Pompidou

The really unusual Modern Art museum in Paris is kind of a landmark. It's by far the tallest landmark in the Marias, and it's just so fun to look at.

Inside, the building is home to a few things, including the Modern collection. I am hit-or-miss with stuff like this. I either think it's amazingly creative and visionary, or I have my head tilted with my ear on my shoulder, trying to figure out what it might be.

You also get really good city views from the top as you ride the futuristic tubes of the escalators up to the exhibit space.

The whole collection can be seen in a couple of hours (or, at least at my pace) and it covers a whole range of mediums. It's spacious enough so that even if it is crowded inside, it's never too much jostling, and there's always a lot of art students camped out on the floor sketching.

Bateau on the Seine

I do love having company. Aside from the social aspect of re-connecting with old friends, it's great fun for me to take people around town. I feel like an undercover tourist, able to really see the city again through naive tourist eyes. I'm not sick of it yet anyway.

The day was warm and sunny, so we planned to have a picnic on the Champ de Mars, but we were going to get there creatively. We looked at several boat companies and settled on the hop-on, hop-off one so we could get back home eventually.

Well.

It didn't quite work out as smoothly as promised as we ended up waiting for several boats before one would actually let us on, and on the way home, the river was too high to pass under the bridges past the Louvre (but, you know...no announcement, just a bemused curiosity as to whey we got to turn around and do it all over again), so we ended up making another loop around and then having to take the metro home. Anyway...the company was fine, the picnic was good, and the scenery from the back of the boat was as good of a way as any to check out the city on a fine sunny Sunday.

That's the Tour Saint-Jacques. It was part of a church that was destroyed during the revolution, but oddly enough, instead of razing the whole thing in the aftermath, they just left the church steeple as a monument.

One odd thing to see on such a sunny day: jet contrails zig-zagging across the sky. It's usually so cloudy here, you don't see them.

Parisians will sit out by the river and picnic every possible chance they can get.

It's so dreary here for most of the year, it's a real mood lifter, and for days after a sunny weekend, you will see the people of Paris with telltale pink cheeks and odd tan lines.

Pont Alexander is, by far, the most ornate bridge.

Destination picnic!

The lawns around the Eiffel Tower are popular with locals and tourist alike. It's great people watching, and sitting on a blanket with our wine and cutting board of fromage and saucisson sec and good baguette got us in some starring roles of tourist photographs all over the world.

Pantheon

Well, why not, I say, on a recent sunny day. The huge roman senate style building on the hill in the Latin Quarter had yet to be explored. Despite the heavy construction and restoration work on the facade, it's worth a look around.

It used to be a grand church, but was repurposed and is now a grand tomb for the more famous thinkers and leaders of France.

Inside, it's a big, light and airy room, with lots of murals and paintings depicting a rather romanticized version of French history.

While the stairs up to the dome is not as option as the dome is closed for renovation work right now (it is slowly collapsing in on itself, which kind of means the whole structure is a bit of a mess), your only other option is to go down, to the crypt.

I spied a rather interesting painting of Joan...

She dropped her spindle!

That angel should know better than to sneak up on her like that.

Oh, and this is where the original Foucault pendulum was demonstrated...

But alas, no more.

Across the street is an ornate little church- Saint Etienne du Mont. I had barely thrown it a glance before, but decided to have a peek.

It was lovely.

There was a huge chapel tomb and reliquary devoted to St. Genevieve.

Sorry about the blur, but that's totally a piece of human bone in there. I'm always fascinated by these morbid bits of leftover saints, and I seek them out whenever possible. I feel a bit like Norman Bates.

I'm glad I found it: it was completely silent in there, and had some really beautiful details and stained glass throughout.