Paris--Day Three

Finally, Monday! On Monday morning, we met to go to the Centre Pompidou, which is a modern art museum. Like, really modern, as in there was literally a blue square made out of fabric that was supposedly art. Whatever. But there were some really cool things. First of all, the building itself is hideously ugly and cool. The pipes are all on the outside! So it's in this really swanky and nice neighborhood of Paris, with all these beautiful buildings, and then there's Pompidou with all these industrial pipes all over the place. Crazy. And then on the top floor of the museum, they have this kind of overlook place with really amazing views of the rooftops of Paris, and the Eiffel Tower! As for the arty part of the museum, our guide was amazing, and very informative. And she had us sit down in every room, which I loved because usually I get so antsy standing up all the time that I can't really pay attention. And another great thing was that our tour took place before the museum actually opened at 11 am. So we could actually see the art, and not just be herded around in a crowd. So after our tour ended, we had a few minutes with the museum all to ourselves, which was great for being silly with the art work. Because let me tell you, most of the art was fairly ridiculous. Hahaha.

Then after Pompidou, we were going to go to a free exhibition of this photographer, but then the line ended up being really long (Christine waited it out), and Annie and I went and strolled on the Champs-Elysees. Which really isn't that big of a deal, except that it's so famous. There are just a lot of stores, most of which I can come nowhere near to affording. But there is that whole Arc de Triomphe thing at the end, which is pretty amazing! I like this picture cause it looked like I just walked out into the middle of the road and took it. Maybe I did? Or maybe there was a median...you decide. But the Champs is basically just a very busy road. With weird shaped trees and a big old monument at the end. We went up on top of the Arc! That was cool. You could see really far! And, as with most things in Paris, you could see the Eiffel Tower really well too!





Then we kind of just walked around for a little while, and then went to H&M, which is a European store that we are so lucky to have at Eastview Mall, but not anywhere in Toulouse? That confuses me. So we went there. I bought some gloves. It was fairly exciting. Then we went back to the hotel to get pretty for the ballet that evening! We went to the National Opera House (top) to see "Joyaux", which means "jewel", and each act was based on a different precious gem. The first was emeralds (kind of boring, but I mean....emeralds are kind of boring too, right?), the second was rubies (incredibly cute and saucy and not ballet-like), and of course the last act was....diamonds (bottom)! And for the grand finale they had the whole company out on stage, and there was some majorly complicated choreogrphy. It was amazing. And that's Paris! A very successful excursion, and I can't wait to go back!