30 April Louvre and Moulin Rouge
I wonder if I meet more new people travelling alone than others do travelling together?
And why do people live their lives looking at the screen on their camera instead of looking at the real thing.
Started the day with a free ride on the Metro as the gate on line 11 at Republique station as broken.
Lonley Planet had told me how to avoid the queue at Louvre by buying a ticket from the shopping mall on Rue de Rivoli which is where the exit from the station is. Got even better because as I joined the queue a Canadian women said her friend couldn't join her and she now wanted to sell the 2 tickets she had just bought. - so no queuing at all to get into Louvre apart from 2 or 3 minutes at the security check. The person next to me in the queue who bought the other ticket was an Australian who was meeting his son later in the day at Louvre but starting earlier. Oddly we arrived at the cafe together and shared a table.
I got hopelessly lost in the Louvre three times. The first was when I arrived before i got my bearings and was able to follow the guide map. The second was looking for Venus de Milo (who should be Aphrodite de Melos) and the third was looking for the way out. I have to say I was underwhelmed by Mona Lisa. I nice portrait but I can't see why it rates so much more attention than a half a dozen other paintings in Louvre that I found equally fascinating. The painting I liked most was one of an infant John the Baptist meeting Mary and Jesus. Silly of me I know but I can't remember who the artist was - clearly I should have been like the most of the other people and photographing everything so I could look back and tell you. I'm writing this offline so I can't use google to get the answer either.
Lets just leave it at saying I spent 7 hours at Louvre and felt I could have used 3 or 4 more constructively.As I said i took no photos - there are heaps of books full of photos far, far better than anything I will take. I indulged in the odd bit of people watching. Several interesting types.
1) Walk along looking at their phone/camera that is looking at the pictures - why not just look at them on the Internet?
2) the time takers - they would spend quite a bit of time looking at a picture usually back a little distance so they could take it all in. Actually I found in some places this was impossible as there was light reflecting off the painting and you had to move around to see some bits at all - not what I would have expected from a world class art gallery.
3) The technocrats. The would like closely at details in the paintings from close up. Some of these even took close up photographs of small parts
4) The sheep - lead by a tour guide who pushed them in front of paintings then waved their flag as they lead the sheep to the next. I found many of the guides extremely rude and they would just push in front of me and others as we looked at a painting or piece of sculpture. I don't see why trying to do all of Paris in 1 day gives them the right to interfere with others who paid to be there.
5) The Been There Done Thaters. This involves taking a selfie or getting your friend to take a picture of you in front of the work - that sometime I don't think they even looked at.
Also peeved off by the number of people ignoring the no flash signs. This was especially so with Mona Lisa that is glass covered and every flash reflected off the glass.
Rant over.
I dashed back to Place de Republique and tried to sort out issues with the phone. It is sending and receiving txts from Orange France numbers but the txt I sent to a shop person who wasn't on Orange didn't arrive and nor did his txt to me. I'm sorry if your receive txts at nasty times from me. It isn't that I'm sending them then - It is just that they are getting held up for hours somewhere. Alss discovered this morning that the phone has gone anonymous internet on me which is preventing me logging on to the blog and also the phone isn't working as a hotspot properly. No DNS when I connect my laptop.
Then once more on the Metro to Moulin Rouge. The dinner was ordinary - I went with the basic menu - but well presented. Certainly over priced at 80 euros. The show was fantastic. and I don't regret the money spent. Lovely girls, good music, good dancing and some great comedy routines as well. There was a woman who climbed in a pool with snakes and danced in the water with them draped around her, three male acrobats that did a comedy number that involved falling over every few seconds - the final fall was with all three standing on top of one another reaching the ceiling then just falling forward and rolling at the last second, a magician who didn't take it seriously but did great sleight of hand while pretending he was making mistakes, and a pair of roller skaters on a circular platform 3 or 4 metres diameter and did the most amazing spins with him holding, or not holding her, in the most precarious positions. I don't know how they could stand up straight at the end of it.
I Wasn't feeling tired during the day so I thought I was over jet lag and didn't take a sleeping pill. Bad decision as I woke up at 3 am.
And why do people live their lives looking at the screen on their camera instead of looking at the real thing.
Started the day with a free ride on the Metro as the gate on line 11 at Republique station as broken.
Lonley Planet had told me how to avoid the queue at Louvre by buying a ticket from the shopping mall on Rue de Rivoli which is where the exit from the station is. Got even better because as I joined the queue a Canadian women said her friend couldn't join her and she now wanted to sell the 2 tickets she had just bought. - so no queuing at all to get into Louvre apart from 2 or 3 minutes at the security check. The person next to me in the queue who bought the other ticket was an Australian who was meeting his son later in the day at Louvre but starting earlier. Oddly we arrived at the cafe together and shared a table.
I got hopelessly lost in the Louvre three times. The first was when I arrived before i got my bearings and was able to follow the guide map. The second was looking for Venus de Milo (who should be Aphrodite de Melos) and the third was looking for the way out. I have to say I was underwhelmed by Mona Lisa. I nice portrait but I can't see why it rates so much more attention than a half a dozen other paintings in Louvre that I found equally fascinating. The painting I liked most was one of an infant John the Baptist meeting Mary and Jesus. Silly of me I know but I can't remember who the artist was - clearly I should have been like the most of the other people and photographing everything so I could look back and tell you. I'm writing this offline so I can't use google to get the answer either.
Lets just leave it at saying I spent 7 hours at Louvre and felt I could have used 3 or 4 more constructively.As I said i took no photos - there are heaps of books full of photos far, far better than anything I will take. I indulged in the odd bit of people watching. Several interesting types.
1) Walk along looking at their phone/camera that is looking at the pictures - why not just look at them on the Internet?
2) the time takers - they would spend quite a bit of time looking at a picture usually back a little distance so they could take it all in. Actually I found in some places this was impossible as there was light reflecting off the painting and you had to move around to see some bits at all - not what I would have expected from a world class art gallery.
3) The technocrats. The would like closely at details in the paintings from close up. Some of these even took close up photographs of small parts
4) The sheep - lead by a tour guide who pushed them in front of paintings then waved their flag as they lead the sheep to the next. I found many of the guides extremely rude and they would just push in front of me and others as we looked at a painting or piece of sculpture. I don't see why trying to do all of Paris in 1 day gives them the right to interfere with others who paid to be there.
5) The Been There Done Thaters. This involves taking a selfie or getting your friend to take a picture of you in front of the work - that sometime I don't think they even looked at.
Also peeved off by the number of people ignoring the no flash signs. This was especially so with Mona Lisa that is glass covered and every flash reflected off the glass.
Rant over.
I dashed back to Place de Republique and tried to sort out issues with the phone. It is sending and receiving txts from Orange France numbers but the txt I sent to a shop person who wasn't on Orange didn't arrive and nor did his txt to me. I'm sorry if your receive txts at nasty times from me. It isn't that I'm sending them then - It is just that they are getting held up for hours somewhere. Alss discovered this morning that the phone has gone anonymous internet on me which is preventing me logging on to the blog and also the phone isn't working as a hotspot properly. No DNS when I connect my laptop.
Then once more on the Metro to Moulin Rouge. The dinner was ordinary - I went with the basic menu - but well presented. Certainly over priced at 80 euros. The show was fantastic. and I don't regret the money spent. Lovely girls, good music, good dancing and some great comedy routines as well. There was a woman who climbed in a pool with snakes and danced in the water with them draped around her, three male acrobats that did a comedy number that involved falling over every few seconds - the final fall was with all three standing on top of one another reaching the ceiling then just falling forward and rolling at the last second, a magician who didn't take it seriously but did great sleight of hand while pretending he was making mistakes, and a pair of roller skaters on a circular platform 3 or 4 metres diameter and did the most amazing spins with him holding, or not holding her, in the most precarious positions. I don't know how they could stand up straight at the end of it.
I Wasn't feeling tired during the day so I thought I was over jet lag and didn't take a sleeping pill. Bad decision as I woke up at 3 am.
1 May - to Orleans via Gien
Not my best day. Found Gare de l'Est no trouble but took ages finding Europcar within it. Then had trouble starting the car. Finally got out of the park 5 floors down with a couple of stalls - haven't driven a manual for a few years. The car has a navigation system which is a big plus. The big minus was it kept trying to take to places where the roads were blocked for 1 May. Then met up with a demonstration along the left bank of the Seine. It would tell me there was a traffic jam, direct me around 3 sides of a block to arrive back just as the march got to that corner. Finally I ignored and drove about 5 blocks away from the river. Next thing I know I get directed to the roundabout at Arc de Triomphe. Fortunately the traffic there was very light.
I had about half an hours walk in the forest - very lovely in spring and got back to the car just as the rain started.
The trip to Gien followed 4 lane limited access roads as far as Etambes and then went onto D roads. The first thing that struck me was the absence of fences, power wires etc. Just fields up to the road side. Towards Pithiviers the road had fences and a lot of them poorly maintained. What really struck me was the absence of anything alive. I saw maybe 3 or 4 crows but no sheep, cows, goats, rabbits etc and there wasn't ant roadkill on the roads.
I was having a lot of trouble with judging where the right hand side of the car was sitting on the left and a couple of times hit kerbs or got off the edge of the road. Then coming into Gien I hit the mirror on another car that didn't fold away and scratched ride down the side of the car - and I didn't take out the full collision waiver for another 300 Euro so now I am up for up to 850 Euro for repair.
To make matters really good near Sully-sur-Loire the gendarmerie stopped me because I was weaving -(I had realised it was that bad) and had me blow in the bag. Once they discovered I was sober and just having problems getting used to being on the wrong side on narrow roads they were very nice. I wonder where the 3 were off to together.
The reason I went via Gien was to drive through the Foret d'Orlean. It is really pretty and lots of signs warning about deer on the roads -that I never saw. Given how badly the edge of the road is marked and the absence of reflectors except on the worst corners I wouldn't want to drive around there at night. The other plus of 1 May is very few trucks on the road. Tomorrows driving will no doubt be harder.
A thought on using tourism as an excuse for opening shops on public holidays. Paris, and almost all of France was closed today (1 du Mai). I went past dozens of villages and most of them were shut for the day. In Gien there seemed to be a few pubs open and there was some major gathering on the river bank.
I am staying at a cheap hotel in an industrial area 10km out of Orleans. About to go hunting McDonalds. I wonder if the drive through will speak English?
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