Today's
will be a short entry. Up before dawn to
get ready for 6:45 a.m. departure from the hotel.
Had a special van take the group to St. Pancras Stations where we
boarded an 8:30 Eurostar for Paris. The
ride takes 2 1/2 hours and is completely un-remarkable. You pass nothing but flat uninteresting landscape. Not at all what i'd imagined it to look like.
Immediately upon arrival the group headed off
to the Clignancourt 'flea' market (really an antique market) to explore. Ferris
and I instead continued with the bus that carried our luggage to our new hotel, Les Jardins du Marais, put a few
items down and caught the Metro to the Institut du Monde Arabe to see the last
day of a special exhibition of Zaha Hadid architecture. I must say that by the time we arrived we
were pretty tired and hungry but we stuck it out, even spending quite a long time viewing the permanent collection.
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| Les Jardins du Marais |
I was
interested to see more examples of Hadid's designs having toured her
BMW plant in Leipzig Germany several years ago with SITE Santa Fe and having been bowled over by
both the beauty and intelligence of its design.
However we both decided after seeing this Paris exhibit (housed inside her own specially designed exhibition 'pod') that we are not quite modern
enough to live inside one of her biomorphically shaped apartments. Ferris told me that many years ago she turned down an
opportunity to live inside one of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes and we
both think this experience would be somewhat similar. Besides, where would you be able to hang art
on completely curved, rhomboidal walls?
Finally at 4 pm we staggered
across the street to a brasserie and had poulet roti (French comfort food) for
what ended up being a combo lunch/dinner. Returned to the hotel to undo all the packing
we'd done last night.
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| Hotel Lobby |
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| Hotel Lobby |
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