Paris

Back from France. The short story is that Paris was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, however, the weekend ended with me getting a ridiculous case of food poisioning and subsequent gastroenteritis. Luckily, the symptoms didn't hit until 3 am or so Monday morning, so by the time I got wickedly sick it was time to go home. I still feel pretty shitty, and actually had to stay home from work today (and Gwen even brought me IV fluids from the clinic). Luckily, things appear to be on the upswing, but man - shellfish can be a harsh mistress indeed.

FRIDAY

Again, Friday was a training holiday, which is some military mish-mash for a "day off". (But hey, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, eh?) So Gwen and I boarded a train here in K-town at about noon and started rolling east to Paris. Found this sweet billboard at the train station while waiting to leave:





We got into Paris around 5:30 pm and immediately hit the metro system up to get to our hotel. (The Paris Metro is pretty sweet, akin to other well run big city metros). We went to dinner at a hoity-toity place called Market the first night. The food was good if not great - and it certainly wasn't worth the 180 Euro price tag for a dinner for two with one bottle of wine.

After dinner, it was about 10 pm or so and we began wandering around near Champs-Elysees, which is the big main street with the Arc de Triumphe. The weather was fantastic, cool but not cold - and a little foggy. It went hand in hand with the massive amount of Parisian fashionistas on display showing off all their hip fall fashions. In fact, two things that struck me about Paris were the amount of beautiful people (mostly women, but also lots of male-modelesque, lethally cheekboned men) and the sheer level of fashion in the city. It seemed like everyone was dressed to kill. It was all very cinematic. More Pics:








Following the walk down the Champs-Elysees, Gwen and I strolled upon a movie theater that was showing "Broken Flowers" in the version originale (In English with French subtitles). Normally, we wouldn't rush off to a foreign city to go see movies, but Gwen and I have been seriously movie-starved lately. After averaging like two a week before we left the States, we've seen exactly ONE movie in the theater since arriving in Germany, and THAT was the very lackluster "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".

So we sat in the (very) little French theater and took in the movie. I thought the US was bad, but the French theater had seriously like a full half an hour of previews and ads. There was even a little animated French boy who was some sort of French equivalent to the AMC Movie Guy, complete with his own retarded and blatantly unfunny antics.

The thing that WAS different about the French movie-going experience, however, was the amount of gratuitous nipple shots both in the previews and the ADS before the movie. It was definitely an eye opener when Monica Bellucci (of Matrix Reloaded fame) rolled onto the screen in a preview and the next thing I knew it was like watching some serious soft porn right in front of me. (This nipple-love extends deeply into french culture, actually. The French love of public titty was evident everywhere, from Magazine covers to billboards to all sorts of stuff. Let's just say that if the Super Bowl was played in France, the Janet Jackson things would NOT have been a big deal).

That being said, Gwen and I were both a bit disappointed by "Broken Flowers". It wasn't terrible, but I just didn't think it had the punch of Murray's other recent flims. The whole thing left me feeling very "meh".

SATURDAY

Saturday was tourist day for Gwendolyn and I, and we started off by hitting up the Louvre. For those who have never been, the Louvre is simply massive. It's also beautiful and very artfully designed. The exhibitions were pretty sweet. In general, I was a big fan. Plus, I couldn't stop saying "You can visit the Looouvre on one channel..." (of Cable Guy fame) over and over again until Gwen was essentially pleading for me to shut up. The highlights of the Louvre were many - the tour books point to the classics - the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, among others. There are too many to name. My favorite stuff was some of the classical sculpture - Winged Victory was especially cool.





















After the Louvre, Gwen and I wandered off toward Notre Dame, which is a pretty cool gothic-style catholic cathedral. Again, impressive. And...pics:
























After Notre Dame, we went back to the hotel, took a little nap, and then got up and had dinner in a really cool area of Paris called Montmartre. This is a trendy little area north of the city which had some amazing restaurants. My dinner, which is now infamous to me, was basically a bunch of shellfish, which I now realize was topped with bacteria. Luckily my symptoms didn't start until the following 24 hours, so the night was pretty sweet all things considered. After dinner we walked around a high hilltop and got some cool views of the city. There was some sort of festival going on and we mingled amongst the peeps for a while. Hell, we even stumbled on some sort of French Fun boy.



On Sunday, Gwen and I slept in and then hit up the Centre Georges Pompidou, which is a modern art museum. Following that, we hit up the Eiffel Tower. The Pompidou was a cool looking building. Inside, we saw some special exhibition on the Da Da Art movement - which was apparently some sort of rebellious anti-art movement circa World War I. To us, it amounted to a bunch of random crap - and I actually like modern art. The standing exhibit, which was called "Big Bang", was a different serious of more modern art works, and was also a much stronger exhibition.

(Mostly, I like modern art - but there is some serious CRAP out there. I mean anything that can be done in 5 minutes (like taking a urinal and mouting it on it's side) or that can be done by ME (like painting an entire 6x6 canvas dark blue and nothing else) is not anything special. Moreover, anything that requires an overly wordy and pretentions little blurb about the piece's composition, "inertness", or whatever, is hysterical to me. I may be overly critical here, but after coming out of the Louvre on Saturday and seeing genuine Michealangelo sculpture and the like and then following it up with and comparing it to some guy who drew slanted red lines on yellow paper (and nothing else), all the while feeling emblazoned by the passion of his "edginess", I must say that the latter is pretty funny to me and nearly impossible to take seriously.)

More pics coming in a minute, but that was basically it for our trip. We had a great time, before I got sick as a dog, and Paris is definitely a must-see city. On late Sunday night, my abdominal pain and diarrhea started, and the nausea and the rest followed. (Taking a 5 hour train ride with a GI illness - not fun). Last night I was at a temp of 101 with full rigors. Today, I had to stay home from work, which I hate doing, but I would have been useless. Gwen brought some IV fluids home and I already feel better after a brisk 2 Liters of normal saline. And there it is. Here are some more pics from Sunday and the rest.