I can't believe it, I've already been in the city for five days! It feels like no time and like forever, all at once. It's crazy!
Today, as planned, I went to the Musée du Quai Branly to see the Indiens des Plaines exhibition. And maybe I went a bit crazy because I took pictures of every artwork in the way that they were arranged. I just know that I'm going to end up writing something about this in the future and so it's better to have more photos than less. The exhibition was huge. It took me just under two hours to go through it even though there only four parts. The shoes in today's cover photo are from the exhibition! Bitching, no? There were over 200 art and ethnographic objects from collections around the world.
I have to say that aside from the Musée d'Orsay, today was probably my favorite activity! I was at the museum for six hours - it takes a long time to see. After I went through the Indiens des Plaines exhibition, I took a break and went to the Café Branly. The service was absolutely horrid. It took forever to get a table, my waiter took 15 minutes to come and take my order and almost 20 minutes to bring me my bill. I would recommend eating around the museum rather than at it. It's right next to the Eiffel Tower so there are lots of little cafés around!
After lunch, I visited the permanent collection, which was great. The museum really made use of its nook and cranny spaces in great ways. One of my favorite things is that you can see the museum's storage (or at least some of it - I assume they have more/an offsite somewhere) as you're walking around the exhibition in a dark, circular glass case that goes right up to the top floor. It reminds me of the MET's open storage a little bit.
Interspersed with the permanent collection, there were three temporary exhibitions. I didn't go visit the Tiki exhibition, but I did go see the Vietnam Women's propaganda exhibition and the tattoo exhibit. I have to say that I was impressed with neither. The Vietnam exhibition was too small to really be effective - there were barely any contextualizing labels, and the labels themselves looked like they were really cheap, which was odd compared to the glossy rest of the museum.
As for the tattoo exhibition, a year ago I would have been really impressed and I would have learned a lot. But the other Master's student being supervised by my supervisor is writing his thesis about Inuit tattooing and so I've learned a lot from him over the year. As such, I knew most of the information in the exhibition now and the examples of tattoos that they showed were far from spectacular. The only section that I really enjoyed was on the carnival/freak show. The rest was mediocre, but if you know nothing about tattooing, this is probably a good introduction for you and I'm sure you'll feel differently about it than I do!
Since Quai Branly is literally the next door neighbor of the Eiffel Tower, I decided that I had to go see it. I was kind of remiss that I was going to be in Paris and I would see it from afar. I didn't go up the tower because a) so many stairs and how about no after my Arc de Triomphe debacle and b) I was getting nauseous just looking at how high up the observation deck was, so actually going up there was a no-no. But I did get my stereotypical Eiffel Tower shot, so here you go:
I took the bus home for the first time! I had avoided the bus because it scared me (I generally prefer undergrounds in unfamiliar cities when they're available because it's easier/faster to correct a navigational mistake) but my feet were killing me and I didn't want to take a cab all the way back to the 9e arrondissment. It just so happened that there was a "La Halle" about two doors down from the stop. I'd wanted to go to the one near Grands Boulevards but I haven't taken that Metro since the first day I got here and so I wasn't going to go out of my way to go back. I'm so glad that I got to go in today though. I got like six things and it only cost me 38 Euros. I actually asked the girl if she had said that correctly because I was so shocked. I haven't spent under 100 Euros in a shop so far (oops), so this was a total steal, omg!
Tomorrow's going to be a relaxing day! I'm having a girls' brunch with Lucile and her twin sister & friends and if I have time I'm going to Notre Dame, so expect a tame day on the blog, but that's good because it's Stylish Sunday! Check back for this week's shop!
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