Art and Football (Parisienne Style)

We visited the Georges Pompidou Center. The day we went was quiet, no crowds, so it was a good day to be there. Check out the webcams. Number two is my favourite. This is the modern art exhibition of Paris.

The first exhibit we went to was on the ground floor, a touch and feel exhibit on heads. You could put your hands under a cloth and feel different heads. Further into the gallery were other exhibits that you could touch, one painted pictures based on heat. The kids really enjoyed this. We knew that the Pompidou Center had a fabulous view from the top, so we climbed the stairs that are in the tube (actually escalators) all the way to the top and the view was worth climbing for. There was a silver service restaurant at the top as well. We went down to the fourth floor gallery which was having an exhibition on moving images (Les Mouvement des images). The one I liked most was a montage of scenes depicting women sleeping, waking and looking scared, creeping out of bed, moving slowly, with terrified looks on their faces to a door. Opening the door, screaming and then moving slowly back to the bed and getting back into bed. There must have been 100 actresses doing this, some quite famous.

We went down to the ground floor for some food, but decided to go outside and find some in the area. We ate Italian (again) and then bought the children paintings from a street vendor. AJR got a dragon with Paris 2006 written on it and MLR got her name on hers.

The apartment faced a main road and on two of the nights we were in Paris, France played soccer matches. On the 5th of July France played Portugal. The French won and put themselves into the final against Italy. We watched the game on TV and listened to the neighbourhood, every time France scored a goal a roar would go up - around 10.30pm the game finished and the road went wild - we have video footage which I will upload sometime. The guys across the road waved their tricolour over the balcony, the cars tooted the national anthem, one guy was leaning horizontally out the car window waving a French flag. The noise was amazing.