Will Around the World

Back in Tim's apartment on this Sunday morning, I had brunch with Tim, his girlfriend, Abi, and his roommate Engin. We conversed about the vagaries of the English language. (Abi and Engin each speak a little.)

I spent the rest of the day in the Louvre. This museum is gargantuan, impossible to cover in five visits, let alone one. I managed to see a fair amount of it, though.

I.M. Pei's pyramid at the Louvre

Inside pyramid

I focused on Northern European paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries, 19th-century French paintings and the lengthy corridor exhibiting Italian works. The Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo were zoos.

I only have arms for you

Life imitates art

Don't bother trying to get close

I found a pleasant surprise, which was the large-format French painting rooms on the first floor. This gallery houses a number of works that are masterpieces in their own right, but without the throngs crowding around the museum's most famous works.

Raft of the Medusa, Gericault

"And you thought we had fights"

The Italian Corridor, too, has works by artists like Da Vinci and Caravaggio, but these are mostly ignored by the endless stream of visitors flowing straight down the end of the hall to the Mona Lisa.

My favorite pieces from this visit were an assortment of paintings by David, Delacroix and Gericault in the large-format gallery; The Valpinçon Bather, Ingres (Second Floor), Portrait of Baldassare Castigliano, Raphael (Italian Corridor); and frescoes [1, 2] by Botticelli (First Floor).

You can tell a city by its museum guards. In Rome and Florence, the guards are, bar none, well-dressed women. In Barcelona, they are young students. The guards in Paris wear conservative uniforms, but there is are equal numbers of men and women, and they are composed of many ethnicities. In San Francisco, museum guards are usually Filipino immigrants who can get the job rather easily and make just enough to send a small sum of money home.

After the Louvre closed, I explored the area around the museum. Nearby is an interesting bridge called Pont des Arts, a hangout for bohemians.

Pont des Arts

After ten days in Italy, the cool Parisian weather, and fashion, were refreshing

Pont Neuf

Pont des Arts

Back on the right bank is the Tuileries, where I went on my first day in Paris.

Tuileries

Summer breeze makes me feel fine

Poor man's bocce?

During my second weekend in the City of Lights, I couldn't help comparing it to the other cities I had just been to. With a huge population of immigrants from around the globe, Paris is certainly more cosmopolitan than any city in Italy, and it even rivals New York and San Francisco. For a city of its size, Paris is remarkably orderly. The tree-lined avenues are picturesque. The people are polite. The Metro is clean and efficient. Overall, Paris seemed to me a very livable city, although I would still rank it behind Barcelona in terms of getting around and use of English.

# posted by billklee @ 15:17