The weather is HOT...and then rainy

Sunday and Monday in Paris were HOT. In a way that la Sconita does not enjoy. Thank goodness its now back to 60's and rain :) However, the wandering that I was enjoying over the weekend has been put to an end, to be replaced by museums. After the Orangerie today, where the huge waterlily paintings by Monet are glued to the wall and joined by some rather second rate paintings from a previously private collection I went to the Musée de la vie romantique. As in Romantic writers. And I have to say that it was possibly one of the strangest museums I've ever been to. I think I needed more background information on people like George Sand and Any Scheffer to really enjoy all the paintings OF them, BY them...and their rings and hair clippings. Anyways. Seeing as I was already in the Montmartre neighborhood I headed over to this restaurant I knew by the Abesses metro stop and got a steak juste poêlé before I vanished from being so famished. A step above steak tartare (completely rare), this meat was slightly brown (sauteed I believe) and I ordered it on a very large and dangerous whim. But it was actually pretty decent. Strangely spicy? Anyway I ate most of it and haven't dropped dead yet (which I think most Americans would have done by now).

In a very exciting news update, I'm heading to Aix en Provence in the south of France this weekend to visit my long lost friend Whittles! I also encourage everyone to check out the newest blog on Wisconsin politics...http://thesconz.wordpress.com/

Rue Rambuteau, by the Centre Pompidou, in the heat

Weekend Recap

Friday was mostly nul except for a visit to the Louvre to see the painting I'm writing about for my art history final.

Saturday was much better as it included three of my favorite things- a museum, a park and books. I went first to the Bourdelle Museum, which is not so far at all from Montparnasse. The museum used to be Antoine Bourdelle's atelier (studio) and now lots of his sculptures are kept there. I was a little bit distracted during the visit (meeting the bf's dad for the first time), so I'd like to go back and go through it again. After some lunch I wandered deeper into the 15th, down to Parc George Brassens and the USED BOOK MARKET they have there every weekend. They have hundreds of novels for 1.50 or 2 euros and a lot of antique books as well. Needless to say I got two books and a birthday present for someone, then headed home to enjoy said books. The one I started, Fort comme la mort, by Maupassant is going excellently.

Sunday started with me being very lazy and sleeping till 11:30 (I was tired!) and then heading to the movies to see Good Morning England (very funny, I recommend it). I wandered for a bit and eventually found my way over to Bastille and the cafe I always go to, Chez Oscar.

I started out today by taking the bus to the Jardin des Plantes, the botanical gardens. I had been really excited to see it, but now would say its definitely not one of my favorite parks (although I did see some toads). This is possibly due to the fact that it seems to be field trip season for French elementary schools and there were noisy kids running around everywhere. And it just wasn't as pretty as the Botanical Gardens in Belfast. The one part I really liked however, was the Iris Garden. Then I crossed the river, walked to Sully-Morland and took the metro to rue Sainte-Anne (full of Asian restaurants) and got some Japanese food (which I've been craving for ages. It seems as soon as I eat it, a new craving begins). After eating the most impossibly large bowl of vegetarian Lamen soup I slowly made my way over to the Pompidou Center. I really wanted to see the Kandinsky exhibit, but wasn't in the mood to pay 9 euros for it, so I just went to the Contemporary Art Museum, which I got into for free. Favorites- Chagall and Matisse. Once it moves into squares and lines I'm lost.

Je suis nulle cette semaine

I'm happy to say that this school week has finally come to an end. It was not going so well. For example, yesterday I go to my art history class at the Musée de l'Orangerie. Nope, I didn't get to class because it was at the Musée d'Orsay and I didn't find that out until a few hours later. En tout cas it is over and next Thursday is a holiday, letting me avoid two 3-hour classes!

Not much else to report. I'm off to read my book on the EU, my beautiful new acquisition that is teaching me all about the EU in 2009.

Les trente-six vues de la Tour Eiffel

So at the Gustav Eiffel exposition yesterday I saw these really cool pictures, 36 different views of the Eiffel Tower, done by Henri Riviere. The more I look at them, the more I like them :)

Weekend Review

I have to admit that I have not been the best of bloggers the last week or two. So sorry!

The first weekend in May found me visiting the bf in Rennes again. We took a day trip to the city of Nantes on Sunday, where we visited the castle of the Dukes of Brittany (below) and the nice history museum they have there. Being the first Sunday of the month all the museums were free, so we went to the Beaux Arts museum as well.


This past weekend was pretty busy. On Friday my friends Jenn, Rachael and I had a picnic at the Place des Vosges, followed by some wandering in the Marais, a trip to the Picasso museum and watching Roman Holiday on the big screen at a movie theatre right by the Arc de Triomphe. Saturday and Sunday I spent with my host mom and her family (that's me with the little cousins in the picture and with the family below) at their country house up by the Normandy region. The house is gorgeous with lilacs blooming everywhere at this time of year. As much as I love Paris, I am always happy to go somewhere a little more peaceful and this definitely did the trick. Today I've started to get back into the swing of things, going grocery shopping and doing homework (if anyone has read Le Paysan de Paris and would like to summarize it for me that would be wonderful), but I also visited the Gustav Eiffel exhibit at the Hôtel de Ville. I didn't think the exhibit was very well put together, but there was some interesting information there and some great paintings of the Eiffel Tower by Marc Chagall and Raoul Dufy (two of my favorite painters).


Things on the agenda for this week: an exposition at the Louvre on the museum during WWII and visiting Buttes-Chaumont and Andre Citroen parks (if the weather is good). For now I'm off to do some homework and then watch the news. Ciao :)

(The goat comes from the Picasso museum, where I didn't find many things that I liked. I actually only went because I wanted to give Picasso a chance before I confirmed once and for all that I'm not a fan of his. However, the goat I liked because he reminds me of Chagall.)