overdosed on fine arts

The end of my second day in paris im copying this from my journal that I wrote with a beer at the hotel bar like an hour ago.

Its been another action packed day at Chateau Golden! Today was the first sunday of the month and aswell as being mothers day (hi mum love you!) a ton of the mueseums where gratuit (free!) meaning that I had to visit as many as possible! I started the day really early before my crazy dutch room mates woke upand went down for breakfast. Taking advantage of the buffet style dining I consumed copious amounts of orange juice and coco pops, I also stowed a baguette and a sachet of honey for my lunch (saving precious €€€'s!) first of all I wandered through a little street market to as metro station catching a metro straight to the Louvre. Arriving early meant I avoided a load of the tourists and therfore queues , I got x-ray'd and stumbled into the gigantic foyer, grabbed an english version of the map and set off to the denon wing which houses italian sculptures and paintings including the Mona Lisa and Venus De Milo two things I knew I definitely wanted to check out!

Arriving at the room displaying the Mona Lisa there was already quite a crowd and to be honest im not that sure why. Basically imagine a badly aged, pretty small painting of a average looking brown haired girl with a bit of a omniscient look

on her face and thats all it is.

No painter has ever dared to restore the classic painting and so even behind it brightened colour enhancing, bullet proof glass its still only a small warping portrait of a mystery lady and not to disimilar to many other portraits of the era. I guess its just the recurring reproduction of Mona Lisas' Smile which helped her gain the popularity, along with the wild myths surrounding it, including one explaining how the image could be a self portrait of Da Vinci himsel in drag from there I perusd the awesome and collection of egyptian artefacts which was much cooler and exciting, they also drew some pretty funny paintings of guys riding camels.

The Venus De Milo is pretty hot for a armless model and I completely loved all the japanese dudes pulling wild poses next to her whilst their disgruntled wives took their photo, my favourite was the guy proudly posing next to her builders bum, The sculpture also has a pretty interesting history too but im too busy to drawl on about it so check it out on wikipedia or something!

After snacking down on a cheese sandwich leftover from the day before, I moved to the exhibition underneath the louvre which explored the galleris history along sections of the restored and excavated original walls, I looked around the dungeon a bit too and it was really dark so I left heading along the bank of the seine to the palais toykyo which houses the mueseum of modern art.

The exterior was a bombshell, a homeless guy in a monks cowl pushing a trolley full of crap harrassed me for change, the walls were covered with graffitti and broken wine bottles littered the ground, I paused considering whether I should even bother going up the stairs to the entrance but scared of walking past the monk dude again I marched onward through the sliding door and its so luck I did. the place is amazing, housing some of frances most beautiful works of art including Dufy's humongous mural 'le fee electricite' (the elecrticity fairy) which tells the story of electricity from aristotle to the power station in beautiful bright colours covering an entire exhibition room it was magnificent!

There was a intruguing exhibition downstairs containing a room full of old childrens clothes and telephone directorys from all around the world lining the walls, static memories of thousands of people in the world gathering dust in a basement gallery of a dilapadated mueseum.

Dufys 'le fee electricite'

Next to that was a instalation of hundreds of TVs running different films immersing the visitor in a minefield of sounds and images conveying thousands of feelings and mentally making your brain work in overdrive trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I want to upload all my photos here but its so tricky so you'll have to wait til im home and I can flickr them all

my lunch break consisted of an apple my honey baguette and a glass of hot red wine from the mueseum cafe, in the building next door was a boutuqye of local artists work on sale ranging from 100 euros to 1000+ for pieces ranging from skeleton necklaces to rubiks cube coffee tables somewhere I would definitely return to if I ever make some money.

behind the mueseum is replica of the statue of libertys torch put there in 1987 symbolising the franco american relationship, freedom and liberty however the site is now remembered for something much darker, below the torch is the underpass in which princess diana was killed.

from here I headed back along the seine to the petit palais containing the mueseum des beuaux arts encompassing pieces from every period of art from the ranaissance to the 1920s including monets ' sunset at lavacourt' the central quad also had a nice garden I sat in for a while.

I did a ton more stuff today like exploring the bastille one of paris' biggest nightspots and home of some upcoming artists and their galleries/workshops but my time on this coin operated internet machine has nearly expired so ill let you know about it sometime soon, I also ate pizza from the home of the METRE LONG PIZZA lolol it was epic, so yeah ill leave you with some photos because happy hour at belushis started 30 minutes ago (glass of wine 1.80!! buy one get one free on beerz!!) so ill speak soon!

tommorow im hiring un velo (a bike)!!!!

stay safe

Sam x

view from my window tonight