Ahhh, return to Pareeee

French Lands
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After a much delayed flight (2 hours) We arrived in sunny, beautiful, flowery and green Paris, to the upliftment (it's a word!!!)of my soul. We went to Soraya's place (a women we met through couchsurfing 2 years ago and have maintained contact with, and so we stayed with her again) and Amandine was waiting for us (Soraya's 14 year old daughter) to give us a key, but had to go back to school so we took the metro to Montmartre and went into Sacre-Coeur for a while. The Tourist season isn't yet in full swing so it was only moderately busy, not as bone-crushing as it could be.

Scott at Sacre-coeur
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We walked around Montmartre, feeling familiar and happy, and again found the Dali museum, featuring rare prints, drawing and watercolours of bible,greek mythology, Alice in wonderland and other illustrations. It's a great museum, curatorially speaking. It has dark walls and there is music, very ambient.

For dinner we got to see all our "Paris family" Soraya, Amandine and Cassiopee(8)  and spent the evening talking and catching up. They were a lot harder on Scott about his french this time and spent the entire trip making him try to speak french. He did very well under the pressure, I'm glad to report.

The CA-TA-COMBSSSSSSSSS
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On Tuesday/Mardi we went to the CATACOMBS (oooooooohhhhh!) with a girl from Kelowna, Shannon, whom we met last summer at Duotone and kept penpal-ing. The catacombs were long, cool, dark and full of bones, pretty intense really. Oh, and if you ever go, make sure you pee beforehand because there are NO BATHROOMS in the tunnels!! okay? just a warning.  There are, however, a lot of stairs to get in and out and strange drips coming from the ceiling "plink" "plonk".

We had a lovely baguette, cheese and wine picnic on the Seine, enjoying the sun and light breeze, drinking wine out of the bottle (Hey, it Europe!). That evening we went to see STARS!! but we missed it. Scheisse! We thought the doors were open at 730 so we tried to arrive at 8 but Soraya had to get home from work, eat, take Cassia to a friends house and we arrived around 9, thinking they would still be on and we would have only missed the first songs. Nope. Nadasurf (headliners) were already on! Oh well, good thing we watched stars a couple of weeks ago! We went to the front and found there were a lot of teenagers there, which seems weird as it was a bar. But this was definitly more "concert" than "bar show" ie: the early start time, the grouchy people who were very pushy about their place (instead of just 'going with the flow' as I've noticed in hamburg shows), the 'encore' that became like a second set

us with Soraya
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Wednesday we went to the Cartier Foundation for contemporary art, and the Paris MOMA (Museum of modern art) which has FREE access to their permanent collection- which is pretty huge, especially for free. I guess the city owns it and they keep it running by charging for the temp exhibits. Anyway, very excellent permanent collection, very satisfying. Especially after the very small (but very good) Cartier museum that cost 4.50Euro!

Thursday we saw MOOORREE AAAARRTTTT

Went to the Pompidou Center where, we were dismayed to find out, the permanent collection is closed!!!! We saw it last time we were in Paris but Scott has studied a lot more Art History since then and I've learned a lot more about art and artists and was really looking forward to re-exploring their excellent collection! Oh well, they had a number of Temporary exhibits on that we checked out with Shannon. Some videos, a big thing about LA art which was pretty interesting, and then a regular sprinkling of painting,photos, sculptures etc. For the afternoon, Scott and I got severely lost and had to make our way home without discovering what we planned to discover.

Us with Shannon in front of St. Michel's Fountain
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Friday we discovered that which we seeked (that has got to be an improper verb conjugation-WHERE'S MY BESCHERELLE????) on Thursday (and wed, tues mon) FINALLY. And deeply disappointingly. It was supposed to be a gallery with a sound installation exhibit... it wasn't. It was a gallery with sound-related art. Very different. So there were some collages made from album covers and such, a drum with mirror where the skin should be. Pretty sad really, after so much effort to find it. Oh well, we continued on and found a lot of commercial galleries to look in and some really cool shops and things. We spent all day just wandering around Paris, bobbing in and out of shops and galleries. And it was so hot out we bought ICE CREAM!!!!

Scott Mange un sculpture.
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That night we had a little dance party with the girls which was very fun, these girls are much better dancers than me!

Then, it was the end of our trip flight on saturday. Tah-Dah