No, I didn’t take a picture of this painting. It’s Le Cirque by Georges Seurat, housed in the Musee d’Orsay, and unfortunately you’re not allowed to take pictures anywhere in the museum. It’s a shame too, because it’s probably one of my favorite places so far. For one, the museum is known for it’s collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, so I got to see more Monet, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, Renoir, and Seurat. Le Cirque was probably my favorite of all the paintings we saw today. It was cool too to see Van Gogh’s self portrait, as well as his paintings of Auvers-sur-Oise, which we got to visit last week.
The best part of the museum though was their exposition on Crime and Punishment. It was very well done and very interesting. There were lots of just crazy paintings, including a Picasso, which was awesome. There was also an authentic guillotine, which was really crazy to see. There were a lot of drawings and sculptures of severed heads as well, which I guess in France were not so uncommon to see.
We also went to the catacombs today, which was cool, but kind of long and repetitive. I guess if you’ve seen one wall of bones, you’ve seen them all. The entrance to the catacombs says something to the effect of “You are now entering the kingdom of death.” You have to walk down a very long, dark tunnel to finally get to where the bones are. You have about twenty minutes of walking to build up anticipation and get creeped out by the fact that some spots in the tunnel are barely lit at all. It’s pretty creepy how there were so many that they could just line the walls with them. There was also one area where the skulls had been arranged in the wall in a heart shape. Kind of out of place, haha.
I was working on a blog yesterday, but firefox was kind enough to reset itself as I tried to post it. So here’s a recap of the past few days, since evidently I don’t update enough =P
Yesterday, we started off at the Pantheon, which is where France’s national heroes are laid to rest. We got to see the likes of Voltaire, Pierre and Marie Curie, Louis Braille, Emile Zola, Alexandre Dumas, and Victor Hugo.
One of the main reasons that we decided to go there was to see Jean Moulin, who was probably the second most famous member of the resistance in France during WWII. There were lots of red, white, and blue flowers on his grave, and they had it blocked to where we couldn’t go into the actual room where he was.
We are fortunate enough to be in France on some major anniversaries, the first being the 70th anniversary of the Fall of France, which obviously is not really celebrated, but second, the 70th anniversary of the Call of June 18th. Since we don’t really talk about it in American history classes, the Call of June 18th was a radio call made by Charles de Gaulle (leader of the resistance in WWII and one of France’s most famous Presidents) from London after the fall of France in 1940. He told the French to continue fighting, to resist the Germans. It’s a very big deal in French history, and it’s cool to be here during the anniversary.
In the spirit of this, we went to a light and sound show at the Invalides last night. It started at 10 and the only thing that we could see/hear was a national band playing patriotic songs. Evidently we left right before everything started… It was pretty cold last night though, and it’s been cold all day today too for that matter.
We also checked out the Pere LaChaise cemetery yesterday. It was the biggest cemetery I’ve ever seen. Wikipedia says that it’s 118 acres, and I believe it. It has cobblestone streets (which are no fun to walk on btw) and road names. It is also home to some famous graves. The first we saw was for Chopin, which was amazing to me that the grave of one of the world’s most famous composers is just sitting in the middle of this public cemetery. It was one of the more elaborate graves, and had a ton of flowers, which someone was tending to when we were there.
The next one we saw was for Jim Morrison, which was pretty hard to find since it’s closely surrounded by graves on all four sides. It was a simple grave, but there were also lots of flowers, some vinyl records and a few empty beer bottles neatly set inside of it.
We saw Edith Piaf, a very famous French singer, the movie La Vie en Rose that came out with Marion Cotillard not too long ago is about her life. Her grave was a little disappointing to be honest. It was shared with 5 other people in her family. There wasn’t really anything that stood out about it.
Our final stop, which was my favorite, was the grave of Oscar Wilde. First of all, it’s massive, and is sculpted and inscribed with short biography about him. The coolest thing about it though, is that it’s tradition for fans who make the pilgrimage there often kiss his grave. So his grave is covered in lipstick. I thought about kissing it for about 2.5, at least until I actually saw how many people have kissed it. There’s almost nowhere left, unless you bring a footstool with you. There’s a sign about not defacing the grave, but it looks like they don’t really enforce that, or make any attempt to clean it off. People have written notes to Oscar Wilde on it, or put their favorite quotes from him. It was really awesome to check out.
I think that’s good for tonight, especially since my computer is close to the end of its life. Good night all!
