Versailles and Nuit Blanche

I did not expect to be particularly enthused about Versailles. For one, Baroque annoys me, as do palaces and most displays of grandeur. I have too much of the American in me to appreciate it, too much of the American whose heart skips a beat when I see Ionic columns and elegant neoclassical pediments. When I was in St. Petersburg, I was bored to tears inside Petrohof, Peter the Great's enormous palace on the outskirts of the city.

Frankly, I find luxury completely uninteresting. I have no particular desire to be wealthy. When I think of Versailles I can't help but think of the stupidity of it all, the overwhelming excess and gaudy opulence. Like Alexis de Tocqueville might say, the American in me cannot bear to witness inequality, because we hold to inequality with much more force than we do liberty. (This unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case any more... Americans nowadays tend towards gross inequality and obnoxious degrees of liberty, albeit only in the case of consumerism. *sigh*)

Overall, Versailles was... underwhelming. The Jeff Koons show that they had there was pretty amazing, though. If not for Jeff Koons, it would have been a terrible afternoon. It was freezing and drizzling the entire time, and for some reason the entire estate of Versailles has only one entrance open to the public, so my friend and I wandered around the gardens completely lost and near exhaustion.
The gardens themselves seemed like something from a fairy land, all of those miniscule trees and curlicues. The autumn leaves in the background made a picturesque setting as well. By the way, in the picture above, that red thing in the center is Jeff Koons's "Split Rocker," an enormous rocking horse head covered with flowers. Cool, right?This is the ceiling of the hall of mirrors. Underwhelming, again. The hordes of tourists also didn't make this experience any more interesting. But enough of Versailles. Last night was nuit blanche, when the night buses barely run and Paris is awake and intoxicated all night long! Our night began at the Centre Georges Pompidou, contemporary art museum of paris and locale of some of my favorite Magrittes. The Pompidou was open until two AM, and we explored the galleries until around midnight. There were so many people, it was actually as if the streets of Paris became one giant party, fueled by alcohol, acoustic guitar, and a sense of camaraderie.

The lights! The people! The music!

OH MAN I love the Pompidou. We walked around lost for a little bit, then returned to sit, as hundreds of Parisians were doing, on the floor of the Plaza. We were joined by a musician from El Salvador, improvised a Spanish love song, listened as a Parisian boy tried rapping and beatboxing... and I vaguely remember learning a Danish drinking song and subsequently forgetting it. Next the night moved towards wandering around Montparnasse, squeezed amongst thousands of Parisians on the metro (we had grabbed the last one). A good feeling. A good night. Who needs the palace of Versailles when you have good ol' fashioned camaraderie?

Later days!