Whew! it has been a busy few days and i have to had time to write at all! Lets pick up on Dec. 31 - I started the day out with a visit to the Pompidou Museum, France's biggest modern art museum. The outside of the building is enough to enjoy without even going inside! All of the stairs and escaloators of the building are located on the outside in crazy tunnel tubes, and you take the tubes up to the top (6th) floor and work your way down. Here is a picture of the outsid, but it doesnt really do the experience justice.
(this and more good images at http://www.neurosoftware.ro/programming-blog)
They had an awesome exhibition up that took up two floors, titled elles@centrepompidou. this was a sort of retrospective through their collection of various works done by women in the past century, and there works were grouped into many different themes. There was an interesting mix of sculpture, film, photography, painting, installation art, and some pieces so avant garde I am not even sure how to define them here. I took pictures of some of my favorite works, and will post them later. this computer is too slow.
Also very interesting was a short exhibtion of work done by the American artist Jim Hodges, who uses alot of interesting media in his work, including gold leaf, silver jewelry chain ( to make elaborate spiderwebs) and fake flowers.
Speaking of fake flowers, later that day I found the most magical sewing/craft supply store called La Droguerie located at 11 rue du jour. I waled into the store because I saw skiens (sp?) after skien (or bundle, whatever you call it) of yarn hanging from hooks on the walls lining the entire front hall of the store - any kind of yard you could wish for - mohair, alpaca, etc etc. Tthere were millions of different types of yarn. I went in looking for a new scarf, but what I found was much better - turn the corner and there were all of the sewing notions one could ever wish for! The walls were lined with shelf after shelf of specialty ribbon and trims, jars and jars of buttons and beads, and tons of millinery supplies, from felt bases to feathers! But the best treat of all was the section they had of silk and velvet leaves and flowers! I was in trimming heaven! After hemming and hawing for quite some time over white minature beaded fruit picks and velvet floral stems I was going to get, I was shooed out of the store by my father and brother, who arent as excited as I by little bits and baubles (cant really blame them, I suppose...) Here are some pictures of the shop, you can see some of my floral loot in the front corner!
As we continued to walk though the neighborhood, we made another heavenly shopping discovery - Dehillerin, a HUGE cooking supply store. they had any and everything you could ever want to cook with! Take, for example, their wall of whisks:
The woman next to me was freaking out because they had the smallest melon ballers she had ever seen. (its true, they could scoop a tiny ball the size of a pea!) I was fascinated by all of the differnt molds of chocolates, tarts, and pie crusts, as well as the pastry section, which had close to 1 million different kinds of tips for piping icing and whatnottery. But perhaps the most impressive thing was the wall of copper - what the manager claimed was just a fine selection of all the various copper accoutrmants they carried for cooking:
That one is for you, David Crowl.
Finally, the last magical discovery of the evening was the forum les halles, which from a bit away looks like a futuristic sunken garden:
It is actually a large underground shopping mall, but the parks and gardens above are a pleasure to stroll though. Their is a cute childrens park, and what looked like an old closed putt putt course. Because it is winter and all the plants are dead, parts of the park looked like a secret garden:
All of the ivy winding around the metal arches of similar design gave the park a eerie and awesome feel, and in the background we could see a huge, Gothic style church with a lovely rose window lit up in the background - it was so cool! I am surprised I didnt read about it in any of the many tourbooks I brough with me - it was the best discovery I have made yet!
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