Ok, so I was going to post this a week and a half ago, but I've been sick and haven't felt like sitting in front of the computer except for my Rosetta Stone: Russian lessons and watching Entourage season 2. Sorry.
As you may know, Paris has a City-Wide Bicycle Rental program. You buy a membership card by the day week or year and then you pay to rent a bike by the hour. 0-30 min is free, and then its one or a couple of euros per hour.
This is the terminal where you take a bike out. There are bike lockup stations, just for these city bikes, every few blocks, all over the city. You rent and unlock the bike in one place, bike to wherever you are going to and just lock up wherever you are going and there you go. Its fully automated and when you check the bike back in, the terminal automatically deducts from either your account or your credit card. I don't need to tell you that this is genius and needs to happen in every city in the United States, do I? Didn't think so.
A Velo bike station in the 4ieme district. Drool.
Beautiful example of city planning. There is a bike lane in the foreground, and then a protected bus-only lane, a garder and then regular traffic. Think as many people on bikes get hit by cars this way? Oh, and bike lanes have their own smaller traffic lights, where bikes are given the right to turn right at stops a few seconds before the cars and get to go forward a few seconds early, too. Glorious.
"Where do you take your dog to get her excercise? Most Parisians have these little tiny dogs that don't need alot of space..."
"Well, it depends, but usually, I take her up to the Louvre and we run around and I throw the ball for her in the shadow of the world's most famous museum. Its nice. Yeah, thats where we usually go. Its really nice. You should come sometime."
In my last blog, I made allusion to having spent the last day of my French vacation alone, Caity having flown back to the states. I wandered around, went back to the falafel spot just to be sure...and yeah, pretty fucking good falafel.
Anyways, I can't remember if I wrote it before, but I've been quite spoiled/ lucky and have been to Paris 4 times. The first time was when I was 15, on my way to live on a farm in rural France for a chunk of the summer. Did that 3 times. I've spend a total of a few weeks in Paris all together, so I've done alot of the tourist stuff, or at least, a good chunk. Paris is like New York. I think you could live there a year and only see a bit of it. But I've done a pretty good job. But there is one thing that has eluded me each time...
I'll back up. When I was a Freshman in highschool, we went on a field trip to the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. One artist really grabbed me. Monet. I didn't know what impressionism was from Marxism at the time and I don't know much better than that now, but I knew I liked him. That and one other painting, but thats beside the point. Point was, I fell in love with Monet.
Fast forward to my first trip to Paris. There are Monets sprinkled all over the city, I suppose. Many in the Musee D'Orsay. But there is one smaller museum called the Musee D'Orangerie that I had always wanted to go to. The building started once, humbly enough as the garden shed for the royal Tuleries garden area. I had never been able to find it and 2 of the previous times I actually tried, it turned out the museum was closed for an extended period for renovation.
You see, the Musee D'Orangerie had one claim, one distinction, apart from the rest of the collection, which included Renoirs, Picassos, Matisses, many others that I don't appreciate because I'm an uncultured, uneducated American. But the Musee D'Orangerie has Monet's Waterlilies.
Towards the end, Monet was going blind. Kind of like the cruel irony of Beethoven going deaf. In his later years, Monet's paintings got more and more well, impressionistic, as he couldn't see the shit anymore. One of his last projects, he painted these murals of the waterlillies in the pond in his garden. Huge murals. They form two huge ovals in two adjoining rooms that make a kind of infinity sign (ooh...deep!). But seriously, there are 4 murals in each room. Each one takes up a quarter of the perimeter of each room and they are about 6 feet tall. Now theres no way to really capture it. I've never been so surrounded, overwhelmed in this beautiful, beautiful way. All the colors, the only way I can use words to capture it is to bring in the other senses. These murals are like the visual equivalent of tasting fresh fruit, wearing sun-dried, hand-washed clothes and smelling lilac in bloom all at the same time. All while listening to children play and birds sing. I don't know. I'm at a loss. What I can say is that I entered the room and just sat down on the bench and soaked it up a little bit. Thats after standing close to the center of the room and turning slowly on my heel twice. It was sensory-overload, trying to take it all in. The thing by very definition, by simple dimensions, eludes your filed of vision. You look in one direction and try to take it all in, and it just keeps on going, right on behind you, past the corner of your eye. I hope every one of you gets to experience this someday. And when you do, imagine how peaceful this man must have been for the months and months that it must have taken.
Go find the Musee D'Orangerie.
Ok, so this really made an impression on me. These are two Picassos. But they were HUGE! I didn't know there were any Picasso paintings this big. I'm no art student. Ask Stacy to explain the painting. But for me, there was something super earthy. Dirt floors and burlap sacks and caloused fingers. Look at the feet. I don't know if you can see it. Anyways. I really liked these two paintings.
SERIOUSLY. CLICK ON THESE TO SEE THEM LARGER.
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