06 October 07
1am?? Wow, Paris is crazy tonight. A. It's a Nuit Blanche, so people are still performing and stuff B. France beat NZ in the rugby match so people are 1. pissed 2. pissing 3. honking 4. in the streets 5. STILL.
This morning I went to Gard du Nord to buy my train ticket. Then I went to Montmarte. I ended up in a Saturday market full of fish, meat and veggies. It smelled so good! The I walked up to Sacre Coeur again. It was all blue sky up there even though it looked smoggy over the city.
I wandered back to the metro and went to St. Michel for lunch and internet. And then to Luxumbourg Gardens. Another "Paris to the Moon" moment, though I didn't find the puppet theater. It really is the coolest place. You can (kids can) get boats to push around the pool with big sticks. There is a playground where there must have been 200 kids swarming all the equipment. There's tennis and basketball, people kicking soccer balls, ponies, tons of benches and chairs. I felt quite alone there because of all the families and couples. I wandered back along the Seine and bought a color sketch from a vendor. I saw a guy by the Louvre actually wearing a striped sweater and a beret!!
At 8pm I met up with Kirsti and Andrea and went through the Louvre quickly. The building itself is art. It was a palace, and it's still stunning. Saw the Mona Lisa with no lines. I can say it was Bigger than I expected. No idea why people say it's small.
In the Tuileries gardens there was this fire art: long pipes with designs punched out, some giant spheres with flower pots full of fuel. It happened that every place we went we arrived just as it was ending.
After passing through the rugby nonsense we went to some gothic church in the 4th where a guy was projecting light patterns (really complex, beautiful ones) on the ceiling and alter area. Accompanied by organ or by some strange "orchestra". It was really cool how the lights slowly moved across the vaults and revealed the architecture as well as the color patterns.
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