GALA (gălă): Bonne Journée à Paris

Day 2
April 9, 2009
Paris

I arrived in Charles de Gaulle airport at 8:30 am but was only able to leave at past 10 am, after more than an hour of looking for my travel buddies Rissa, Mitch, and Marlon. I did not realize at first that my cell phone inbox was full so I was not getting any of their messages. Apparently, they were just in the lower floor where the train station, which connects to the city, was located.

Once in the city, it was time to experience the metro. It was said that the Paris metro system is one of the most efficient in the world. This is true, as long as you are not carrying any heavy baggages with you, or any baggages for that matter. We had to carry them across multiple long staircases on our way to different connecting stations on the way to the hotel. I will definitely be a backpacker on my next trip to Paris (if there is one).

All of us were exhausted by the time we reached Hotel des Victoires. Our rooms were minimally furnished and small, just like the elevator which can only accomodate 2 persons at a time. Hotel staff was friendly so that made everything ok.

After a long rest and a very late lunch at an Italian restaurant, we proceeded to our first stop at 4 PM - Centre Georges Pompidou - Musée National d'Art Moderne. The building showcases a cool inside-out design, i.e. escalators and pipes can be found outside:

The first time I saw Eiffel was from the top of Centre Georges Pompidou:

The museum hosts a leading collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe. Most of those we have seen are abstract paintings:

Arty toys are also on display. Rissa joked that these are being sold locally in Quaipo and they are hardly called art in there:

We only stayed for an hour at Centre Pompidou then we went to Musée d’Orsay. The place was originally a train station and is now a museum of Impressionist paintings and statues.

Here are some of the statues we have seen:

Antoine Louis Barye - Napoleon I as a Roman Emperor

Jean Baptiste Carpeaux - The Four Parts of the World Holding the Celestial Sphere

Jules Cavelier - Cornelia, mother of the Gracques

Alexandre Schoenewerk - Young Tarentine

Jean Antoine Idrac - Mercury inventing the caduceus

This is Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's Ugolin. Behind it is Thomas Couture's 'Romans during the Decadence'

Behind me is Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's 'La Danse'

We have also seen paintings of world famous artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Pierre Auguste Renoir:

Vincent van Gogh - Fritillaries