Tlatloc

 

First day of school was yesterday, it was a really tough day. We like, had to attend one unit launch, in which we had to pick our preferred group options for the upcoming seminar unit, I'll talk more about it when I know which group I got, suffice to say they were all different kinds of vague. All of this took about an hour, but it was nice to catch up with some classmates.

Paris was a neat place. Our hotel was located near the Pere-Lachaise cemetery, where all the famous people are buried. We arrived in Paris in the morning, and couldn't check in at the hotel until 2 p.m., so among other things, we explored this beautiful place. It was really quiet and soothing, and filled to bursting with mausoleums, sepultures and headstones.

They also had any imaginable shape

If you climbed up the hill and went to about the middle of the place you saw quite an astounding view of Paris. There also was some really neat flower-arrangements in the garden around. The most interesting aspect of them might be that they seriously seemed to use dill as a decorative plant. I've never seen it happen before. I almost went there to pick some in order to assess if it really was what I saw.

So now we just need some new potatoes and crawfish and we're back in Finland!

 Out of all the celebrity graves we saw, Oscar Wilde's was maybe the most interesting looking:

It actually was walled off with a metal fence in addition to the plexi, 

there were baskets provided for gifts and letters.

Besides Wilde's, we saw Edith Piaf's Georges Seurat's and. . . who could the last one be. . . Jim Morrison's tombs. It was fun trying to find these (there were maps located around the various entrances), but the place itself was the most interesting part.

Paris has many interesting buildings, some are actually pleasant to rest your eyes upon. Centre Pompidou, not so much.

It doesn't matter how much or little of it you include in a picture. 

In the end it still looks as terrible and chaotic.

The view from up there was stunning, and the exhibitions were interesting (maybe Gerhard Richter's most of all). But that facade. . . no, just no.

Slightly more aestethically pleasing was the main building of the original Galeries Lafayette department store complex with it's immaculate glass cupola:

Looked especially good in the dusk .

During the really rainy day we saw one of the more popular buildings:

 

Do I really need to write it out?

Paris also seems to be full of 'street art' and all kinds of (often funny) little details. I think this wonky fellow is my favourite among the ones we happened to find.

They really do exist. If not, why would there be a codex entry about the 

Myrmecophaga camellus then? I believe they are nocturnal.

And of course, another (delicious) form of art is delivered by the numerous boulangers and patissiers:

This was (part of) my breakfast the last morning.

I think that starts to be it about Paris for now. I hope I'll get back there soon enough. I already miss the croissants. Well, at least me and roomie managed to take a couple of bottles of wine with us from there, and I even bought two cheeses to try out. Nothing terribly moldy (or stinking for that matter, at least the odour doesn't reach through the plastic wrapping), I think I'll have a taste as soon as my nose has gotten a bit better.

Au revoir, la maison mince.