Thanks to the suggestion of a friend, we had an outstanding few hours in a beautiful museum we had never visited before. With a bright blue sky outside & the sun already beating down at 10am, we entered the gold & glass doors of the Petit Palace. What a place, it totally took our breathe away. Not only is the building itself a stunner, with high ceilinged rooms on the ground floor & a cool & quiet internal courtyard café, but the displays are spaciously& appropriately arranged, there is no crowding, & there weren't many people!
We did take (cough) hundreds of photos, but I will only share some of my favourites. This is the type of museum you could visit each time & discover something new. It is also a smaller museum & not as overwhelming as the Louvre.
In the Antiquities section, which we started with, an impressive collection of Rhyta vessels had us totally mesmerised. From ancient Rome, these were used in Dionnysian rituals. Shaped into various creatures heads, the wine was poured in the big end & at the snout end somewhere was a hole where the participant would drink from. They were quite beautiful & wonderfully quirky.
Speaking of quirky....these were non functional tableware often given as wedding gifts. There was quite a range of various shaped & decorated vessels, but these were my favourite. I have affectionately dubbed them avocado bowls. Thankfully, with being virtually on our own in this gallery, it wasn't such an issue when I erupted with raucous laughter & blurted "look at these!!!!!"
This was my favourite sculpture. I don't remember the artist &, of course, there was no postcard of this piece to remind me. It is rough & full of wonderful tension & tenderness. For me, it was emotionally moving.
My favourite painting was this masterpiece of Les Halles Market. What you don't grasp with this photo is the size of the painting, it is huge & thankfully there was a seat in front, to really enjoy the energy, motion & all the wonderful characters & their activities in this market scene. Such a visual treat. This is one of those paintings I would want to visit everytime I could.
After such a blissful few hours, we decided to visit our old friend Notre Dame...until we got there. It is a little hard to tell, but this is a photo of an enormous queue waiting to get into Notre Dame. Notre Dame is free, this queue is here because of the increased security screening now essential to get in anywhere. It was extremely hot, the queue was moving very slowly, so we decided we'd come back in the evening when it was cooler & also open. We went to the Crypt instead, which was stuffy & unpleasant, packed with way too much information to read, but still very interesting.
Enroute home, Jeff revealed that he hadn't been to the Pompidou Centre before, so we decided a trip amidst the pipes was just the thing to do.
Traveling up the escalators in a tube is a buzz & the views out over the city are spectacular. It was very hot however, so we were pleasantly relieved to discover that they have airconditioning at the Pompidou Centre (these people deserve a medal!!) & it was deliciously cool!!
There was a lot of modern art that we enjoyed & there was a lot we didn't! It is always a treat to see artists work 'live', having studied their work from books. There was very little in the way of textiles, but I did enjoy the above cactus made out of doilies. They had obviously been dipped in some sort of resin to hold this shape, but the fact that they were doilies was not lost.
Clothing & shoe sales are ON here in Paris & I thought that I should make an effort to shop. I made it to one clothing store, where there was no aircon & the changing room was so small I had to position myself diagonally across it to be able to try anything on. Everything looked like a sack on me & I was hot & depressed, so decided one shop was enough!! To cheer myself up, I wandered down Rue Rambuteau in search of Pain de Sucre. They are a patisserie & confectionery store that specialises in Guimauve...flavoured marshmallow. I chose a selection to try & my absolute favourite-died-and-gone-to-heaven ones were the chocolate marshmallows dipped in chocolate. Oh my goodness. We need these in Adelaide! The best anti-depressant EVER!
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