Translated by SFT
In the
fall of 2010, we met a French cyclist,
Thibaut, in Canada.
For
details, see the article’ Cyclists Never Lonely’ in the link below.
http://mypaper.pchome.com.tw/frontpower/post/1321613286
I also posted an article about helping him to find his bicycle.
http://mypaper.pchome.com.tw/frontpower/post/1322146654
One year
later, we are in France. With Thibaut’s help, his friend let us stay in her
apartment in Paris.
We arrived in Paris in the evening. Looking down from the window,
we saw the downtown area. Many thanks to
Kahina who let us stay in her place;
we have experienced different views in
Paris.
At night, it’s a bright view of all the lights, different from what we usually
see on the road.
After a good night’s rest, we left for Musée
du Louvre (Louvre Museum) and Centre Georges Pompidou (Pompidou Centre) the following morning.
As we rode, we came across a French cyclist. He had once
biking around Europe for 2000km in 2 weeks.
He enthusiastically pedaled ahead to lead us to the entrance of Louvre
Museum. Most French don’t speak English. It’s not easy to find a person who
speaks English and is also willing to show us the way. Thanks to my fellow cyclist, we had a good
first impression of Paris.
After our long bike trip, we were now finally in Paris, the capital of arts.
On the first Sunday of every month, admission to the Louvre Museum, Centre
Georges Pompidou, and the Musée d'Orsay (Orsay Museum) are all free. We really benefited from our good timing. It’s great; we can save some money so that I
don’t have to spend time performing street shows.
Free to enjoy all the wonderful artwork is
surely worth our 23 months’ biking efforts.
So many visitors, the estimated waiting time was 3 hours. However, we only
waited 1 hour. I think it’s because there’s no ticket buying and checking today,
it made the line go faster.
Let’s first check out the French national treasure: Mona Lisa.
I think the Mona
Lisa painting in the bullet-proof glass may not be authentic. Even though flash is not allowed for
picture-taking, but a lot of people would have the flash on by mistake and the
guard won’t be able to stop it in time.
I actually thought about taking a photo of the interesting moment of the
audience eager to take pictures of Mona Lisa, but the guard stopped me from
doing it.
I did not understand what he said first. Then he spoke English to
warn me,
“Painting only, no people!” The purpose is to protect the individual privacy
right, I guess.
In the basement of the art department in the university I studied, there’s one
duplicate of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. I finally witnessed the authentic one
here!
The coronation of Napoleon I as Emperor of the
French
Yi likes this painting very much. She hopes if we have a daughter later, she
would be as adorable as the girl in the painting.
This is an art piece from aboriginal Taiwanese.
Nearly 35,000 objects from prehistory to the 19th century are
exhibited in the Louvre Museum. It will
probably take longer to finish viewing every piece of them than the time we
have spent biking.
We browsed around the Museum from top to bottom floors for
about 4 hours. Then we went to Pompidou Centre, a modern art center, which was once
jokingly called the ‘downtown refinery’ by Parisians.
Sure enough, it’s an astonishing view.
It brings a large number of visitors to Paris every year. It has become an
important art and tourism resource.
Let’s explore the center.
Music scores after cut–and-paste also become an art piece.
This artist must have paid attention to the world news and also cares about
protecting the world.
After viewing the artworks, our confidence level has increased.
Yi has made up
her mind to change her career; she wants to become an artist, too :o)
A very modernized lobby
---to be
continued---
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