(see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
Our last day in Paris was Monday. A lot of museums and other attractions tend to be closed on Mondays, so we saved this day to go see the Picasso Museum which we knew would be open. I discovered my interest in Picasso when Jen and I saw an exhibition of his work at the museum in Madrid this past summer, so I was really interested to see this museum in Paris. We got there a bit later than planned... it took us a while to get ready, packed, and checked out of our room, but we got to have a couple hours in the museum (it's a small one). It was neat seeing not only his paintings, but also a lot of his sculpture and even pottery! I didn't realize he had such a broad range to his art. When we first started looking Zach commented that he didn't really care for Picasso that much... however by the time we'd seen most of the work he changed his mind, agreeing with me that all Picasso's stuff is just so interesting and intriguing... I guess with most normal paintings you know where the inspiration came from, you know what the original image was, and how the painter came to form that image in his mind. With Picasso's art... you just have no clue where it comes from. I just wonder what the process was behind each creation. Then you see some of the pictures of Picasso himself, and you just gotta wonder what it would have been like to know the guy... certainly seemed like a character.
I also found it amusing that the museum itself seemed almost like a work of abstract art-- there were no maps or plans, you just walked from room to room in what seemed like a random fashion, going up and down stairs, never really sure where you are or how much you've seen. Kinda interesting.
After the museum we grabbed a bit to eat at a sidewalk cafe, in this adorable little area of town with all these cute shops. I joked with Zach that he'd planned to take us there only when we had limited time before having to catch our train back home that afternoon! ; ) We kept on walking and ended up at the Place des Vosges, which has a big courtyard in the middle that's a small park, and all around are shops and tiny art galleries. It was pretty cute, but I was so exhausted by the entire weekend by then that I didn't enjoy it as much as I might have otherwise. Oh well, soon enough it was time to get our bags from the hotel and head back to Gare de Lyon to catch our train back to Geneva.
Getting home took kind of a while, as once we got into Geneva there was a huge bottleneck to get through customs (where all they do is wave you through anyway) and then we had to wait for the bus to take us to our house... We found out that there's another stop on the train ride in from France that's just on the other side of the border, about 20 minutes drive from where we live, that has free parking at the station so we might take the train from there instead next time.
Anyway, so that was our trip. It's interesting, in some ways Paris didn't impress me quite as I expected it to... but in others it was absolutely fabulous. I guess I've already gotten used to "small town living" here and Paris just seems like such a HUGE city in comparison. A bunch of Zach's coworkers will be in Paris in June, I think, to do some follow-up work with L'Oreal, we may go back for a weekend to meet up with them. I look forward to getting to explore the city more, having gotten the touristy stuff out of the way.
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