Paris report 18353 (actually 23)

O hai! So I’ve been to Paris yet again and must of course record it here. Pics on Flickr. Feel free to ignore what follows. 😀

So this was a trip with my mum and the main reason we went was the big Monet retrospective at the Grand Palais. This was scheduled for 5pm on Friday (we had tickets) but before that, I went… mainly shopping for postcards. And I went to see a Karl Lagerfeld exhib at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, and this was quite boring. Saw the rest of their stuff too, which was also largely boring. *lol* Yeah, then postcard-shopping for Postcrossing (postcards in Paris are hideously expensive tho), and then wandered around Les Halles. For it was raining you see, and this kept me dry. I got nice eyeshadow!

The Monet show was AMAZING, really really great. Very crowded, tho it got better in later rooms (I wonder if many people do the early rooms in great detail, then get bored and rush throught the remaining ones? that’s the only way I can explain it). But really very many wonderful paintings we had never seen before, and all under one roof. So you could compare them, see the effect of them together, etc. Really beautiful. We bought the catalogue and it’s just not the same thing. 🙁 Wish I could afford a Monet (or four!).

After that I think we only went to dinner. And then to bed. Saturday it wasn’t raining anymore, so we mainly walked around, with a few exhibs in between. We went to see C’est la fôte à Bruxelles at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles again (I’d seen it previously, but wanted to show my mum) – I spent most of the time on the iPhone tho, was less funny a second time round. Then we went to see an outdoor photo show about toilets around the world, organised by the Service de l’Assainissement en Ile-de-France (so basically the water-cleany people). This was quite fun, some quite yuck, but also… well, fun. And informative. Then we went to some “Buildings of the 1950s” exhib at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, and this was insanely boring (but free). They had some other architectural Paris stuff as well tho so at least we got to see that too.

I had a cold and was feeling crap so I went to bed after that while my mum went shopping. Then we went to dinner at our traditional Italian where we go every year and the waiter recognises us (even tho we only go once a year! I went with Jana in June and he didn’t recognise me then, so it only works with my mum :P). And then we walked around some more, for it was Nuit Blanche (white night, so basically they had events and stuff open all night). My mum was annoyed cuz you had to queue for everything, a fact she had to repeat to me every 10mins, which annoyed me. We went inside Notre Dame tho (queued for 20mins – see, not that bad!?), which was pretty fun. They had some light installations, the rose windows were illuminated from inside, as was some other stuff… and the outside was all dark. I took loads of pics, incl. about two dozen of the lit rose window, until I finally got one that wasn’t blurry. *lol*

Sunday we didn’t really have a plan, tho we ended up doing quite a few things… first we cycled around for a bit (not long, just under an hour). We ended up at the Eiffel Tower so we went to the Aquarium de Paris which was… pretty fun. Well, it had lots of sea life, as was to be expected. *lol* Also lots of kids of course. Then we cycled back, and went to the Petit Palais for another photo exhib, this time organised by Reporters sans Frontières, of photos by a father and daughter, Pierre and Alexandra Boulat. Theeen we cycled a tiny bit more and then my mum got tired and we parted ways. I ended up just walking around some more, then sitting down in the Jardin du Luxembourg, playing iPhone games and eventually falling asleep until I had to catch my train.

And that was it, I’ll spare you the story about the horrible trip back, no Victoria line and engineering works on the railway as well, which meant I didn’t get back until 23:45, over 2 hours later than I should’ve done. Hmph.