Our Paris Adventure: Day Two (21 October)

The Marais is one of the liveliest places to be on Sundays, when many businesses in other neighbourhoods are closed, but at 10:00 A.M. on a Sunday, even the streets of the Marais are pretty quiet.

There weren't many people out on the streets, and we meandered toward the same place where everyone we saw seemed to be heading--along the way, we passed this very odd throw cushion
and this thoughtful crab, who wondered (over and over) why the sea is blue.
We reached Bastille's iconic roundabout
and the joys of the market lay just beyond. Easily my favourite farmers' market in Paris, a Sunday morning here is full of great people, ambiance, and, of course, food.


Oh, and the market's also a nice spot for seeing quite a few dogs in the crowd, as the locals always seem to bring their dogs along for the shopping trip.



This particular dog
belongs to one of the stallholders, and I got a photo of him lounging on the bolts of fabric his owner was selling last time we were in Paris. This time when I stopped to take his picture, he wandered over and kept bumping his head into Bob's knee until he got a thorough pat. After going up and down the market aisles with the increasing numbers of people, we took our purchases over to our usual post-market eating spot, the tranquil and scenic Promenade Plantée, a landscaped walkway that makes superb use of an old, elevated railway line.
We sat in the hot sunshine (our picnic felt like it was taking place in June instead of October), nibbling at our market delights and feeling slightly guilty as a steady stream of joggers eyed our food on their way past.
After lunch, we decided to head out to Paris's southeastern suburbs to check out a relatively new museum that's only been open for two years, MAC/VAL. The first sign that you're not just in the tower-block suburbs is the roundabout in front of the museum, which contains Jean Dubuffet's striking piece, Chaufferie avec cheminée (Boiler with Chimney):
I love the name of the museum bookshop: Bookstorming.
We sat for a while in the back garden,
which contained several odd installations,
which (in true Paris form)
smoked!
The collection was interesting--this room was filled with computer screens whose faces initiated conversations with you as soon as you sat down. This extremely involved installation filled a large room with its strange mixture of robotics and childsized figures. When all the pieces moved at the same time, the nodding heads, swinging arms, neon wiring, and pulsing robot made for a very odd experience.
Franck Scurti's warped signs made me smile; they presented a new perspective on some of the most common signs around Paris (for example, the blue one is for public-transportation tickets and the red one is for cigarettes). When was the last time a visit to an art gallery had you running back and forth across a room with a group of people, laughing and staring at yourself on a projection screen? Well, Bob and I did just that in Shilpa Gupta's ingenious interactive installation room. In the beginning, the screen only showed our outlines, but as soon as we stood still for a short amount of time, wires appeared from above and a continuous stream of junk slowly slid down the wires, joining onto our bodies. I'm standing third from the left, and Bob is second from the right here:
Once some detritus fell on you, the only way to get rid of it was to overlap your shadow with someone else's and linger for long enough for the garbage to transfer. Bob's now at the far right, trying to shake off his garbage, while I'm just left of him, standing still, taking photos (hence the large amount of stuff "stuck" to me):
Eventually, all of the shadows start to overlap and the entire screen fills to the top with garbage and goes black. Then the game starts all over again with just people's silhouettes.
It was great fun and had everyone laughing and talking to each other--some of us in worse French than others ;-). Back in the centre of the city, we crossed over the finally scaffolding-free Pont Neuf, which had been undergoing restoration on both of our previous visits. A gorgeous bridge whose numerous rounded balconies contain seating for sunny days or moonlit nights, its newly lightened colour glowed in the autumn afternoon:
After a bit more wandering, we stopped here
for some delicious coffee
and a lovely view of Saint Eustache Cathedral.

We walked up lively, tempting Rue Montorgueil, which is filled with foodie delights,

including Stroher, one of the city's most famous patisseries. The jewel of their current window display was this wonderfully kitschy rugby cake:
Everyone's an artisan in Paris!
Even dogs occupy themselves with noble pursuits:
After a full day of wandering, we met Christina and Rachel back at Christina's place and headed out for dinner at Le Potager du Marais, an organic vegetarian restaurant (not easy to come by in Paris). Although the photos of my other courses didn't turn out so well, here's a snap of my delicious creamy dessert, fromage blanc avec miel (white cheese with honey):
As promised yesterday, here's a pic of true world traveller Rachel:
Just to let you know how cute and narrow the restaurant is, I took this photo while sitting with my back against one wall of the dining room and the glass behind Bob and Rachel marks the opposite wall! After dinner, the three of us (Rachel decided to head back) went to check out some late-night art at the Palais de Tokyo. Along the way, we passed this striking plaque commemorating 3000 metro employees who courageously went on strike during the city's Nazi occupation, contributing to the eventual liberation of the city (and country) nine days later on 25 August 1944.
Once again above ground, the Eiffel Tower was at its nightime best, albeit with the strange (to me, at least) addition of an illuminated rugby ball cradled in its base:
The contemporary art, anything-goes Palais de Tokyo has always been a favourite of ours, but I suppose that the fact that it covers such a wide array of contemporary art meant that at some point its tastes and ours would diverge, and, well, tonight marked that point! The normally expansive gallery spaces had been broken up into much smaller spaces and although the exhibit's title, The Third Mind,
promised an exploration of thought processes beyond the linear and the expected, most of what was on display was shudderingly bad, in my humble opinion. Two artists were exceptions for me: the first was Toba Khedoori, whose enormous wax-covered paintings depict cold renditions of objects without any sense of scale or context. As I peered at both paintings, searching for some familiar ground, even the splits in the paper ensured that I left the room without any sense of totality or stability. When I looked up her name back in London, I learned that, like Sarah Sze, Khedoori received a MacArthur "genius" grant for her focus on the everyday (although in a very different way than Sze!):

The second artist who held my attention was Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, whose series Wartesäle (Waiting Rooms) chronicles more than ninety Swiss railway waiting rooms around the country. Every morning he travelled to a new station to paint, producing this series of simple images devoid of people or activity, filled instead with a sense of being suspended in some eerie transition point. I liked his paintings as much for what they showed as for what they didn't show.
On our way back home from the Metro station, we passed this shop window, full of just the kind of knick knacks that I love.
We're still living a relatively minimal existance in London, with nothing on the walls and paper being our only clutter, and every once in a while I begin to remember all the stuff we have in storage back in Vancouver--it's going to be like the biggest Christmas ever when we unpack and rediscover all the things we have!