After another late night, we slept in. Dmitriy went for a jog and as much as I wanted to, I knew the day held a lot of museum walking, so I just stayed in bed. We decided to take a free day, where we would each go our seperate ways. I was on a mission to find the ever elusive photography and go museum hunting. I grabbed a quick breakfast and bounced over to Musee D' Orsay. The entry was quick and painless and I was walking around in no time. Musee Dorsay is a overhauled train station turned museum. It contains impressionist art, sculptures, neo impressionist and symbolism (and some lame photography). Overall this place is a must see, not too big, took about 4 hours to walk it and do the audio tour on most stuff. It contains works of Monet, Van Gogh and other famous artists. Walking all the collections, it was really interesting to see the evolution of art, how artists evolved their works when they came into contact with other regions, cultures or other peoples art. I really like this kind of stuff and while I am the furthest thing from an expert (understatement of the century), I really enjoyed seeing the evolution to impressionist arts, as they stopped painting "stuff", apple, face, scene and moved to capturing the feeling, emotion, vibe, etc. To me along with Dali's style (forget what its called), this is my favorite. You get self portraits by guys like Van Gogh that reveal how he saw himself and other people, not physically, but psychologically. Interesting thing about Vincent VG is that he committed suicide at 37, (he went crazy), but lived another 24-48 hours as the local doctors didnt know how to treat that. That sucks! Either way, as you would imagine, the most talented people are also the most disturbed, they see the world from a different angle, I think I can really relate to these people, not as much the talent, but as a view of the world, the talent part still eludes me :) Other interesting works was a guy who lived at Pigale and worked at Moulin Rouge, his paintings were of the visitors, and the working girls from the brothels, I thought it was interesting art to say the least. (not talking about nudity, just raw personalities). A painting that drew a lot of interest and crowds was of a womans vagina, not your typical semi covered or out of the way vagina, but the center of the focus. Interestingly the painting was called The origin of the universe (or something like that), the artistic depiction and story of the painting were fascinating and further goes to show how open and understanding this region was to art.
After D'orsay, I went on a hunt for the photo museum and after travelling to St. Paul metro, finally found it. It almost felt like somebodys house, three story house with a bunch of photos. Not as impressive as I would like, it was good, but not incredible. Should have gone to the Louvre!
After that museum, I met up w/ Dmitriy at the hotel and we decided to go on a hunt for Absinthe (thepsychedelic liquor that was outlawed and now is a mere shadow of itself), we found a bar on google in some odd neighborhood and set out to check it out. We decided to get dinner at our favorite region @ Straussberg, this time instead of a falafel we decided to duck down the shady alley and hit some middle eastern cuisine. It was darker outside, so this time we were seriously harassed to go in and eat by the Indian fellowes. We decided to go into the first inidian joint in the shady alley. The experience was fascinating, we were blown away by the food and hospitality and then set out to drink the green stuff.
After roaming around looking for the place, we finally found it, busy bar in a side neighborhood of Paris. The menu had like 10 absinthes on it and we just started pounding them one by one. The experience is not quite psychadelic, but different then alcohol, we had a good time there, then set back out to go home. In this bar, they pour the absinthe in a cup, then put a sugar cube on a metal sift, then put a device that drips ice cold water over the ice cube until the cube melts. In Cafe Intermezzo (Atlanta) they give you a shot, and hot water over the ice cube and my cousin was saying that you actually pour the absinthe over the sugar cube, then light it on fire. I guess whats really missing is the real absinthe!!!
(Come back for Pictures, they are coming when I return home)
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