Bye Bye Paris

I was a bit apprehensive going into my final weekend in Paris, for I was going to be virtually alone most of the time since Abby wasn't able to come visit as had been originally planned. I generally don't mind being alone, but Paris just didn't feel like an alone type of city. In any case, Friday evening was nice and relaxing as Kerry (the friend whose flat I was staying in) and I had a picnic near her dorm. The night went by quickly and after what seemed like a short little chit chat, it was already two in the morning and we were down a bottle of delicious (and deliciously cheap) Sauvignon. Saturday morning, Kerry and I started off by walking through the beautiful Luxembourg Gardens and commenting on how funny the French looked while jogging. We then walked around a bit of the Latin Quarter and saw the Sorbonne and the Pantheon where we were supposed to meet up with some of Kerry's American friends. They were nice enough, but I didn't particularly want to go wine tasting with them, so from there I headed towards the Centre Pompidou. I was strangely tense as I strolled through the beautiful Latin Quarter on my way; that may have been partly due to the fact that I realized I had left virtually all my money in Lille and was left with around 20 euros for two museums and three meals in Paris. Part of my nervousness could also be attributed to the fact that a friend had emailed me telling me not to go to the Pompidou because there was a horrible "angry, feminist, modern for the sake of being modern art exhibit" there (that's one of the least appealing descriptions of an exhibit i've ever heard). On the other hand, I'd heard a few people say it was their favorite museum and I had originally been extremely excited to go, so I dreaded being disappointed. I was also walking around the areas where I had already walked with someone else before, so I was unnecessarily dwelling on that. The moment I saw the Pompidou, though, my mood lifted. The building and the surrounding courtyard were reason enough to come visit, and as the sugar on top, the museum was displaying the biggest exhibit of Kandinsky that had ever been put together. When I first entered the Pompidou, I headed up to the restaurant terrace to have a glass of wine and relax a bit. The view of Paris was unbelievable and in what would seem to be a strange coincidence, every one of the waitresses there looked like a more beautiful version of Penelope Cruz. I couldn't get myself to leave for almost an hour, but when I did, I made a beeline for Kandinsky. The paintings were fantastic, as was to be expected, but what was interesting was that I felt more connected to the art and the spirit of the paintings at the Pompidou than I had ever felt before. The space was made for art and all the people seemed to be thoroughly enjoying their time (the exact opposite of the Louvre). What really played the greatest role, however, was the fact that I was alone; I wanted to be with someone and share my excitement at the priceless collection of Chagall, Matisse, Derain, Braque, and Picasso, more than anything- but I couldn't. I couldn't enjoy someone else's view complementing mine and I couldn't see the art through the excitement, fascination, or confusion in someone else. I also couldn't be distracted by wondering whether someone else was enjoying the art or whether I was going too slow or too fast; I couldn't think about what someone else said to me or what I would reply. I could only enjoy the art as thoroughly as I could for what it was and that was enough. By the time I was forcibly expelled from the Pompidou at 9 PM, I was in a lovely mood and couldn't help but smile at all the wonderful Parisians and tourists I passed as I walked back to meet up with Kerry at the Latin Quarter. From there, we had a magical night listening to street musicians and hanging out with a big group of young Parisians on the Seine. One slightly awkward detail of the night was that I was wearing a new dress that had this wonderful tendency to spontaneously unbutton itself in the front; I had assuaged that problem by wearing a big scarf and surreptitiously rebuttoning the dress behind the scarf as necessary. However, when the street musicians were playing their last song, one of them made me come out and dance with him. At this point, my dress decided to be highly uncooperative, and my dancing technique, which was less than stellar to begin with, turned into a "how do I move around and not flash 100 Parisians?" It was stressful and ungraceful, but successful. After the musicians left at 12:30 because they had a curfew of 12:00, Kerry and I stayed to hang out with some English girls and a bunch of Moroccan engineers. I had one of my best nights in France and I was sad to go when we left to catch the last metro home.
Sunday morning I enjoyed visiting the Rodin Museum and exploring the Invalides Quarter. My first hour in the Rodin Museum when I strolled through the rose garden and saw the Gates of Hell and the Thinker was the best. The museum on the inside was remarkably complete, but after seeing 5 rooms full of Rodin's work, the sculptures started to blend into each other and it was pretty tiring. The museum often had multiple copies of the same sculpture or all the complete studies for the sculpture and the scultpure itself which was definitely overkill. At one point, I crossed the Seine and watched a bit of the Tour de France. I had no idea how it worked and I kept searching for country flags, but some hard core American fans explained to me that there were sponsor teams and not country teams. It was virtually impossible to see anything through all the crowds, but just seeing all the crowds, the fancy sponsoring cars, and a blur of bicyles every now and then was cool. I stayed for about a half hour and then returned to a little garden near the Rodin Museum to paint. I was feeling excited about modern art as I had just seen the Kandinsky exhibit so as I sat down to paint, I tried to channel my inner modern artist: all that came out was muck. I was thinking about the people who go see modern art and say "anyone can do that" and was resentfully thinking that maybe it's just anyone but me. Just as I decided to scrap my pathetic attempt at being Kandinsky, an old French man who lived near the Rodin museum sat down and started talking to me. He asked what I was painting and after I quickly hid my picture and answered a few generic "where are you from" questions, the conversation moved towards the book he was writing and his views on Paris and Parisians. I stopped painting for a little and just talked with him, but then as he was getting ready to leave, I looked at the tree that was right in front of me, and realized that it was an absolutely amazing tree and that it was exactly what I wanted to paint. I did, and it was a bit disappointingly, and as always 100% impressionist, but I was happy with it. When I got kicked out of the garden because it was closing, I headed to Gare du Nord where my adventures for the weekend should have ended. The station is quite sketchy, so I searched around for some non-sketchy looking guys who I could sit next to and who could serve as sketchy-guy repellent. I found two very young, slightly confused-looking, backpacking British boys who were headed in the same direction as me. The two boys, Alastair (known as Ally as in the girl's name) and Dominque (known as Dom as in dumb) explained to me that they had finished a 30 day Eurotrip to Istanbul and back and now they were just headed home and really wanted to sleep in their own comfy beds. Ally was a very rich socialist (aren't they all) and quite talkative economics major from near Nottingham while Dom was a history major and a painter at the same university. Unfortunately for Ally and Dom, the girl cousin who had been traveling with them and who had been meticulously planning their trip, stopped in Avignon, so they were on their own getting back to England. Since she left, the two "grown up" boys had lost part of their sleeping bag and a few other minor belongings and had missed all their trains. From Paris, they were supposed to take a connecting train to Calais to get to England, but they missed their train from Paris (by an hour), so they missed their train to Calais and had no where to stay for the night until their train at 6 in the morning. I told them they could stay at my apartment for the night, so they came over and Ally and I had a long political debate until we realized it was almost 2 in the morning and we should go to sleep. They put out their sleeping bags on my floor and promptly fell asleep. Unfortunately for me, Dom snored a lot and they both also crashed into all my furniture when they woke up at 5 in the morning to catch their train, so I didn't really sleep that much. It was interesting though, and judging from the fact that Alastair has since facebook friended me, I'm guessing that they got home all right.