A Day of Parisian Culture Followed by a Night on The Streets

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Had a comfortable night’s sleep. It got a bit cold and since I no longer had a sleeping bag, I ended up requisitioning an SNCF blanket from the first class carriages. No where near as good as my sleeping bag, but it did the trick.

When we arrived in Paris, the Australian guy then off to meet some friends, leaving the English guy and I to check out some more of Paris. First stop was the Louvre. The queue was huge, but we eventually got it. I was to be very disappointed. Like the galleries in Florence it was just full of religious art. Baby Jesus, dying Jesus, dead Jesus, the Mona Lisa, Baby Jesus, etc. De Vinci’s masterpiece did look a little out of place.

The Louvre is so huge that you could walk round it for days, but we’d soon had enough and decided to head for the Pompidou centre. This was much more our cup of tea. There was an exhibition on ‘Metro-art’ and another on architecture. Not a cross is sight. The architecture exhibition didn’t feature much in the way of 60’s and 70’s office buildings either. We spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening there, looking round and watching the street performers.

We headed to the Gar du Nord to catch the late train to Calais. Alas, the late train to Calais was not as late as we had expected and was long gone. We settled down with a load of other inter-railers to sleep in the station, but come about two o’clock we all got kicked out into the street. The fact that I was using an SNCF blanket to keep warm didn’t help in my negotiations with the security guard.

In the street, along the front of the station, there were a mixture of inter-railers, down-and-outs and drunks. Things were about as low as they could get, but at least I would be home soon.

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Photos

Pompidou Centre
Pompidou Centre building

Pompidou Centre
Pompidou Centre artistic fountains

Steet Performers
Pompidou Centre street performers