Barcelona - Gaudi Day continued

Aquainting ourselves with yet another Barcelona hill/mountain, we rode the metro (and had to walk a mile uphill) to Gaudi's Parc Guell. Fun park, way too crowded with tourists though - clambering over the hills was delightful. got to leave the paved paths a little into mini-sneak through woods paths... refreshing to feel somewhat away from the city. only could get away from the scottish boys singing the beatles for a little while though. Great views of that hill and last night's glowing church again, and Norman Foster's sattelite tower. Another fantastic Gecko in the park... the crowds really did take a lot of the wonder out of it, i think i would have been more spacially impressed without masses of people in the way.

Casa Mila was the next Gaudi find, first tour i've done an audio tour with - don't quite like it. I read too much faster then I hear, and it made me miss most of a fantastic sunset on this crazy roof of the building. Also was quite propagandized by the audio and swelling music - yuck. crazy roof though, was crazy... everything had the functions though - these are the ubiquitous chimney pots, done up lovely-like... they're about 8 feet tall... inside was cool, murals, openish floor plan cool... hmm was seriously so annoyed by the talk over that i don't remember being very positive about it while i was there, though in memory the spaces seem cool. i will opt to not listen next time i have the option i think. Also was quite tired at this point 6,7 o'clockish.... this trip was a ton of walking.

Saw the Casa Batallo just down the street - crazy monkey skull railings and a fairy-tale sparkling facade, all we got to see of it. long subway transfer, but we got close to the train in enough time to peek into the church of Santa Maria del Mar - so refreshing - a Gothic church structurally without all the decorations - very solomn and grand without the distracting frillies. Also picked up a bottle for cava for the uneventful ride home... made for a pleasant start and a good sleep home :). Yay Barcelona!

ha missing big picture overview.... will add shortly

Barcelona - Day 2

So - Sagrada Familia was as mind-blowing as promised - not nearly as done as expected, but a beautiful piece of work already containing more effort then most other buildings i've seen -
huge towers that everyone knows were less exciting because of it, but the sculptures around the opening were quite nice, told the Nativity story with more expressive emotions in them all then i've seen. the addition of geckos was also key.

inside was a bit of a wonderful mess with scaffolding all over - no idea what the ceiling of the nave is like... but the entire transept is nothing but wonderful. sunburst corduroy texture concrete shaping roof above multiple rose windows (bare now, i dont think they'll be quite as good with stained glass, but still cool) and a nearly-literal forest of columns ending at more concrete oculi suns... awesome to see it less then half-done.

the glory facade with sculptures in a half-cubist style was more intriguing to me then the other - simpler and less gothic, more effective inho... previous picture from there. the brass doorways were inspiring - made me want to try that kind of collage/scuplture.

climbed the steps up the front facade - highly recommended, the lift would be so much less interesting, and there's stops to rest and look around the city pretty frequently. the sun came out while we were up there, cool, and seeing the detailed decorations close up was unbeatable.

ok, done with that.... walk to the miro museum copied the triumphal walk to the pavillion last night, being able to see the gardens in the sun was very lovely (i feel like i'm running out of positive descriptors...) and that museum was fantastic in every way the picasso was not. go there first, or only.... great overview of modern art with most major movements well represented with prime famous pieces, and then miro is much more impressive then i knew. the building was also lovely, the white curves and sun and city view.... wee... picture is with a miro sculpture.

Barcelona Evening one

Hmm continuing walk here... castle at the top turned out to be a modernist restaurant, with a gorgeous view over the nighttime city.

We got lost after this and took off on a road at the elevation of the restaurant that ran along the coast - SO beautiful. dusk/dark sky that was actually a purple-red due to the city, contrasted with wild lush vegetation (lit very well by street lights) and then the sea... it felt like it could have been hawaii. we weren't really in a tourist area at that point, just a sidewalk beside a highway, and eventually the wonder wore off and we realized we were in no way going the correct direction. headed through a scary freeway tunnel through the mountain, 18 inch sidewalks, but it turned out well.

we had to head out of the park into the city to get our bearings, walked through some 'real' barcelona neighborhoods, which was nice. Not so preserved-touristy, still very much a metropolis, 7 or 8 story apartment blocks or buildings.

The approach to the Barcelona was more... impressive then I anticipated. the current Museum of National Catalan Art was obviously an old palace with a huge street promenade with fountains aiming up a huge waterfalled and fountained and gardened hill to the vision of glory itself on top, complete with spotlight-ray halo. was a little over the top, actually.

we were treated to a enormous fountain light&music show on the way up, would have been better had it not been wonderful American music being played - Destiny's Child was not what i wanted to hear at a glorious Spanish monument... the barcelona pavillion was off to the side, we got there 20 minutes before close (our adventure had taken awhile). It was Mies, very spacially interesting although simpler then I had anticipated. Courtyard with statue and reflective water and marble lovely, homey meis chairs.... felt like being back at crown, with more expensive stone. good to have seen.

obliged to finish the walk up the hill to the palace/museum, rewarded with a different glorious view of the city. a glowing church seeming to float on the top of a distant hill was enchanting.

um - long walk home, half sketchy though cheap and volumous meal with good sangria, saw the Placa Reial with it's yuppy-ish bars (apparently was the place where Columbus met his king with the news of america). walked around a lot looking for a bar with the right ambiance, the one we found ended up being just a block from our hostel. very chill, sweet eclectic decorations, and excellent cava (spanish sparkling wine) cocktails. then to bed :)

pic is of sagrada familia.... and i'll tell about that in the next post, or rearrange them so this works. don't want to put too many pictures/posts in to keep loading times down, don't want to have so solid of text blocks... oops too late...

Barcelona Day One

Well, initially getting into Barcelona was less fun then it should have been. Due to a crappy train station error, my ticket was for the wrong day, so i had to buy a new one while on the train, and only got half of that money back. frustrating. And the train was 5 hours late getting in, due to a huge snowstorm that apparently just stopped everything in southern france. meh.

First stop picasso museum... because it was raining and we wanted to not be outside. got quite intriguingly lost on the way... didn't realize how small it was and how not-far distances on the map were, we made it across the old downtown to the Ramblas before figuring out where we were. Had to buy shoes on sale, happy cool real leather euro shoes, cheap :P. Wandered path the main Barcelona cathethdral on the way, had to go it. It was cool - in the cloister there was a large courtyard with palms trees and geese - very lush, intriguing with the frilly gothic architecture. otherwise, another gothic church, and the steps up to the top were closed due to the rain. meh. but we saw plenty of amazing views over the city later on - i don't think we missed too much.

cool interior market with sweet arcing metal and wood structure - much smell of fish and meat, probably 15 each of fruit stalls, fish stalls, butcher stalls, and food/salad stalls.

The Picasso museum (now third stop) was something of a letdown - covered his developement very well, and just when you're expecting it to open up and give you a huge outpouring of his real work.... it's over. i don't think they had enough money to buy any pieces of importance, or many from even the time of his importance. And the explanation given with the exhibits meshed poorly with the work shown, and didn't give you any sense of his place in art history or reference works you might have known... eh. i'd go to the miro museum over this one, and i'll check out the picasso museum here - apparently it had a larger collection. The bottom of the houses were sweet arched bricks - i would just visit that and skip the museum - and check my bags in the free luggage check before heading out elsewhere ;).

decided to find a place to stay - the hostel we had picked out right by the Arc d'Triumph turned out to be closed, we wondered the old streets where we had seen a few hostels, picked one called Hostel New York. It was fine, unremarkable (although we did get a good breakfast), fifth 10-foot story - sigh. double room for 30euros though, cheep. on our wanderings we went through an amazing park and saw the Parc de la Ciutadella with it's oversized folly monument - all the tropical plants were soothing after austere Paris. very nice spaces.

So - decided the walk wouldn't be too long to the Barcelona Pavillion from the hostel.... but... got a little lost. fun walk along the sea shore, really developed, large swooping/jumpy structure/sculpture impressive. Got to a large hill we assumed was the park on the map, and of course had to climb it to the tantalizing castle-thing on the top.... the hill we climbed is the one in the picture - this is about 3/4 of the way there from the hostel - i guess we're really used to walking by now, it didn't seem too far at all

Barcelona - in summary/list

Barcelona was great! fun to be in a new location, appartently 'vibrant' is the impression everyone takes away from it, so i'll be repetitious and say that it was indeed vibrant, and colorful, and beautiful, and a very fun town.
it's about time for class already, so i'll just post this until i can write up more... simply a list of what sara and i did from noon saturday until 8pm sunday... hehe we did end up fitting a lot in...

I took a fairly huge number of pictures, some really good, a lot marred by cloudy weather - couldn't choose just one for now, so this is a painting miro did of barcelona, i believe from where the current back facade of the sagrada familia is... it did a good job of capturing the impression the city left with me, even in dreary January weather.



Barcelona:

Train
Big Street
Wandering little streets to Las Ramblas
Shoes
Picasso Museum
Hostel One - Parc de la Ciutadella
Hostel Two - New York on Carera d'En Gignas
Aborted walk to Barcelona Pavillion
-Arcing Statue-sculpture
-walk up hill - Jardins de Miramar
-Getting lost in tropical wonderfulness overlooking Mediteranean
-walking under tunnel
-indian quarter
Placa de l'Univers
Water Fountain Show
Barcelona Pavillion
MNAC castle
long walk back - food
Placa Reial
Milk
sleep

Trip to Picasso Museum 2
Sagrada Familia
Stair Climb
Placa de l'Univers 2
Jardins de Joan Maragall
Fundacio Joan Miro
Funicular down
Parc Guell
"forest wandering"
Le Pedrera (Casa Mila)
Casa Batallo
Endless subway transfer
Englesia de Santa Maria del Mar
wine shop
Train 

Presentation and Spain!

This was the map I presented today for our communist party walk - it's quite disconnected from the actual district, but that's something i wanted to achieve, along with a less cluttered look then my other maps and the idea of a 1 to 1 scale map and a few others from lectures and readings. anyway, i thought the image stylish enough to post: the picture is originally from my trip with shane out to the rocky mountain national park. i'm leaving for barcelona on a hotel-train at 8:30 tonight, doing laundry and hopefully the church of Saint-Denis first... should be very fun. Looking forward to a lot of Gaudi, the Barcelona Pavillion, Picasso Museum, and absorbing the Spanish atmosphere on the Ramblas and beach. And warmth! predicted to be about 55 (and drizzly, but hopefully that part is lying...) not tropical, but it's been hovering around freezing here and you start to feel it after hours outside. Wee! Back on Monday morning.

Musee d'Orsay

 


oo great evening tonight at the Musee d'Orsay - a converted train station that houses primarily and almost exclusively mid 18th century artists to Impressionists. Amazing quality collection, there was almost more things I had seen in pictures there then pieces I hadn't. I was blown away most especially by the Degas pastels, but there were the Monet chapel studies, and 2 van gohe self-portraits and his room and a few others that i felt were almost better, and cezanne and pissaro and and and.... it was spectacular to be able to see the originals, still looking (in some cases) glossy with wet oil - much more vibrant then pictures. I was suprised by how much I liked some of the work by the Naturalists and Symbolists, art movements I hadn't given much thought to...

also they had a splendid collection of art nuevou environments, fun to get to walk through whole spaces rather then just look at museum pieces - I greatly admire the artistry of the pieces, but feel more firmly now that i wouldn't want them in my house - something about the dark-nature vining takeover implications bothers me. I still adore the Makintosh roses, though, and maybe as a wall piece in the style could be fun.

I loved the way they had converted the station, instead of cramped little drywalled rooms they allowed the scale to stay large, and the walls were faced/created with natural rough-cut ?limestone or marble?. also in other places worked polished concrete - the subtle variations in the walls really made the pieces feel less... artificially placed i think. The main promonade was a little postmodern pastiche - corny imitation column heads and angles, but the elaborate steel rivitted structure poking out pretty much made up for it. 

Wednesday Fin.

 



the rest of the walk was fun, paled in comparison however. started right by my hostel from the first day, apparently the area was quite a bit more seedy then i had realized... the walk was focused on the Canal d'ouroc (although the path wound really far away and back to it a few times) and then ended at the Parc de La Villette. Saw a few exciting Renzo Piano buildings and some fantastic converted warehouses - the neighborhood again was a little more one of immigrants and many housing projects. Not the burning ones, just highrises in town taking over a formerly industrial neighborhood. charming Russian Orthodox church on it's own little hill, oddly placed behind other buildings, access through a gate - completely different world with plants and a little plaza and near-silence. Felt like a piece of the steppe. no access to the chapel, but by peeking in a crack we saw a fresco painter at work.

was a LOT of walking, was very tired by the time we got to the park - a greek sandwich revived me much however. the Parc didn't impress me as much as it maybe should have - the large red follies didn't seem playful enough, but so it goes. the lack of crowds probably had something to do with it - felt like an abandoned six flags with the attractions reduced in scale. impression gradually changed as we walked though it - maybe it's something to visit in the spring. the sunset was gorgeous...

(this is tony's picture, my camera was being finicky with the cold... i pointed out the sunset, although the particular cloud that would have made this picture even better was missing...)

posting this on thursday (i'm finally caught up!), this morning i bought hotel-train tickets to barcelona for tomorrow until sunday :) tonight i'm going to try to get out of studio at 5 or 6 to see the Musee d'Orsay: it's open late on thursdays and is supposed to be full of Impressionist/turn of the century paintings... excited :) 

Wednesday Communist II

 


Emboldened by playing trotsky in front of the revolution, we wandered the rest of the floor. In a sublimely deep/shallow conversation it was noted "It would be great to see those shapes on the roof..." "Well there's the stairs...." hehe so Tony and I snuck up to the roof of the Communist Headquarters. The stairs ended on the top (7th) floor... but there was a convenient sign pointing to the terrace... universal word there. tiny cool cement winding staircase brought us up to a fantastic view of Paris and sculptural-abstract concrete um...forms. quite giddy to be up there, no real cameras on us. Spent quite a bit of time looking around and climbing up and around the mountains, snuck down completely intact and with no one the wiser.... 

Wednesday - Communists!

 


class at 10, more interesting urban exploration lecture, sent out into the recently updated 19th arrondisement.

first (and most excitingly) we walked to the Communist Party Headquarters by Oscar Niemeyer (Brasilia architect). we were told to not expect to get inside, but when we got there it was completely open. scary-dramatic entrance, ground raises up almost to the underside of the office block but then the stairs take you down a story and in being compressed by a big canopy (that visually hangs only a few feet above ground level). Spaceship-smooth glass sliding doors into a put-put green carpeted underground area, indirect lighting along the walls and some natural from the plaza above, sculptural board-formed concrete... tres cool. No evident party demarcations, we very easily could have been in a generic office.

Photomontage wall, and non-english speaking people at the desk. tony's french managed to get across that we just wanted to look around, and they were ok with that. they opened up the dome-meeting room for us - more spaceship doors, into an even more spaceship-like space. It was truely a dome, and explained the odd white plaster hill outside - it was the top of this room. the walls had a continuous covering of hanging aluminum strips to diffuse light and for acoustic purposes that lent a shimery-futuristic feel to the space along with the rounded portal-doors and ?one-way mirrors? on the other side. I had to feel a part of the communist action, so pic is of me in the party line... hard to tell the scale, there was probably 150 fixed seats at tables in low-slope ampitheater style around the front.

I might have to open a photo-sharing site to put more pictures up - getting too close to the 1000 words a few pictures could have replaced... 

More Tuesday Morning

 


hmm also saw the madeline - a ginormous Greek Temple reproduction. Kind of silly in France, they hadn't done much to change the design at all, it was just big (huge!) and greek...shrug. Also found my way back to St. Augustin, got to see in in the sunshine, more wonderful stained glass, and this one had a lot of frescos. I almost like the frescos better the carvings all over - much more restrained and just as effective. and they were old but half-refinished, even better. Sat in the church for awhile (conveniently over a heater vent); it has been bitter cold since sunday.

did find the skate shop on the way home - but it was closed, and no rollerblades. I'm dying to have blades here, my jaw drops in envy every time i see someone with them. have found a few stores that have them online now, and will get them when i have more funds i think.... wee rollerblades :) and on suday i saw a rally and it was hmm envy-making :) it will be fun...

and the rest of the day was studio and posting 

Tuesday the 24th... kind of ramble-y

 


Most of today's excitement came in the morning - the rest was spent in studio working and producing the majority of this blog so far....

so, in the morning i set out with a mission to find a skate shop i had seen saturday evening walking around. was HARD to find a specific little store from memories of a time when i was already a little lost.... so went more monument-hopping, it was in the opera area, but i had kind of missed the other highlights in the area. So when I couldn't find the shop quickly, I headed down a street (maybe for two blocks, things here are rediculously packed together) to see the Vendome column.

I've been reading Seven Ages of Paris by Alistair Horne - a very excellent book, and it's exciting to read about things you've walked past in the very recent past, or know you can get to with all sorts of historical knowledge. On Friday night reading by the Pompidou, I was reading that a king had been assasinated... just to the east of the present Pompidou... pretty much where I was sitting. fun stuff like that. Anyway, the Vendome palace just kept popping up, so I was glad to see it.

Although... it wasn't that special, just a huge column in a plaza. Apparently the column was made from about 1300 Prussian cannons Napolean captured and melted down... you'd think i'd post a picture, but that was just a column. So this is from that plaza, they were doing restoration work on one of the facades. French construction is not as annoying as American though (although the jackhammers outside our window at 8 in the morning better stop soon, and it's concievable they will, they look almost done...), they do a great job putting attractive scaffolding up and covering it with tarps so it looks more like an art statement or even a new, modern facade. Or, in special instances, like this morning, and at the national galleries, they'll cover an area with fresh yellow pine boards - incredibly attractive :). So the picture is of that piece of French wonderfulness instead. although the column picture also had a gorgeous sky, it was a beautiful morning.... 

14th District Walk

 



Ah the futility - we only are going on four tour walks as a class, and the one today basically retraced our footsteps from last sunday. oh well, so it goes, it was interesting to see again, with a little more commentary on what we were seeing. also saw yet another corbusier building lol, a little place called the Maison Planiex on a very large road. it was kind of cool to see a buuilding that looked like it was from the 30s or 40s without being overly restored - it wasn't all that white anymore... saw the Cite de Refuge again, and the BNF at dusk and evening. Scary event - the sunken forest absolutely filled with ?sparrows? after dusk - a seriously gross number of birds flocked in there. and i like birds, alot. these were enough to sag the branches, and they kept flying across our sites for 4 or 5 minutes to keep settling (there were groundskeepers trying to shoo them away) very creepy "the birds"-like moment. 

Corbusier Sunday Part 2

 


Also saw the Maison de Brasil by Corb and Louis Costa on this campus. Headed out through an amazingly pleasant park, lots of sunday strollers, down some quaint streets to find the Ozenfant studio (by Corb). Could only see the outside, still very pleasant. Could tell it was an earlier work. Backtracked to walk up a main boulevard, all the way from the farther 16th to almost the center of the city - briefly stopped into the Paris Pantheon (Parthenon?) and saw the Bibleotheque St. Geniveve from the outside. We were hurrying to catch this play our teacher had recommended, when we decided we wouldn't make it we headed instead to the National Gallery, intending to see the last day of the Gustav Klimt exhibition... that planned scrapped due to 3-hour lines, we headed to the Pompidou Center to see the Charlotte Perriand (worked with Corbusier doing much of his fabled furniture) exhibit.

The walk there was great - went through the Tuillerie (my new favorite french word to say) garden. stopped in the huge plaza Concorde with the egyptian obelisk - more impressive then I expected, the gold pyramid on the top was very effective. The lights all came on at once as we were admiring, fantastic moment. then through the louvre courtyard to the river, abandoned the normal sidewalk to walk right by the water on the lower level. Kind of got trapped on the outside of the road by the river, had to sprint across to get back up to the normal street level, but that walk was fantastic - dusk, lights, water, hmm way to fast traffic... :) the picture isn't the best but it was one of the best parts of the day. 

Corbusier Sunday - Swiss Pavillion

 


Another sunny day to go building-hunting. Our first stop at the Maison Roche was thwarted when we found the Fondation Le Corbusier was closed on Sundays, of course. Will probably be a weekday morning thing later, maybe next week. We walked around that quiet district for awhile, shipped off to the Cite University to see the two buildings there. ..... 

Villa Savoye, La Defense, Evening

 


Ok one more post for this day - this isn't the picture i'll use, but it's a placeholder for now, i would like to write about more days :) 

Villa Savoye -2

 


My camera died while I was walking around, very disappointing, so I'll just post sketches instead. It's a very kinetic building, I wanted to keep walking up and down the ramp indefinately, fantastic shifting space. the wierd scupltures on the top are very hollow and light on the other side, meant to reflect into sunbathing and roof garden spaces, so they have a definate purpose and aren't as random as they look in the pictures. again, I'm not feeling literary enough to describe it further right now - definately something to experience in person.

lots of pictures online too if you feel like looking 

Saturday, Jan 21 - Villa Savoye!!!

two plans for saturday - the sunny day plan, and the cloudy-day plan. it was sunny.... so.... out to the suburbs to see the 'countryside' villa savoye by le corbusier. it's another architecture student thing, but this house was amazing... i think everyone should go to it and be astounded by the perfection modern architecture can bring to a living environment. I actually do feel rather polemical about it - this house was a joy to walk through. hmm more later 

Friday Jan 20 - chill

finished off tours in the morning, free louvre friday night with tony - many more sculptures, greek artifacts, french painters - i think i will go every friday night i'm here, it's very worth it. and saves eight euros fee.... after that we did the 'reading in a paris cafe on a rainy night' very parisian.... haha guess what i had to drink.... mmmm.... more cloves in the vin chaud this time, and stuck in the orange so uncultured me couldn't eat it.... very nice chill day.

the cafe we were in had a fully sheltered overhang with clear plastic windows, but had gas warmers like this picture - common here, very picturesque, and makes it very nice to eat outside. 

18th District - more

Barbes, Le Gotte d'Or, and Chateau Rouge were the last three neighborhoods. We actually split the walk into two parts and did the last two Thursday morning. Barbes was yet another fabric district - blocks and blocks of winding street with bolts of fabric, inside and out. The other two were more immigrant districts, with Le Gotte d'Or being Algerians, and Chateau Rouge other Africans. They weren't tourist districts, more just places for people to live, a little run down, but lots of markets and street shops. A few cool modern and new buildings in Chateau Rouge - saw probably the only empty lot in Paris there :). Tried some baclava and a wierd orange funnel-cakish thing at a bakery - the baklava was exceptional, don't be tempted by the apparent orange sugary goodness though.... it tasted of sweet'n'sour chicken breading, solidified. 

18th District - Pigalle

Haha - Pigalle is the sex district of Paris. Garish neon lights all up and down the street for the "Sexodrome" and multiple shops and cabarets, and of course the Moulin Rouge (which is suprisingly tiny)..... was more funny, and a little sad, during the day. Really does get mentioned all the time in tourist books, etc. A little bigger then i expected, about 4 full blocks on both sides of the street, funny when you turn the corner off and it's just little normal shops - a lot of people just going around their everyday business here too.

Went back on this Saturday evening, just for kicks - even more lights, but the wares were not as conspicously on display as we thought they might be - only caught 4 streetwalkers, possibly more (we weren't looking for groups with guys at first) um... yeah. kinda funny. plus i like this picture - shrug. 

18th District - Monmartre

Monmartre is really the tourist district - "old preserved village Paris" and it's really pretty well done, the souveneir shops and caricature vendors are pretty distracting, but it's a charming place. It was a huge place for artists for a long time, and a lot of their cabarets are around here. Hmm - more later, i'm feeling ambivilant about presenting this one right now. 

Thur Jan 19 - 18th District Walking

Today was fun - early class, presenting maps, another fabulous lecture on urban wandering as an art form with Fluxus, land art, and urban interventions. We were then sent out to explore the different neighborhoods in the 18th district.

Paris is divided into districts, and I keep referring to them - they spiral clockwise around from the louvre in number, and are just a handy way to say were something is. sized so they're significant to walk through, if you were driving you might think they were absurdly small. Paris really isn't very big. i'm living in the 9th district, in the southwest corner so i'm very close to bother the 2nd and 1st and 10th, but the 18th and 8th also border it.

Picture is from Sacre-Coeur - again - i might not go up there again for awhile. 

Wednesday, Jan 18 - not so boring

actually, i did do something today (this is me, posting this all on tuesday the 24th and trying to remember what i did and occasionally slip into typing in present tense..... ha) after studio i walked around Monmarte and Sacre-Couer with Sara looking for a place to eat. Found one in the really touristy square that had quieted down for the night, and ate mussels and fries. the mussels were awesome - much better then i even expected them to be, but i tried them out of adventuresomeness - i need to stop that kind of when referring to culinary things, i get some wierd bad stuff sometimes... but this was a happy experiment. good wine too, but the fries were a bizzare addition to the mussels - really felt like they wanted a salad to break up the heavy protein seafood.

this sketch is from sacre-coeur on my second or third day here, forgot to post it earlier and we were right there again anyway....

so wednesday really wasn't totally boring :). 

Wednesday, Jan 18 - boring

so - today was boring, all studio. this is the map i presented from the passages, it's quite big in person (they have a beamer=projector) to display these with, so we can keep things digital.

so instead i will tell you about our fantastic kitchen. see, it's just a little shed hanging out our windows, with only a stovetop, no microwave or oven. and the roof has a problem with excessive heat bridging, seeing as it's simply a system of plastic panels, with sheet metal attatments. so: one, it's cold in there two, it condenses in there, foggy in the morning three, we try to boil things on the stove and it starts raining due to the combination. wee! raining kitchen!

(it does get better when it's a little warmer out and we have both windows in there open. and we love the view. but... it's pretty inconvenient)

hmm i will post about Thomas, our vagrant, and our washing machine on another boring day. 

Tuesday, Jan 17

wandered the 8th district again in the morning looking for english bookstores - a good few were closed, a few more were apparently nonexistant, we finally found a great one though, so many cool books, much better then a barnes&noble or borders - but english books in france are quite expensive, so we didn't end up getting anything anyway.

studio was neat - all our classes are basically aiming towards the same goal, so i'll probably say studio for every day of class - excellent lecture by ann attali, whose profession is 'urban exploration' through walking. her talk was about flaneurs and situationists - stuff i've studied before, but it was great to have a rehash, and she is an excellent lecturer.

she usually leads walking tours, but she's currently 7 months pregnant, so she went through all the passages with us and sent us on our way, prepared with rather sketchy maps and her verbal description.

our walk was through all the passages (french pronounciation) that apparently riddle the buildings of Paris. They were built around the 1850s as a new way to shop (and stay off Paris's open-sewer streets) and are basically glass-roofed alleyways that became very elegant with store fronts and cafes. we went through passages in a variety of conditions, kind of run down to fabulous elaborate ones nearer the louvre and then out further to some more commercial once in the fabric district, and a final one nearly exclusively full of indian restaurants. The first one actually comes out 50 feet from our front door, and we had taken it home the night before, not knowing that the tour would take us back down it. They were kind of sad places where they weren't vigorously kept up (it was a cloudy day, probably helped) with a lot of antiques and oddities being sold in them.

Probably the most interesting part was getting really lost outside the passages and wandering around Les Halles (lay all if you hear it pronounced) and discovering St. Eustache, a most impressive church. We bought pans for our kitchen finally in the last passage and had a good indian meal. The walk home was a little sketchy, the people in this area were definately in more of a hurry and possibly just less prosperous - our area is friendlier. 

Monday, Jan 16 - Classes

no martin luther king, jr. holiday for private college students, so classes started today. at 1 though, so tony and i headed to the 6th for art supplies in the morning. the sennelier store we wanted to get to (they are the best manufacturer of watercolor paints and pastels, and put out sweet notebooks) was closed, as apparently nearly everything is on monday mornings. kind of neat that everyone just takes it easy, unless you're trying to accomplish something. had a back-up in mind though, so we wandered around the district, walked through the Luxembourg Gardens (so formal! but beautiful already, will go back in spring to see the gorgeousness) and then to a drool-worthy art store. dropped a fair amount of money on school and sketching supplies - ink, some fantastic sketchbooks, and pencils and pens. hopefully will use up most of the sketchbooks - tis a goal.

class was disappointing, instead of the 4-day weeks we were promised in the states we have class from 2-6 mon-friday. quite cuts down on the travel time anticipated, and i'll say less then more about it and see how the semester plays out. hopefully randy is not as hardcore as he is trying to appear right now, we're here to STUDY ARCHITECTURE by experiencing the variety of it there is here, not make a building down to the last detail, which is what he says he wants us to do. we can do that easily in the states - this is not third year.

anyway, after studio went down the street a bit to the opera and sketched - playing with new ink and sketchbook. fun, turned out pretty well i thought. frilly building, awful colors of pastel marble in the sun, rather fun at night though.