Nude Friday

TGIF. This semester this saying is most definitely true. I have an entire semester with Fridays off, which has left me some free time to explore Paris this weekend. Yesterday a few girls in the group and I thought we would spend the rainy day at the Monet exhibit, but after finding out that it was a three hour wait, we decided to wait until Monday night. We do have free access anytime with these amazing paper cards that say, “Les Etudiants de l’histoire de l’art” (art history students). This piece of paper has literally saved my life and my wallet, so Monday night Monet seems like the game plan. This minor failure in our plans led us to Les Catacombs. The Catacombs are a mass gravesite hidden beneath the city of Paris. To access the Cataboms you have to climb down a set of twisted stairs and make your way through a dark stone-lined hallway, but don’t worrythere is only one path, so it is impossible to get yourself trapped, that is, unless you barge through the iron gates, which block off unknown paths. After a good five minutes of aimlessly wandering beneath the city, we came to this door.

“Stop. This is the empire of death.”

This is the official entrance to the Catacombs and I had no idea what to expect at this moment. Full bodies? A few sets of bones? Gravestones? Well officially it was none of the aforementioned. There were mass gravestones, without names of course, because the walls for the rest of the walk were lined with a meter or more of bones from hundreds of thousands of bodies. The bone walls were impeccably made and some of the bones were even arranged into decorative designs like the one below.

For most of the walk through the Catabombs the walls were lined with neatly arranged bones accompanied by a quote about life and death.

Kelsey and I striking terrified poses and getting dripped on by the leaking ceiling. Yes, the Catabombs DO flood when it rains. I recommend boots and a jacket with a hood.

This is the last room of the Catacombs. It is a ceiling that shows that you are 200 meters below the city. Très cool.

After this adventure, the girls and I decided to visit le Centre Pompidou. This is the modern art museum of paris and it is built inside out, so to speak. Pipes, wires and the like are all on the exterior of the walls and the building and are color-coded. It is a very unique building and stands out in stark contrast to the rest of the ancient city.

This photo is from our first trip to le Centre Pompidou, but we didn’t actually get to explore it that time because someone…Allegra forgot their student id! Yet I like this photo because the museum is in the background and the cement park in front of the museum is visible. That’s where we decided to eat lunch the last time before continuing our trek onto hotel de ville.

For this trip to le Centre Pompidou we used our all access passes to see the new exhibit by Gabriel Orozco. He really likes circles and shoeboxes. Clearly some modern art has escaped me, but I did enjoy two of his photographs. After this exhibit, I went up to the fourth floor. WOW and not exactly in a good way. I never thought modern art could scar someone, but that is exactly what happened. I will leave out the descriptions of what I saw, but in short, it involves barbed wire, nudity, blood, masturbation and sex. These first few exhibits on the first floor were definitely mind blowing…There were a few exhibits on this floor that I really did enjoy, but I have to say I fell in love with most of the art on the fifth floor. Kupka, Kandinsky, Sonia Delauney (no offense to her husband and son who also painted) and Pollack. I have to say I was not a HUGE Picasso fan, but I loved the artists who came after him and continued to paint in a cubist style.

These are just a few of the paintings that I fell in love with by the artists mentioned before. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the afternoon in le Centre Pompidou, until it was time for dinner. Hannah, Danielle, Erin and I all decided on dinner in the Latin Quarter at an Italian restaurant. I got the cheesiest meal you can possibly ever order. It was three cheese ravioli with heaps of Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. To my little Kate and Lisa, you would have loved it!!

Délicieux, non?!

Obviously tonight had to be dinner and a movie night to make the entire day complete. We decided to see the movie Happy Few. It was only playing at few theaters, but we could not find the street on any map that the first theater was on. Luckily, we ate quick like any Americans and were able to make it in time to see the movie in a theater that was on a map. As Hannah so sweetly put it last night, “I have never seen so much bush in my life.” Yes, I am sorry to say that the movie, may or may not have been pornographic. Dam this language barrier and our lack of reading signs such as this one:

Loosely translated it states, “Scenes in this movie will shock the sensibilites of the viewers.” AKA DISCRESION ADVISED. This would have been very helpful before being completely bombarded with these scenes. No wonder the woman selling tickets asked us, a group of four girls, if we were sure we wanted to see this movie. I was confused at the time, but that instance makes perfect sense to me now. Thank you Danielle for taking me to my first porno, but never again! As for the rest of the weekend, I hope it involves less nudity. Tonight, Saturday night, is La Nuit Blanche and I cannot wait!