the paintings I liked (smile).
2 things out of several that I liked about Louvre:
1) I saw lots of student groups with a lecturer who studied art or history (or whatever they studied) sitting next to the original "thing" which I thought was quite cool. The same we had seen in Hermitage. Felt a bit jealous about that missed part of someone's education.
2) There were quite a few artists placed in different parts of the museum who were re-producing the famous paintings. It was quite overwhelming to observe those people in the midst of their creation stage. It was also great to see the different "stages" of the painting and artist's style.
Pieces of art I liked (and remember the names) - statue of Victory (Nika), quartet of Giuseppe Arcimboldo's "season" paintings, Delacriox's Liberty, Venus di Milo, Rembrandt's auto-portraits, Rafael's & da Vinci's works and quite a few others. Posting here some of them, so you might find something familiar (smile).
Definitely it was cool to see "Mona Lisa" and Venus di Milo as those are the most famous painting and statue in the world. It's hard for me to evaluate those from the expert point of view, but the feeling of being close to something great (even though the feeling is most probably has been created by fiction novels, stories from the textbooks, TV, etc.) is great and somewhat eternal (smile).
We liked Louvre a lot and could have spent more time there but didn't have much of the desire to do so. At certain moments all of the "greater things" become distant and all you want is to sit on the sun and enjoy your sandwich (smile). There was one more museum I'd definitely love to visit in Paris the next time - Musee D'Orsay with all the masterpieces of French impressionists of 19th century and my favourite Georges Seurat.
After such and intensive & extensive experience the best thing was to sit next to a fountain in Jardin des Tuileries just in opposite of Louvre & its pyramids and enjoy Sunday afternoon. Kids playing with ships, us having a snack, metal chairs (same as in Luxembourg garden) incredibly comfortable... and faces of the months (Yuliya with March, me with April - looked matching (smile)).
We were absorbed by the "Paris metro abyss" once again at Place de la Concorde and were delivered straight to Place de la Bastille. There was not much left at the moment from the world's famous prison except of the name, so we just enjoyed some minutes of rest and peoplewatching on the stairs of Opera Bastille and started following Rue di Rivoli towards Hotel de Ville and then Pompidou Centre of Modern Art.
It was already getting a bit dark, so we decided to explore that place of modern art during our next visit to the French capital. The building itself looked quite cool and the area around was full of cafes, lively streets with lots of souvenir shops, street artists, lots of small squares contained fountains, churches and other interests. We walked around a lot and enjoyed couple of happy-hour beers in a nice small pub. Great area for handing around evening time.
During those 3 day we experienced Paris in a certain way. To add to our experience one more perspective we decided to take an evening boat tour along Seine. We got out of the metro at "Alma Marceau" and walked towards Bateaux boat "station". 10 EUR per capita and in 15min we were enjoying an evening cruise in Paris. Except of the "Europe anxiety" and photography passion of a large group of Chinese tourist, the ride was really nice and relaxing. It was a great piece of the last evening in a very romantic and wonderful city.
We decided to add one more special piece to the great evening puzzle by getting back to Notre Dame, place which became quite special to both of us (hope the story is coming in the next post) during that trip and, for sure, for a long time after it. We took another walk in the area between Saint-Michel and Boulevard Saint-Germain enjoying the evening business of the narrow streets and two pints of 1665 French beer.
Day 4. Sat, 3-Oct-09
Half of the cloudy Day 4 was spent for 3 things.
1. We saw the original statue of Liberty which stood on Ile aux Cygnes. As we still hadn't been to NY, this piece of America in Paris looked quite cool (smile).
2. We met Anya Kucherenko, another AIESECer from Kyiv, and went together to the Montparnasse cemetery. We didn't know who was buried as we got attracted only by the name (smile). We were quite excited to discover the "last homes" of a great Ukrainian Symon Petlyura and great French Jean-Paul Sartr whose literature both Yuliya and I like. Before that day we actually hadn't known who Simone de Beauvoir had been but were surpised to discover notes addressed to her on the gravestone together with the messages to J.-P.Sartr later we read that she was quite an interesting lady who contributed a lot into the feminism movement.
Then we walked back to Jardin du Luxembourg to enjoy a part of our last hours in Paris, said "thank & bye" to Anya near Odeon and headed back to Cite to tell "good-bye" to Notre Dame and whole Ile Saint-Louise, the "second" Paris island which we didn't explore before the last day.
Great time, great memoirs and peaceful French landscaped were saving us from realizing the result of our decision to take a 14h bus ride back to Prague (smile).
What a 3.5 days those were!
























































































































