Mosquée de Paris, Notre Dame, Centre Pompidou

    

J'ai eu l'envie de visiter la Mosquée de Paris dés que j'ai appris de son existence dans le film Paris, je t'aime. And I finally got to visit Saturday afternoon. It was breath-taking! Easily my favourite stop in all of Paris.

The tour was in French and unfortunately I simply couldn't understand all the nuances of its architecture, but the space is pervaded by a palpable sense of tranquility and harmony. 

They even have a restaurant around the corner with some truly amazing desserts and veeerrrry agreeable mint tea. And after you finish, your table becomes a free-for-all for sparrows, apparently.

On to Notre Dame! Once again, there were some confusing lines while waiting to enter the space. When I got in, I was surpised to find that photography (sans flash) was permitted in the church. Unfortunately the crowd demotivated me from photographing the space, but it was impressive! I had this song stuck in my head most of the time.

After Notre Dame, I found my way to Centre Pompidou, which was to be my one and only museum/gallery stop in Paris.

The two temporary exhibits were Mircea CANTOR: Prix Marcel Duchamp 2011, whose video work I really liked and Adel ABDESSEMED: Je suis Innocent, who genuinely disturbed me with a segment of one of his videos and I thought I would become physically ill. I haven't read up on him to consider the justifications of his thought process, but let;s just say there was some recorded violence between things that are too familiar to me to have me see them get hurt. I did buy Mircea CANTOR's monograph though--- pourquoi pas?

Right after I saw the two shows, my camera crapped out, so I don't have images of the rest of the gallery. Suffice it to say it was a large space and I soon grew very tired of looking at and processing art. I saw a load of superbly famed works such as Otta DIX's Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia Von Harden, a pre-cubist, but not-blue-period Picasso, some Yves KLEIN, whose works I would later encounter in Nice, Max BECKMANN, who was a favourite in high school, Joan MIRÓ, early (I think) Sonia DELAUNAY and some other big names and works I can no longer recall. 

The important this to note here, is that my camera was very, irrevocably dead (PS. if you get this MURAKAMI reference, we are probably soul-mates) and it remained as such as I watched an absolutely perfect dusk flourish before me outside Pompidou, and all I could think about was how I wouldn't be able to share it!

Luckily, I decided to give it a last go before finally setting out and somehow managed to squeeze a bit of life out of my S95, and alas, my perfect sunset with the Eiffel Tower was realized.

After returning to Gobelins and charging my camera, I set out again for le Marais, because Jaclyn said this was my hood, which I later realized was super close to Notre Dame #facepalm, and rolled around a bit before setting back to look for Chinatown.

Somehow, I fumbled to it after a couple failed attemps and time wasted riding aimlessly on the Metro, after which I realized it was so much easier to find on foot following Avenue de Choisy from Place d'Italie. Once there, I was dying for a last drink in Paris. Following Liam's order of never buying anything from the main drag, I came across this place, which I don't know the name of, strolled in just before they closed and had an excellent red. 

On the way out, I noticed this amazing book of portraits. If I'm ever in Paris again, I will dig this place out and have a proper meal here to hang about.