Another beautiful day in the neighborhoods

Okay, so I did Notre Dame first, because it was right there and the crowd for the interior wasn't too bad. Not only was there a charge for the towers but the line was truly ridiculous, out and around the square. It may be worth it, but I didn't care enough to wait/pay.

And Sainte-Chapelle is amazing, or I imagine it would be without the 10 million tourists and with the west doors closed (so that the light only cae from the stained glass). It's free for art history and architecture students, but they require something that says your name and program. The ticket lady took my word because my IDs don't list the progam.

Standing at the end of the Place Dauphine, square on the Ile de la Cite, I watched a group of men play water polo in the Seine using a life saver hanging off the side of a boat as the goal. This was not to be the only time I was to witness potential bowel diseases originate today. At the Musee Picasso (page is in French, but there are pictures), a father watched and took pictures as a pidgeon walked through his absent daughter's salad (she didn't want it anyway) picking out the shrimp. Then the furious mom and upset little girl came back with a tirade of (I think) Spanish. Then the mom fed the little girl the salad. Wholly unsanitary, that.

Now I'm going to go off on Picasso with the caveat that I know nothing about the man's life or philosophy, really, this is all my impression: Production does not equal thought, though it can be an aid to thought, alonJungianan lines, but I didn't see that sort of exploration in Picasso's work. Could he have reduced the multiple women in his life any further? They are nothing but tiny heads, spherical breasts, swollen bellies (if pregnant: 4 children by 3 different women; two wives, two mistresses, one of which was 17 to his 46 which I have a HUGE problem with), and gaping holes for sexual organs. I understand that he was deliberately reducing life to bits and pieces, but he would have found a way to depict the love he had for these women if it existed beyond sexual obsession, which I doubt. There's one room where it seemed you had to sleep with him to get him to paint your portrait, which, I know isn't true. Alright, I'm done.

The Musee Arts et Metiers is not what I was expecting. Arts and Crafts to me mean something different. This is a museum to the industrial revolution, not to William Morris, et al, so I was only marginally interested in the content, unfortunately.