3 Great French Men: Rodin, Napoleon, and Pompidou

On Saturday, I had originally planned to go to Versailles with Eric. But this was a particularly rainy weekend, so we decided to go to the Rodin Museum and le Centre Pompidou instead with Abby (another Hoya who was visiting Paris that weekend).


The Rodin museum was great. I had to pay, even though they didn't make Eric or Abby pay. The one thing I learned about museum admission policy in France is that it's arbitrary, which can be great or frustrating. We went through the sculpture garden, finishing with the Thinker:

Then we went to the indoor part of the museum, which had smaller sculptures and paintings and sketches. One of my favorite things inside and outside was the art from Dante's Inferno. I took a philosophy class on the Divine Comedy at Georgetown last fall and it was amazing to see Rodin make parts of the Comedy come alive. This was The Kiss:

This reminded me how excited I am to go see Dante's Florence in December!

Les Invalides was right nearby so we headed there. It's actually Napoleon's tomb connected to the army museum, but we only wanted to see the tomb. Eric and Abby had no problem getting a free ticket, but they refused my Scottish ID again. I refused to pay 9 Euros just to see one tomb so I asked the woman why I had to pay here but not at other museums. I thought the fact that I was conversing in French might help, but she wasn't budging. When I gave up and just walked away from the counter, she took pity on me and called me back to give me a free ticket (confusing me even more about what the actual rules were). Napoleon's tomb was as big and ornate as everyone said, so I'm glad I saw it (but totally not worth 9 Euros or about $13):

We crossed town to go to le Centre Pompidou, which was one of the highlights of the trip in my opinion. They had no problem giving me a free ticket, so that was fantastic. Outside we passed by a clown and Eric pointed out that clowns become creepier when they're speaking French:

Half the reason to go to this museum is the building, which is incomparable. You can see the exposed skeleton of the building, giving it a very open and accessible feeling, which is dramatically different from the other French museums with their traditional and aristocratic appearances. Despite being so different from the other major tourist sites, it still manages to fit in and feels like it belongs in Paris. 

The top has an amazing view of the Paris skyline:

There are two floors of permanent exhibits and I only had time to see 1960 to present, but it was very enjoyable. I preferred it to the Louvre, partially because of the atmosphere. People spend time looking at the different works of art and their descriptions, whereas the Louvre is filled with people taking pictures of paintings. While there were people with cameras, there were much less and they still took the time to actually look at the art.