Promenade Plantee

I think it was the Design*Sponge Paris city guide that pointed me toward the Promenade Plantee as something worth visiting. I had never even heard of it, but it was a beautiful escape from the crowded, noisy sidewalks. I spent at least an hour walking along the promenade, which is built on an old viaduct that used to be the home to a set of elevated train tracks.



Some of the things I saw as I walked:

(My sad attempt at capturing myself on the Promenade. Let's be honest--this picture could have been taken anywhere. But I had to try.)

The Jardin de Reuilly park. A total hidden gem. (Well, not totally hidden, as you can see. But not packed by any means.)

If you visit Paris and have an hour or two that you'd like to escape the city for a while, this is definitely worth your time. I enjoyed it a lot, and I decided I wouldn't mind living in that area--it seemed pretty cool.

To access the promane plantee, take the Metro to Bastille, and you'll find the promenade plantee behind the opera building.

The Pompidou Center

I spent a lot of time at the Pompidou Center during my time in Paris. And a lot of time in their bookstore.
I rode these escalators many a time to check out the exhibits. The views of Paris are not too bad from the top floor, either.



The Eiffel Tower through the window (and the rain).

Another great thing about the Pompidou Center is that the bookstore and the bathrooms don't require entrance to the museum. You just have to go through security. I'm not gonna lie--I totally took advantage of that a time or fifty.

Home Sweet Parisian Home

I don't think I ever gave y'all the grand tour of my apartment. Here's a quick look at the place I called home in Paris.

My room. I think I showed a picture before when I was showing you the sad and cratered state of my mattress.
This was the day before I left, so it looks like a hurricane swept through. But you get the idea. It was actually really large, which was great since there was no storage.


A quarter view of the very skinny kitchen.


The kitchen. That white appliance between the stainless counter and the stove? The one with the platter on it? That's the washing machine. If there is anything wrong with this apartment, this is the one thing that (although it had problems) was very, very lovely. I don't do laundromats. I did get used to doing dishes by hand, though, since there wasn't a dishwasher. I still forget about the dishwasher sometimes, which puts me at the receiving end of some very curious looks.

Our 'balcony.' Really just a way to get to the garbage chute.

The shower. Please note:

1) There is no permanent shower head. Each day I had to insert the hand-held shower head into the pipe sticking out from the wall. Weird. But whatever. It was set up that way on purpose, probably because when the building was first constructed no showers were planned as a part of the plumbing.

2) The only real problem I had with the shower was that there was no curtain. That's right, folks. This means I had to wipe down 1/3 of the bathroom every day because I sprayed water everywhere.

Notice the drying rack in the back of the bathroom. I also sprayed any and all clothes that were out drying in the morning as I showered. That's right, I'm amazing.

The entry. You can see the front door just to the left of the bookshelves. My room is the open door you can see on the right. The kitchen is the doorway you can barely see on the left edge of the photo.

My landlord's room was on the right just out of the frame, and through her room is the entrance to the bathroom.

The water closet is out of the frame to the left, past the kitchen.

I'm estimating that the whole apartment was maybe 800 square feet.

This is Alfred Roll street, where I walked every day to the RER and Metro.

There were two teensy grocers within 30 seconds of my front door, as well as a Chinese take-out place, an Italian restaurant, a cafe/bar, pharmacy, and of course the lovely farmer's market one block behind my apartment complex. And underground parking right below my complex, as well.

All in all, a great location.

Playing Catch-up

I'm trying to get caught up on all of my posts from Paris, since I've been home almost 4 months now. (Ah!! I've been home almost as long as I was there!!)

So you'll be hearing a lot from me over the next few days.

Montmartre

I wandered around Montmartre one sunny day and took a few pictures before enjoying a banana split at an extremely touristy joint that looks onto the big square full of artists.

I think the Sacre Coeur is a gorgeous building.

Palais de Tokyo

I went to the Palais de Tokyo.

It was disappointing to say the least. I think maybe I missed most of the museum.

Maybe not.

When I got there and pulled out my money to pay, the cashier asked me if I was a student. I said yes, but I was older than 26, so I don't get the discount.

"Are you sure?"

"Uh, yep. Pretty sure."

"And you don't qualify for any other discounts?"

"I don't think so."

"You're sure? You're definitely older than 26?"

"Yep." (Seriously??) (Although, apparently almost everyone in France though I was 23, so I guess I can't blame her.)

"Well, okay then. It's 10 Euros."

I should have taken that as a bad sign. If even the museum staff doesn't think the exhibit is worth the entrance price...


This was the coolest thing in the museum. And it was in the gift shop.


This is the cafeteria.

This is a piece by Jim Shaw called "Heap." It's a big pile of McDonal's Happy Meal toys turned into a creepy sea monster with resin, green spray paint, styrofoam, and metal rods. This was the next most interesting thing in the museum.

In the background you can see the security guard. I was the only person in the museum. (Yet another clue.) When I asked if I could take pictures, he said, "Yeah. You can also stay here and flirt with me for a while if you'd like."

I just laughed like he was joking and went on my merry way, trying to get pictures in the ridiculously low lighting.

Don't know who did this or what it was called. But it was built to look like it had smashed through the wall of the museum.

So that's it.

Disappointed?

Well, I'd be lying if I told you I was surprised.

Musee de l'Armee

I think I already mentioned how on the first Sunday of each month all of the state-owned museums in Paris are free of charge.

So one of those Sundays I decided to check out the Army Museum. Not something I would pay for, so I figured I would at least make the effort to check it out when it was free.

The main thing I wanted to do was see Naploeon's tomb... but (classic) that was the one part of the museum that isn't free.

So I decided to just quickly check out the chapel in the complex and call it good. (I then proceeded to get lost in the neighborhood because by this point I wasn't in the habit of taking my map with me anymore. Woops.)

Les Macarons LeNotre

I, sadly, had never experienced the loveliness of a macaroon until I went to France.

So, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to make up for lost time.

The best macaroons I had were from LeNotre. Wow. They were so good. I don't remember what the flavors were, but believe me when I say they were a-ma-zing. And pretty, too.

Elles @ Centre Pompidou

So, this post is one of the reasons I even brought up the cookie story.

I went to the Centre Pompidou one last time because there was a Kandinsky Exhibit I wanted to see before it or I was no longer in Paris.

While there I noticed that there was also a new primary exhibit in the Pompidou Center. "Elles @ Centre Pompidou."

Elles doesn't have a direct translation in English that makes its meaning apparent. It could be translated as they, but it loses its inherent meaning, because elles is the third-person plural, but strictly feminine. So, I guess you could translate is as "the female they" or "the women" (though "the women" would just be les femmes).

So the exhibit is essentially "They (females only) at the Pompidou Center." Got it? Good.

I thought maybe it was just a special exhibit focusing on the existing art in the Pompidou by female artists.

Well, I was kind of right.

Take a look at some of the things I found in the exhibit.

At the entrance there was this display that featured the names of prominent male artists, but the names had been changed into a feminine version of the name (La Corbusier, Annie Warhol, Jacqueline Pollock). I thought that was pretty clever.



Barbara Kruger


Sylvie Fanchon

Sylvia Bachli

Lee Bontecou

Koo Jeong-A (An example of contemporary art that I doesn't appeal to me. Everything else I took pictures of I really liked).

More Barbara Kruger. (I love this, by the way. Maybe too much. I think it's really funny.)

Helen Frankenthaler

(I don't know who the artist was here. Just liked the look of them.)


Marthe Wery

Details of a Kristin Baker painting. Her subjects (inspired by car racing) aren't really my thing, but her technique is really cool.

I don't know who made this, but it was kind of interesting--a dress all covered in light bulbs.

Vera Molnar

I found a lot of pieces that I really loved in the exhibit. And then I saw this (you might want to click on it to see a bigger version):


This really annoyed me. I can understand that the curators probably wanted to make a point about how women artists were just as good as men. But here's the thing. I think you can do that without coming across as whiny little kids who are basically saying, "Hey, look at me, too!"

Why not give the exhibit another title, and then once everyone has gone through, have some sort of big reveal at the end that tells them how all of the works in the exhibit were by women?

Anyway. This was just one of the pieces of art, but it was at the beginning of the exhibit and I felt that it set the stage in a way that kind of tainted everything else that was featured.

It was still a really great exhibit, and I discovered several artists that I had never heard of whose work I really liked.