More late reporting...

Hello and welcome back to the program. It's been a couple of days since the last pictures and info, and I do apologize if you wanted something more a little sooner. It's not like I could blame you. :)
The last I left off was Wednesday evening. So let's see...
We got up a little earlier on Wednesday (still not saying a whole lot), got dressed and ready, and went our metro stop ("ours" because yes, we owned it personally), Les Gobelins, up to Chatelet, transferred to the Number 4 train, and got off a few stops later at the Musee du Louvre stop along with two thirds of the rest of the passengers on our train. The Louvre itself is across the street from the steps out of this station, so we were facing it when we came up to the level of the street. This part of the building looks almost like something with some sort of government function. Very tall and square with regularly-spaced windows. As we walked through the arched entrance, we were in a large sort of breezeway underneath the whole thing, and then we continued on and were in the big courtyard with the famous glass pyramids. After waiting in a short line, we took the escalator down into the larger pyramid, and we were finally in the museum foyer. Quite a lot of pomp and overture before finally making it into the actual museum, but it was really fitting. The museum was so impressive! Every room had ornate sculptures and impressive paintings on the ceiling and the molding high up above us, there were tall windows and grand staircases, and corridors of the museum went for ages and ages in all directions. Just the facility itself was huge, elaborate, and awe-inspiring, and that wasn't even the point of the place. The works of art! Just the sheer volume of the artwork was overwhelming. Every culture that has contributed significantly to the world of art was represented, from the Etruscans and pre-Hellenic Greece to Renaissance Italians to French painters of the 19th century. One of my personal favorites was the sculpture of Psyche and Cupid by Antonio Canova. Good sculpture is impressive anyway, but this one was not only a technical marvel but a beautiful scene as well. We also saw the Mona Lisa (not very big, but very well-protected at the museum), sculptures by Michelangelo, incredible carvings from the Northern Renaissance, Louis David's pictures of Napoleon... The list goes on and on. I don't know where to begin as far as posting pictures, because I could go all day, so I guess just shoot on over to Google to look up some of this stuff if you're interested.
As great as the Louvre was, it also offered up one of our biggest disappointments of the week when we discovered that its collection stopped around the year 1840, which meant no impressionists or moderns at all. No Van Gogh, no Monet, no Picasso, etc. We were really, really looking forward to these a LOT, so it was a big disappointment finding out that yes, it was true, the world's biggest and most famous art museum really was missing this stuff. Here is what our faces looked like when we found out.

As we were going through the Louvre, there were two things that I was thinking about. The first was the whole idea of artistic integrity vs. technical ability vs. aesthetic merit. These three things, when you get right down to it, are what qualify some artists to have their work in a place like the Louvre, and they're so difficult to determine. By artistic merit, I mean the messages, meanings, symbols, etc. in a piece. The "intellect" behind it, if you want to call it that. Technical ability meaning the skill of taking a blob of colored stuff off a palette and making it end up doing what you want it to on a canvas or paper or whatever. And I guess "merit" isn't really the word to use concerning aesthetics, but what I was thinking about was in relation to me and my personal taste, because yes, that may make me selfish in the grand scheme of artistic appreciation and all, but at the same time, it was my eight and a half euros admission price, so there you have it. Anyway, I was thinking about how most of the great classical work was loaded with meaning, symbolism, cultural reflection, etc., as well as technical ability, but how most of it just isn't stuff that I particularly like as far as the picture itself. It's like if you compose a perfectly shot piece of photographic genius. Great lighting, superb contrast, etc., but it's a picture of, I don't know, a gum wrapper or something. Nice job on the photography, but it's not a picture of something I care to decorate my home with. These paintings were the same way a lot of times. Gigantic painting of Napoleon crowning himself. Enormous historical bearing, great skill in the painting, certainly deserving of a place in the world's greatest art museum, but not a picture that I particularly care for. And then, of course, you have all of the artists who painted hum-drum, everyday things and ordinary people because these pictures represent the common man, and blah blah blah. And I love that. I appreciate what they were doing, and I like the pictures of farms and kids and bedrooms and bowls of fruit. I am really, sincerely into it. So it's not like every picture has to be a breathtaking sunset. Anyway, I'm just kind of blathering on here, aren't I? I have no real point with all of this, no nice conclusion for you, no message. I was just thinking about all of this sort of thing as I was going through.
The other thought that I had, and there's more of a point here, is how rich the mind of God is and how far-reaching it is that we were made in his image. In all of our depravity and the great distance we are from salvation on our own, there is still within every person a spark of the divine. Not the nature of the divine, of course, but more like a deeply set thumbprint. I was thinking of this as I was looking at the sculpture of Psyche and Cupid. It is such a beautiful picture of an embrace with so much tenderness and warmth and all of the things that should be in an embrace- protection, longing, trust... And it's all based on ideas and deities created by human minds to explain and put a face on the longing in every human heart for communion with the source of all beauty and love. Every human being has an innate attraction to things that are beautiful because whether we realize it or not, we are born of the creative mind of the same one who made the whole idea of beauty in the first place. As I was looking through the museum at all that was there and being blown away by it, I was reminded of how great of a scheme God came up with to show his glory even through the endeavors of people who don't know him. If he can use the foolish to confound the wise, like the Bible says, there doesn't seem to me to be any reason that I can't look at the art of an individual who had no idea that they were glorifying God by showing off his handiwork and worship God through it. If there is nothing redeeming or ultimately worthy of worship within any human being anyway, all of these creations, in any way that they're appealing, are a testament to a creator, and I was in awe of Him again looking at all of these things. Maybe I even make a little bit of sense here. Who knows? Anyhow, moving on...
After getting over our brief and very slight disappointment at the Louvre, we decided to head over to Montmartre, the highest and pretty much the only hill in Paris, and have a look at the city from that vantage point. We took the train over to Gare du Nord, which you've probably seen in movies and stuff at some point. The ground floor of the station has all of the platforms for trains that go to other cities in France, as well as the Eurostar line to London, and the station has at least three levels of local and regional trains under the ground floor. It also has a small mall with a candy shop (or that's what I hear, anyway; we were all too health-conscious to find out for ourselves, naturally) and 200-ish other stores. The train platform at the top was not in black and white like it should have been, but it was still easy to imagine teary-eyed lovers, handkerchiefs, big puffs of steam, sappy music, etc. Very picturesque, and very famous too. Here's a picture.

After we left Gare du Nord, we took a brief detour through McDonald's, because the McChicken is different in Japan than in the USA, and I wanted to compare France to those two. You know, high gourmet survey from various world countries. So I was full of McChicken when Kirsten and Lindsey got their most expensive meal of the week in a nice, authentic French Brasserie. Try to explain that one to a waitress in rudimentary French and sound sensible. This meal was when Kirsten and Lindsey discovered that "well done" doesn't exist in France. Everyone survived, though, and we carried on to the outlying part of Montmartre.
We were looking for the Moulin Rouge, specifically, and if we'd thought it through a little bit, we probably would have been a little more on the lookout for the shady part of town we ended up in. The clubs around Montmartre (but not the Moulin Rouge itself, according to Kirsten) were the birthplace of the can-can, and that was like a hundred years ago, so you can probably imagine that it's not the most squeaky clean area in aught-six. It wasn't anything too horribly embarrassing or decadent, but we were all pretty glad to be around during the day. I can only imagine the difficulty we'd have navigating a neighborhood that houses the Sex-O-Drome after dark.
On the way back home, we went through Montparnasse, which is supposed to be a fairly artsy part of town. I wanted to head that direction to find one of those street artists that rip you off on a portrait of yourself and get ripped off. Montparnasse wasn't noticably artsy, and we didn't see any portraitists, but as it turns out, it was pretty close to our apartment, and we didn't even realize it, so that saved us an additional metro ride. We went on home and geared up to siege Paris with a vengeance and take it over by force on our last day.
Thursday actually started off with a bit of a whimper. We took the number 4 train all the to its terminus at Porte de Clignancourt, where there is apparently one of Europe's best flea markets. The prospect of great deals on chintzy and ridiculous stuff that we'd be ashamed to own when we got back and got a bit of perspective was just too much, and we wanted to make sure to go and be suckered out of a large portion of our remaining funds. As we got off the metro, we realized that it had been upwards of an hour since we'd had some sort of pastry in our hands. This is an indictable offense with the amount of great pastries in France, so we ducked into a little shop and recharged before heading over to a couple of guys to get directions to the flea market. Turns out the flea market is only open on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, so that put a hit on the first portion of our day.
As it turns out, it wasn't too much of a problem because it just gave us more time to take in Montmartre, which was my personal favorite part of the whole trip. Thursday contained Montmartre done properly, and it was fantastic. We took the directions the map offered and climbed the Martyrs' Hill to the Sacre Cœur church at the top. This church looks sort of like a cross between the Taj Mahal, some sort of Mosque, and an orthodox Christian cathedral, which is what it actually is, apparently. There are a million steps up each side of the hill, all swarming with tourists snapping photos, and yet somehow, even the crowds don't manage to ruin this area. It wasn't so packed that anyone was actually in the way of each other, and the view facing either the magnificent church or the lofty view of the city in front of it more than made up for the lack of solitude. We went down the stairs facing the front of the church (we'd come up the side) and took some pictures of the carousel and this famous spot before taking to the neighborhood for the rest of the afternoon.

The area around the foot of Montmartre is full of tourist shops full of lame t-shirts, postcards, Eiffel towers in all sorts of colors and sizes, mugs, etc. We picked up some postcards and mini-posters and looked around some of the shops that were full of cooler stuff, and then I finally steered the caravan toward what I'd been looking forward to all week, the famous square with all of the portraitists, Place du Tertre. There are so many artists in this area, so many degrees of talent on display, and so many different degrees of expense involved in purchasing anything. After looking around at everyone doing the charcoal and chalk portraits and thinking "ehhh..." we spotted the only guy in the whole square doing any sort of "artistic" portraits in watercolor. He was definitely a real artist, and we could have scanned a black and white photo into photoshop and made it look like charcoal anyway, so we thought we'd see what he was up to. By the end of the day, we'd purchased a portrait of Kirsten, a portrait of me with Kirsten, and a really fantastic portrait of Lindsey. The guy was very friendly, spoke good English, and was eager to talk about our ideas on art, Kirsten's background in art and design, and our trip. He also only asked fourteen euros for each portrait, which was a steal. Here are Kirsten and I looking as glum and serious as possible while getting our portrait done. Because, you know, it's the arts. No joking matter. Yikes.

The girls had the fantastic idea of making me look like an ugly goober by having dress-up night on our last night in France. They both had dresses and nice shoes and earrings and the whole deal, and I was certainly not punching my weight by any stretch of the imagination haging out with them, but they let me anyhow, for whatever reason. We went out to take pictures and then had our best dining experience of the whole trip at a nice French restaurant around the corner. It wasn't too horribly expensive, especially considering the quality of the food, and I was even able to get flaming crepes, so it was well worth every second and every penny. We had a great time being all sophisticated, and there is a good amount of photographic record to prove that my girlfriend is positively the most radiantly lovely lady on the face of the earth.
Exhibit A:

After cleaning up the apartment and packing, it was just a train ride or two up to the world's least convenient airport and a trip home. You've all traveled before. You know how it is. There's really no way I can recap every single thing we did in France, obviously, even in a post as obnoxiously long as this one. If you're reading this and you can get with us at some point to look at all the pictures and hear all of the stories, it would be great. Ultimately, though, I can say that it was a really hospitable and lovely country, a lot of fun, and well worth your time if you ever have the chance to go. Thanks for sticking with me through all of my longwindedness. (Although if you've read all of the Japan ones, you know it could have been much worse.) So ends the travelogue. A bientot.

Late reporting

Alright, so it's actually day four, but by the time we were in last night and settled down and done drinking Orangina and getting the laughs over silly things, it was late, and we were tired, so I just went ahead and went to bed, realizing that you all are between six and nine hours behind us, so I can be a little late and, since only like two people in the world are reading this anyway, things will not all fall apart.
Yesterday was our day to exhibit a cavalier disregard for cliché and go to the Champs Elysée, l'Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower all in one day. Lindsey and Kirsten slept in really late, and I couldn't, so I got up, left a note, and went around the corner to the pastry shop and the grocery store for some vittles. I got three eclairs at the pastry shop and the fixings for a few omelettes then came back here and made breakfast in bed for Kirsten and Lindsey. They actually got up by the time the eggs were ready (Lindsey thought the eclairs were breakfast), so I had to herd them (can you "herd" two people?) back into bed so the whole thing would have the effect it was supposed to.
After we ate and got ready to go, we stepped out into a really, really pleasant day and made our way over to the metro station to make the trip and the one transfer over to the Charles de Gaulle Etoile station, where the Arc is located. I know the thing is really big, and I wasn't sure which direction it would be from the escalator out of the station (though I really should have thought about it more, since I do know which was built first), so I was actually turned the wrong direction on a bad hunch when we came out. I heard people gasp, turned around the right way, and was pretty much blown away. The Arc de Triomphe is really really big, yes, but it's also just really beautiful. I wasn't expecting a big pile of cinderblocks or anything, but the level of detail and the styling of all the sculpture on the arc are really fantastic. It was not a letdown. There is a HUGE roundabout round about the arc, and I was sort of wondering about how in the world we'd dodge the hodge-podge assortment of cars (there are no lanes on Parisian streets, just people doing their best to avoid hitting each other) when Kirsten saved my life by pointing out a pedestrian tunnel that goes underneath the whole thing. We went through, took a bunch of pictures, horsed around, and before we left, asserted our dominance by licking the Arc de Triomphe. Kirsten figured it would be a good idea, and it sounded 100% logical to me, so we conquered our first monument of the day with a Léchez de Triomphe. On to l'Avenue des Champs Elysée.
You can see some pictures when we get back, but I'll sum up this road with one word: overpriced. You have not seen exorbitance until you've been to the flagship Louis Vuitton store and seen a twenty-eight thousand-euro suitcase. All of the employees have those cool earpieces with the spirally phone cord-looking wire, like secret service agents, and there are security guards outnumbering the clerks and sales staff by about three to one. This is because there is a vast array of items that could easily fit in a handbag (especially if it's as big as some of the monstrosities actually on sale in this store) and sell on the black market for the GDP of a small country. Unreal.
We did manage to visit one of the places of the Champs Elysée that wasn't too insanely priced: le Quick. It's France's answer to McDonald's, basically. Lindsey really really wanted to go and get a "le Magic Box," France's answer to the Happy Meal (and Kirsten and I secretly wanted to live vicariously through her and be there when she ordered her le Magic Box), so we ducked in for a moment. Normal fast food. Nothing to report.
We spotted the very top of the Eiffel Tower from the roundabout, so we set off in search of the thing. We were going around corners and zig-zagging and crossing streets (Pretty much every street in Paris is completely straight, but no intersection is square; all of the roads go at angles to each and make a bunch of triangles where they come together. It's crazy.), and after about twenty minutes of walking, we came around the end of a really tall apartment building, and *BOOM* there it was. Like the arc, this monument was not overrated at all. It's not the highest monument in the whole world, but the view from the top, mostly due to Paris's nearly flat profile, is absolutely incredible, especially at night. We were there for sunset and then stayed to watch the light completely fade and the lights start turning on. It was eleven euros to go to the top, and worth every cent. I've included pictures.
After we finished up in the tower, we headed down to the plaza underneath it (HUGE!), and Kirsten and I managed to lose Lindsey for about 25 minutes or so. Turns out she was taking pictures, and we were going to go to this horseshoe-shaped building to get a picture of the tower twinkling (they have a bajillion lights on it, and they twinkle every half hour for ten minutes, I think all night long). Lindsey got past us somehow when we stopped to wait for her, we scoured the plaza, she scoured the area by the building. It was freezing cold. Not a great time, basically, but we caught up with each other, everyone agreed that it was no one's fault, and we headed home. Everything was fine. We got dinner at a pizzeria about a half mile from our apartment, and when we got back, we looked at the day's pictures and called it a night.
I really wish Spring Break would last forever. Vacation is such a nice thing, and I know that it's such a privilege and that the times in life when we can sleep until whenever and do whatever and be accountable to no one and nothing are rare. In a few more days, it will be back to a busy life. But even though the break will be over and it'll be back to work for all of us, we really do have it so good. This has been a great bonus.
I'm too tired to give you the whole rundown on today. I'll do it in the morning maybe. I stopped this entry when we went out this morning and picked it up after we got back, only you can't tell where. Ha. Today, in a nutshell, was the Louvre, Montmartre very briefly, and a little jaunt through Gare du Nord, which was great. Tomorrow, the rest of Montmartre, hopefully a portraitist, one of the world's greatest flea markets, and whatever other grand finale stuff comes our way. Should be great. Don't miss the next episode.

Kent

Day 2: Our... dame? (& c.)

Day two. Still in Paris. Still alive. Still kicking. Et cetera.
We went to see the world famous Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris today, and let me tell you, that thing is hooooooooooj. As a veteran of world cathedrals named Notre Dame (the other being in Montreal and having been visited by yours truly a few years back), I feel qualified when I say that this thing had an Official Largeness Rating of 9. There are lots of little sculptures (and big ones), paintings, votives, committed catholics, noncommitted catholics, tourists, and flagstones inside the cathedral, and we all just loved it. It turns out that it's not too painfully far from where we're staying. We were on a corner doing our best impression of hopelessly clueless tourists -mouths open, cameras out, necks craned upward; not really, we were just looking at a map- when a guy came up in desperate need of some English practice. In such need, in fact, that he was willing to break the strict Parisien Moral Code and converse -in English!- with a trio of hapless foreigners. He told us that it was "not so far by feet" to the cathedral, and we found that he was quite right. We used the map to guide us, turned a few corners, and then all of a sudden looked up and saw the church looming just ahead. I don't know why I was thinking we'd need an exact address or something. It's such a gargantuan building.
After chasing some pigeons around the square in front of the church and horsing around with the cameras for a few minutes, we walked along the river for a bit and then went to wander aimlessly for the rest of the day. One of the first things we happened to see was another legendary landmark I'd hoped to see and had no idea was so close to Notre Dame, the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, Paris's largest (only significant?) English-language book shop. I wish I could describe how great this place is. It's not really a huge bookstore, actually it's only the size of a TINY house, but it is absolutely PACKED with books. Every surface that a book can stay on without defying gravity is pretty much covered. It would be a nightmare for a claustrophobe, but I'm not one, particularly, so I thought it was awesome. Not only were there a BILLION books, but at the top of a steep and inCREDibly narrow staircase was a section marked with a sign that said, "The books on the second floor are not available for purchase, but you are welcome to sit and read, and use these books for reference." On that second floor were several seats, and -get this- two BEDS in a room off to the side. Blankets and all. Apparently they get new linens every couple of days or so? But the idea is that if you want to come and curl up with a good book and get a nap in the middle of your tourism, you can. The whole shop was very, very cozy and home-ish already, seriously, and it was definitely a highlight of today.
The rest of the day was spent walking around and looking at different shops, eating in a little sandwich shop that was NOT warm enough inside (Did I mention it's about 35-40 degrees here and windy? 40 degrees is cold.), and making our way through several narrow pedestrian streets that had a TON of restaurants (Greek ones especially, oddly enough). We stopped for coffee and warmth at a little place called Malongo. It was a rather disorienting experience. Let me tell you why. We walked in and were greeted by an East Asian-looking guy (looked Indonesian, maybe?) who spoke perfect French (of course). I ordered drinks for Kirsten and me, but it turns out that the machine needed to prepare hers was broken. My grasp of French is a little tenuous, so I kind of lost some of the details when James started going on about the machine. He realized it, so he switched to perfectly fluent, British-inflected English. It was jarring. I think he was British. But this guy -his name became James, for reasons you already know if you paid close attention to my Tokyo exploits last year- was playing the three nationalities card, and it was a little tough to keep track of. Anyhow, after Malongo, we went over to the Jardin du Luxemburg, where we saw some guards, the Palais du Luxembourg (le Sènat), a nice little pond, a kid that was DEATHLY afraid of ducks, and some statues and whatnot. We wandered on home after that, and we were devastatingly cold by then. At one point, we did find a grate blowing mysteriously warm air, and we huddled over it for a few minutes. By the time we approached the apartment, Lindsey was nearly frozen solid, and Kirsten's feet were killing her, so I carried her the last little bit of the way home.
After we thawed, I went down to the grocery store and got some things for my World Famous Alfredo of Gastronomic Felicity (this time with ham, which was a personal hit) and made dinner for us all. We are all so grateful for having an actual apartment with a kitchen and everything rather than paying more (more!) for a third-rate hotel room an hour's ride outside the city! This is the life, seriously. We're right in the thick of things, and it's just great.
After dinner, we went looking for a 24-hour convenience store (we ran out of Orangina, and this is unacceptable), but in a country where it's illegal to be industrious (35-hour maximum work week), this is a pretty tall order. We came back empty-handed and -surprise!- cold. We're all winding down for bed now, which means that I've been banished to this side of the wall between the rooms until time for the tuck-in and bedtime story. Here are pictures of Notre Dame, the bookstore, the vent (mmmmmm...), and the three of us in the living room/dining room/kitchen. Tomorrow is the big tourist-y day, I think. The Champs Elysée, l'Arc de Triomphe, and some sort of tall thing. And a lot of walking around between vents. A bientot.

Kent

In France

Well hello there.
I was in North America less than twenty-four hours ago, and now I'm in good old Paris, France, sitting on a futon that will be my bed for the next few nights, with une omelette, un peu d'un patiserrie chocolat, et d'Orangina in my estomac. The trip over here was uneventful for the most part. Charles de Gaulle International Airport isn't really anything too impressive. Actually, it's downright ugly in parts- certainly not the luxurious Parisian architecture I expected. It's not too terribly confusing, and neither are the public transit systems, so we made it to our apartment at Rue Pascal without too much difficulty. It took a couple of phone calls to Monsieur Thiriet and a little bit of shivering out in the one-degree-celsius weather that we were all a little underdressed for before we actually got into the apartment building and into our apartment, but we're all settled now, and Paris is fantastic. I wasn't too tired when we got here, but Kirsten and Lindsey were completely exhausted -Lindsey's ears took a major beating on the plane, so she was ready to sleep for a while if not die- so I went out to explore a little and take a few pictures. We are definitely right in the thick of things here, and there is a lot of activity right in our neighborhood. The door to our apartment is right next to the door of a cafe, and the cafe itself, I believe, is directly underneath where I'm sitting right now, just down about 30 feet or so. To the right outside our building is the famous Marché Mouffetard if you go down a block or two. Big old outdoor market next to a cool old church with nice bells that were tolling noon or something similarly eventful when we arrived. All in all, it's pretty much what we expected, but with friendlier people so far. There was even a guy playing nice music on an accordion for spare change in our metro car today. "Welcome to Paris," he said. We're talking about doing Notre Dame tomorrow, as well as whatever else is in that area. Should be awesome. I'll put up pictures. Here are a few from today. Enjoy.

Kent