By now, all this museum walking is getting tiring. Not tiresome, but tiring. While both Doreen and I walked every day in Houston for exercise, I do not think that we had such endless walking in mind. I think it is good, though, as it helps us work off all the cheese, sausage, and bread that we eat for the bulk of our meals.

On Thursday, a friend of mine, Keith Brouthers, was coming into town for the weekend. He was coming by the apartment to meet us and then go out for dinner and a walk. But first, we had to go to MORE museums.

We took the Metro (The subway) over to the Louvre. This was the first time we used the subway this trip. We felt that it would give us longer staying power around the city. The Paris metro is easy to use, and goes everywhere in town. For us to go to the Louvre (which is about 3 miles away) we did not need to change lines, and it only had about three stops. The ride took about ten minutes, and WOULD have put us right INTO the museum, but I got off a stop early. (This was the Lourve stop, not the Palais Royal/MUSEE Louvre stop. Who was to know? Well, Doreen knew, but she got off anyway. Yipes!) It was a quick walk across the street, and we got in one of the side entrances. This time, we did not have to go through a metal detector, I am not sure why. But we got in, and headed toward the ancient oriental scuptures.

We walked along the Mesopotamian stuff, which included the Code of Hammurabi. It was a large monolith, and not really as impressive as the Rosetta stone. But we saw it, and a bunch of other cool things. We also saw the Capital of Apadana, which is an enormous beam with bull’s heads as the supports. It was from Persia. Seeing all this stuff made me think of the British Museum and the Elgin (AKA Parthenon) Marbles. (There were a few of those here as well, but not as many as Elgin took.) It made me wonder why Iran or these other countries have not been lobbying the French to give back their stuff as the Greeks have been lobbying the British It could be happening, but because I am just unaware of the politics of France, I just don’t know.

We saw a WHOLE BUNCH of little Sphinxes in a number of the different rooms. AND a bunch of mummies, and Egyptian toys, and just about anything else you can imagine from ancient times. They seemed to be fond of Baboons as well. (We have noticed an odd fondness for Baboons and other monkeys in art. Some of them, like the Picasso paintings, and some of the 18^th century French paintings, these monkeys are performing human tasks, Most notably, painting. Go figure.) We saw Baboon figures standing in lines, waiting to be useful in the afterlife.

As we wandered through all this old stuff, we stumbled in to the Greek art section, and saw Venus de Milo. I think that this is like the Mona Lisa – it is a wonderful piece, but no better than several of the other pieces in the same area. It has become a meme for "Great Art" and people must see it. Heck, we knew that WE wanted to see it, so it has affected us as well.

We left the Lourve to head east into the Marais again, this time to the Pomidou Center. It is a BIG square building with the services (Water, heat, electrical) on the OUTSIDE o the structure, color coded for everyone to see. It is not a particularly attractive building, even though Renzo Piano was one of the main architects. It is situated in the neighborhood with a wonderful pond and fountain, and it has the enormous air vents, like the vents on an ocean going ship. The escalators and walkways look like they came from a "Habitrail" hamster house. You really have to see it to believe it, but it was supposed to be the modern art building for Paris.

The lobby of the place was nice, and they had some neat design exhibits on the ground floor. One was a VERY small concept car that looked sort of like the "Smart" car, which is a joint venture between Swatch and Mercedes. But this one had canvas seats, and was able (in various easily changed configurations) to seat five people. I cannot imagine that it would have seated five COMFORTABLY, but it looked like it could seat five people. Another neat thing was a poncho that turned into a two-man tent. What a great idea for camping! No need to bring both a tent and a raincoat.

We made our way up the Habitrail to the top of the building, which afforded a great view of the city. The top floor had only special exhibits and the restaurant, so we went down to the fourth floor (The top floor was six – or US seven. I think that I mentioned before that French floors start a "0: or ground floor, and go up from there. So the first floor is one level above ground level) The fourth floor held really modern art. Video tapes of people complaining, or of a woman conjugating verbs in a VERY nasty voice. ("I’m bored. YOU’RE bored! We are BORED! THIS IS BORING!!!" and so on) There was also some Dadaist stuff, which was cool, and some Man Ray.

The museum really didn’t feel like a nice space, though. It did not pull you through it, or make the path easy and obvious where you should go. I attribute some of that to the curation, though, and not the building. But I tell you, after seeing as many museums as we have seen in the past several days, you start to get a feel for them. I am not sure if the odd flow is what they were looking for, but they certainly achieved it.

Keith came by the apartment about 5:00 PM, and we sat and had wine and cheese. We talked about Paris and art, and Keith told us about what he is collecting these days. We decided to take a walk to the Latin Quarter, and St Germain de Pres, two neighborhoods right on the other side of the Seine.

To get there we walked past Notre Dame, and brought some old bread that we had been saving up to try and feed the birds. The sparrow guy was there, but when I put out my hand with bread, all I got was pigeons. He came over and gave me a handful of rice (uncooked) and told me that rice is what the sparrows prefer. He also showed me that you must keep the pigeons off your hand, or else the sparrows will not come. Amazingly enough, as soon as he opened his hand, sparrows flocked to it. Pigeons did not even try. With MY hand, the pigeons were there immediately, and the sparrow only came reluctantly. The birds KNOW this guy!

We wandered around the city for a couple of hours, and then decided to meet at 9:00 the next morning to go to the Rodin museum.

An interesting development in the search for the Oofs in Buckets today. The owners of the apartment dropped off a list of restaurant recommendations (in French) and while Doreen was glancing through them, she found, the mythical OEUFS au COCOTTE! It was even in a place that was fairly close (Les Fous d’en Face) and they had Blue Cheese Oofs in Buckets. We have not yet seen the place, or ordered these oofs (I think that they are Phoenix or Roc eggs, personally) but we are a step closer.

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