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Welcome to Day 3 of my trip to Paris! Let me start off this entry with the following:

WARNING! The following journal entry contains pictures of (gasp!) boobies and hoo-hoo dillys. Also known as chesticles and beavers, or melons and cooters… if you get my drift. Paris is chock-o-block full of nude images. You can’t avoid it. They’re on billboards, television, and statues mounted on every corner. Paris is a place for artists, and they celebrate the beauty of the human body (yay!). If you completely obtuse and do not appreciate the splendor of a beautiful naked woman (or man), then turn away… this blog (and pretty much all the blogs yet to come on this trip) are NOT for you. Hell, PARIS isn’t really for you. And if this note does in fact, turn you away, why did you get to know me in the first place? I mean, it’s pretty obvious that I like dirty pillows and bearded clams…

ANYWAY… let’s get down to business!

Saturday morning we hopped on the Metro (read: subway) and headed towards the Champ de Mars and the Eiffel Tower. Now many tomes have been written about the history, symbolism, and magnificence of the tower, so I won’t bore you with a rundown here (what? you don’t know? Try wikipedia). We came out of the subway on the northwest end of the Champ de Mars where the tower was instantly revealed upon passing around the corner at the Trocadero. The most surprising thing to me was its size. Standing at over 1,000 ft tall, it is much larger than you might anticipate (especially if you think the “eiffel tower” in Vegas is big). What didn’t surprise me were the gypsies selling their trinkets (you can see them behind me). These guys seem to be all over Europe peddling junk. What amuses me is they don’t speak French, much less English, but they DO speak Euros Oh, and the giant balloon thing in the middle of the tower is a Rugby Ball. France is hosting the World Rugby tournament this week (and apparently doing quite well – the giant television mounted on the tower said France beat Ireland 25 to 3 the night before).

Next we took a leisurely stroll down the Champ de Mars and under the tower. I love the diversity of people in Paris. Where else can you find armed guards carrying machine guns right next to men dressed in pink riding Segways? I didn’t bother to go up the tower itself. The lines were WAY too long.

At the other end of the Champ de Mars, we came upon this scene. My parents informed me that there is ALWAYS some sort of festival, rally, or protest going on somewhere in Paris. This one was apparently some celebration of handicapped atheletes, which I found ironic because the stage was set out in the dirt and the plastic casing protecting the wires running from the stage to the sound box created an impenetrable barrier for wheelchairs. No wonder there weren’t many people there…

After a brief stop at a nearby cafe (we’re in Paris… of COURSE we stopped at a cafe), we wandered over to the Hôtel National des Invalides and the Dome Church. The Hôtel National des Invalides was originally a hospital built by Louis XIV to house wounded veterans. It is now the site of the magnificent Army Museum and the Dome Church (the churchy-looking building with the golden dome). The Church is the burial site of Napoleon. He rests inside five successive coffins (tin, mahogany, lead, lead, and ebony) which are set inside a single carved block of Finnish red porphyry (the outer sarcophagus). The Army Museum sits behind the church and it is HUGE. It has displays covering the entire French history of military combat from the middle ages through the second world war. We didn’t have time to do it all, so I chose the medieval section. They had a buttloadious-quantiferous plenitude of arms and armor. I’ve pictured a few of them here.

RIGHT next door to the Army Museum is the excellent Rodin Museum which houses Rodin’s world famous “The Thinker” among many other splendid works. I snapped a picture of The Thinker just as a pigeon was taking off from his head. I also did the obligatory “thinker pose” at the base of the statue.

The museum is set in the gardens and home that made up Rodin’s original estate. Many of his greatest works are sprinkled all over the gardens. The two coolest ones (and his most arduous undertakings) were the Gates of Hell (I’m hitchhiking – funny eh?) and the Burghers of Calais The story behind each sculpture is quite interesting. Click the links to learn more (wikipedia).

Alright! Now it’s time for the moment you’ve all been waiting for… images of funbags and poontang! Seriously, Rodin was a master at realizing the intricacies of the human body. I’ve posted a few of my favorites here. They are in order: Iris, Messenger of the Gods, Eternal Idol, and Eternal Springtime. One thought that occurred to me was that Rodin chose nebulous names for his more sensual pieces. It’s obvious to me that he appreciated sex, romance, and hot naked chicks as much as the next guy, but since most of his work was commissioned for public display, he had to avoid criticism from his patrons and uptight audience members by giving the sculptures “moral” names and associating them with biblical passages. It’s okay Rodin, your secret is safe with me.

By the time we were done with the Rodin Museum it was getting late, so we hopped on the Metro and went home. When we arrived, my parents then took me to the local market area to show me what grocery shopping in Paris is like. It’s quite different. There’s a store for meat, a store for poultry, a store for bread, a store for desserts, etc. It was very interesting, but I failed to bring my camera along. I’m sure we’ll go again, so I’ll snap some pictures then. Tomorrow we head to the Centre Pompidou. Tune in for my musings on the best of Parisian modern art!

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