I am so damned tired.

My leg isn't hurting much anymore. I don't know if I'm stronger or I'm numb.

Anyway.

This morning I put my proverbial foot down that we were GOING to the Museum of the Middle Ages OR ELSE.

Here is a lovely candle mount from 1480.

I would not be surprised if it were German, judging by the head dress, but I don't know. It didn't say.

The Musee to Moyen Age (for all you French speakers out there) was pretty neat. It was not as...thorough as I was hoping. I was hoping for more things dug up out of dumps and sewers and that sort of thing, and less...chipped apart lumps of rock and secular items.

Still. It was pretty interesting. There were a number of nice tapestries, if you're into that sort of thing.

They had JUST finished a show of illuminated pieces, and I refuse to check the exact date of when it ended because I don't want to know if I could have seen it and missed it.

But they did have a handful of nice illuminated pieces that you could check out very close. Also, they let you take pictures (no flash) so I got a few good shots, I hope.

Check it out. I would say those squares in the background were about an eighth of an inch square, and all the not-gold ones had white work on top.

Pretty nuts. Someday, I'll be that good.

Someday I'll use period pigments, too!

I talked my mother into buying a book on illuminators and scribes from the museum bookshop. I found it pretty amusing that most of the books there that were any good, I already owned. My mother even approached me rather excited at one point with a book in hand, only to discover she'd bought it for me five Christmasses ago (and I use it a lot: The Medieval Tailor's Assistant).

After the Museum of the Middle Ages I decided I was Done Like Dinner. Done. No more museums. We'd done the Museum of the Middle Ages, the Musee d'Orsey, the l'Orangerie, Musee des Arts Decoratif, Musee de la Mode et du Textiles, Musee des Arts et Metiers, the George Pompedou Centre, Saint-Chapelle, Notre Dame, the crypt in Notre Dame, the Catacombs, the Petit Palais, Versailles, and the Lourve THREE TIMES.

And I was done.

So when my mother said we were going to go to the Musee Carnavalet (which was the history of Paris), I said: "No."

"But--"

"No."

"Well....what do you WANT to do?"

"I want to sit in a park and read my book."

"But--"

We walked all the way there and at the door I stopped. My dad stopped too. And that was it. We were like mules who didn't want to go any further.

Mom went in, though. Dad and I sat in a park around the corner, in the sun, and read books and napped, respectively.

And this is where I noticed this fellow:

Oh fine and noble pigeon.

He was the most hopeful pigeon I have ever seen.

He walked up and down that roof top. When he was all alone, sometimes he would sit on that corner and stare forelornly at the street below.

That is...until another pigeon landed on his roof.

Oh, and then! THEN! Our fine feathered friend would strut up behind her and puff up his feathers and do the mating call walk.

And do it and do it and do it until the frustrated female would fly off again (usually within about ten seconds).

And our poor buddy would take up his perch again.

Someday....someday his princess would come...

At the end of the evening we took a totter down to the docks and took a boat ride along the Seine. The sun was setting and the lights on the Eiffel Tower were coming out.

It was all very pretty. I told my dad that a night like this needs a man to down a bottle of wine and profess his undying love.

My father took me gently by the arm, waggled his eyebrows in a lascivious manner and said:

"I think we're too closely related for that."

I gave my father a look that looked something like this: -_-

He just giggled.

Which reminds me, the other day we were walking down the street, just me and him.

All of a sudden he leans over and whispers very loudly: "HOOKERS!"

And I said: "....what?"

"HOOKERS!" he whispers again, and points over his shoulder. "WE JUST PASSED SOME HOOKERS."

I looked. They didn't look like the hookers I'D seen.

"They don't look like the hookers I'VE seen," I said. "They look like they're waiting for some---ooooh."

"VIETNAMESE HOOKERS," my dad whispers. "THEY WERE HERE LAST TIME, WHEN I CAME BY MYSELF."

Again, I was a little: -_-

There were a lot of hookers out that afternoon, if my father's summation was correct...

And on that note, I think I will go to sleep.

See you tomorrow, peeps. Only two days 'til Amsterdam!

Sup.

I'm still in Paris.

It's still cool.

Today was Miriam's last day. She wanted to take a walk up to the Sacre Coeur. So that's what we did!

On the way we discovered that somebody had murdered the Eiffel Tower and its ghost was roaming the back streets of Paris, looking for souls to feed upon.

That, or there is a lot of pollution.

(Apparently, there's a lot of pollution. I suddenly did not feel so good about breathing.)

We walked a long way. The walk from our hotel to the Sacre Coeur is a bit over an hour, and we kept stopping. We found an amazing little indoor market with all sorts of food stalls. That along made me want to live in Paris. All the fish displayed artistically in ice, rather than just slapped in rows! Rabbits so fresh the eyeballs still looked alive, and all sorts of amazing cheeses.

I have been eating the stinkiest cheeses. It's bloody amazing.

On the way up the hill we paused in a church while my dad figured out the map.

It, like every other damned church in this country, was gorgeous. Many stained glass (though not the best stained glass I've seen) and lots of statuary.

There was this lovely lady who, I believe, does not look nearly a thrilled about her wee tiara as she ought to be.

I use this clip to back my belief up:

CLICKY CLICKY CLICKY

Yep. That.

Anyway, after we left we tottered a short way up the street, and discovered a shop that was a 'gallery of mannequins'. I think it was just a shop that sold mannequins.

Judging by what they had in the window, I would have enjoyed taking a poke around inside. But it was closed (boo).

My father insisted on this picture.

It pretty much sums him up, right there.

I thought it was funny that a mannequin store had 'headless' as one of its alluring features.

Then off we went again! Hooray!

Walking and walking and walking.

You know what one of my pet peeves is?

Tourists who stop in the middle of busy sidewalks.

Yes.

That's all.

We walked through the fabric district of Paris and I VERY VERY CAREFULLY DID NOT BUY ANYTHING. Never mind my darling family would never let me slow down enough to actually properly look.

However. Amazing. The fabric district. Very cool.

Then Sacre Coeur!

You cannot take pictures inside Sacre Coeur. Normally I would have sneaked a picture or two, but they were in the middle of a big service and there were nuns walking around like giant disapproving birds.

I may not be religious anymore, but I still find nuns rather terrifying, and not worth crossing.

But I will tell you a little of the inside:

It is set up much like most churches. Long center area is filled with chairs, center aisle, little stage bit with alter, choir pews on either side. Then there's a walkway that goes all around the edge which leads to various alters to various saints and what not, and the confessionals. Lots of candles burning here.

That was all cool. Nothing particularly extraordinary about that.

The amazing part was the ceiling. It was a mosaic of teeny tiny little tiles, and the HUGEST JESUS I'VE EVER SEEN with his arms outspread like he's halfway into belly-flopping on the congregation. Opposite him, a man I can only assume is God is peeking into the scene and preparing to throw the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch down on everybody from behind.

Instead of that amazing sight, I will give you a much smaller mosaic from the Montmartre cemetary.

This is the same style of tiling, though. You see how tiny the tiles are. This piece is less than my height and maybe four feet wide, at most.

Mind, the entire inside of the...little...building...thingie....was all done in these tiles, right up and over the ceiling.

Very cool.

But I'll get to the Montmartre cemetary a little later.

But first, Montmarte itself!

The community is a little northwest of Sacre Coeur. My dad particularly wanted to see it because of this one square that had a bunch of artists.

"They'll all be crap," he said. "But we can critique it."

So we did. Quietly, so as not to be rude.

There were some very good portrait artists, doing portraits on the spot. Lots of painters painting 'classic Parisian scenes'. Yuck.

There were a couple actually good artists, but not many. Most of it was tourist junk.

I ate ice cream here. It was very good.

I ate a lot of ice cream today.

Then we wandered the shops, and saw meat being delivered to one of the butchers.

Super neat! Also weird.

A little disturbing.

Food handling practices are a lot different in Canada.

At least it wasn't all dripping everywhere.

After Montmartre, we swung down and took a peek at the Moulin Rouge. We also passed by the Moulin de la Galette, which looked a lot less skanky than the picture on the right there.

The Moulin Rouge is bang smack in the middle of the sex district.

SO MANY SEX SHOPS.

SO, SO MANY.

I can't even tell you.

And skeezy looking ones, not even interesting looking stores.

Also, lots of theatres. How appropriate that the sex district and the theatre district are one and the same?

Our last thing of the day was swinging up to the Montmarte cemetary. I think Degas is buried there. We didn't have time to see it all because a) it's HUGE and b) Miriam had to leave soon.

Here is my father, practicing being a corpse.

Dad gets cranky when he doesn't have naps.

I get cranky when I don't get food, and don't get to sit down now and then.

As I was sitting here I was jumped upon by a French cat. First cat I've seen. It was lovely and mostly ignored me, once it was finished jumping.

The tombstones were mostly quite old, but some were as new as 2004 (IT WAS FOR A BABY) and some of them still had colour photographs of the corpses on the gravestones.

Not weird at all.




Here's a dude. He's all:

BOO HOO I'M SO DEAD.

I don't know who he was, but he had a very pretty monument, and FABULOUS hair.

After the cemetary, we went and dropped Miriam off at the Eurostar station. I ate more ice cream (I should probably stop that) and Miriam jammed a fistful of Euros in my pocket, for spending in Amsterdam (THANKS LADY!).

Then me and my dad teamed up against my mother and told her under no circumstances were we walking the hour back to the hotel. We were going to take the tube, and we going to go buy some cheese, and maybe even wine because we were feeling that wild, and then go have naps.

Cranky baby naps.

So that's what we did!

I slept very very hard for a whole hour. Then I ate cheese and pate and baguette, and drank a can of Hoegaarden, which is lovely to me. No wine, though.

Now...now I am finishing this blog post and going to bed. My dad has finally stopped snoring in this postage stamp hotel room, and I think I can sleep.

Good night, all of youse!