In which the city is a canvas

I’m back! And have free time! For now, anyway. So I’m going to do my best to get all these up. Let’s start with Nuit Blanche, a night in October where things stay open really late and they put art exhibits in weird places.


It started in the afternoon, really, with performances in the street. This is the view from my window of a group of dancers in the square.


They were filming a Bollywood movie at Gare de Lyon. I was the only one tall enough to be able to see; this picture was taken at arm’s length.



The clock tower at Gare de Lyon and its reflection in the glass building across the street. I nearly got left behind trying to get the second picture: I kept trying, because my camera wouldn’t capture the fantastic quality of light there. I could’ve used a better camera on this trip, but I rarely use it at home, so it's hardly worth it.




This alley between two apartment buildings was absolutely packed with people, and it was one of my favorite things that night (not the best; that’s still to come). They were projecting these colored lights into the windows and playing really cool techno music in time with the lights. It got old after a while, but for some time, it was very cool.


There were lots of weird light displays that night.


But this was my favorite: a HUGE projection into the sky at the Tour Montparnasse, which could be seen from everywhere in the city. We loved it and spent about an hour there, and we weren’t the only ones: everyone was drawn to it, exactly like moths to a flame, fixated and immobile. A little creepy and a little cool.


From close up, the big beam separated into dozens of smaller ones arranged in a grid.


The first view of the crowds around the base of the lights.


Absolute fascination. And oh, the number of X-Files jokes I made that night! (We do all look like alien abduction victims, though, don’t we? And up close, everyone was grinning and staring into the lights.)


Not sure what happened here, but I quite like the effect. Nothing new, to be sure, but pretty.


People kept sticking their hands into the lights or climbing up to sit on the boxes that housed them. They couldn’t get close enough.


I love this angle. This was from when we ventured into the crowds around the lights.


A final parting shot. I think the lights were meant to be a reflection of the Tour Montparnasse, which is right behind them (and which, despite its reputation, is actually a lovely, elegant, and stealthy skyscraper. It just suffers from being out of context).

Next we went to my neighborhood, since that was a major center of the displays, and also we wanted to sit down and have something to eat or drink. On the way to my apartment, we stopped in this little cathedral around the corner (St. Merri).


This was one of the art displays suspended from the ceiling. It reminds me of a molecule.


I thought this was kind of hilarious and awesome: chairs on the ceiling! Why?


This didn’t answer my question, but it did put it somewhat more in context!

We also went to another cathedral, where we watched a video about blind people discovering an elephant. It was actually a very cool documentary-type thing, but it was dark and so we all started falling asleep, and that was the end of our night. But it was very cool, and definitely worth it for the light-tower.

In which we tour churches and gardens

Sorry it’s been so long. I got distracted, and these take a LOT of time to write. But I’m going to try to get the next few done over the next week.

For the first three weeks we were here, we were taking a French class every afternoon through the Brown in France program. As part of this, we had to research and present on a series of historic places in France. This is the first day’s series.

First on the list was St. Germain, one of the oldest churches in Paris. We couldn’t go inside because there was some sort of funeral starting up just as we got there, but I hear it’s beautiful.


The main tower of the church.


The front of the church. You can see the hearse and the mourners gathering in front.


The detail over the front door. I can’t tell if the white stripes are bird droppings or stained stone, but I think it looks pretty cool. (Now go to http://www.googlism.com/ and type in “White Stripes”. Hee. I am subtly manipulating the music industry!)

We also, in this neighborhood, saw two of the hugely famous cafes which the literati and artists (Camus, Hemingway, Sartre) would come to: Les Deux Magots (named for the two Chinaman statues that frame the front door) and Le Flore. We also passed the boutiques which I will never be able to afford: Armani, Chanel, etc. (It’s sad. The displays were lovely.) This, of course, was all on our way to another church: St. Sulpice!


Part of the fountain in front of the church. I like the way the sheets of water came out in this one.

Have I mentioned yet that I LOVE taking pictures of pigeons on statues’ heads? I don’t know why, but I think it’s awesome and hilarious. Maybe because the statues always look so dignified and yet they have absolutely no control over whether or not a pigeon is sitting on their head.


More of the fountain, yay!


Half of the church is under construction. You can’t see it here, but the two towers don’t match. We thought this meant one was HUGE and one was tiny, or one was vertical and the other horizontal, or something like that. Nope. One’s round, and the other’s an octagon. It’s hard to notice. It’s disappointing.


A terrible picture of the organ in the church, which is HUGE. (Here's a good one.)


I like this one, too. My pictures of crucifixes always come out interestingly lit.


The Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus, in a kind of fake-rock alcove. I don’t know. It looked cool, and there was a spotlight on her. Unfortunately, the rest of the church was too dark for any of my pictures to be even halfway decent, and eventually I gave up.

So we moved on to the Luxembourg Gardens.


Here’s a sort of overview of the place…


…and here’s a close-up of the pool. There were little kids playing with boats behind that bush.


Giant head! There was a lot of modern art mixed in with the ancient statues: some of it awesome (like this), some of it cool (like the one with a sign warning people not to climb it – is it really art if it’s basically a jungle gym?), and some of it horrifying (like the giant flowerpot with legs growing upside-down out of it, which a French man actually spit on in passing. We’re not sure if he did it intentionally, or if he just didn’t want to spit on us).

There’s more modern art to come next time, when we visit the Centre Pompidou (which is literally across the street from my apartment), but to leave off, the Luxembourg Palace: