Tuesday, 1/13/09

View of the Eiffel Tower:

At 2:30 I went to the metro station we were supposed to meet at. I was in the same train car as Melissa and Elizabeth, which was lucky because the meeting place had been changed to the Palais du Tokyo and I hadn’t known. We met Vincent and Koyel at the Palais, which is a museum of contemporary art and actually has nothing to do with Tokyo. Then we walked around outside the museum and across a bridge that had a great view of the Eiffel Tower, in order to take in the Musée Quai Branly, a museum of African, Asian, and Oceanic arts. Vincent explained the ideas behind its bizarre modern architecture, for example the large ascending spiral that is meant to detach people from their normal life and prepare them for the museum. Another example is the long glass wall in front of the building, designed to be both a sound barrier and a means of placing the museum in continuity with its surroundings.

The Musée Quai Branly:

Later we went through the Franco-Russian quarter and some other very pretty neighborhoods and on to the Ecole Militaire near the Eiffel Tower. We saw some really remarkable architecture on the way, such as a house that an architect designed for himself and covered in sexual references just for amusement. We finished the visit in the Champs de Mars (the park next to the Eiffel Tower), where we learned the history of the tower, and that it was saved for scientific purposes. I really loved just walking around Paris! Everywhere I went, even when I was walking by myself in my free time, there was something interesting to look at! No part of this city is boring.

A.G.

Architecture we saw on the tour: