05.26.05

Walks and Opera

Posted in Travels at 1:27 am by Leopoldo

Wednesday, May 25, 2005, 1:00AM
Paris, France

Had a nice long walk around Paris this morning starting with an exploration of the neighborhood where I am staying. There is a pedestrian road, the Rue de Moufetard that I can take from the Rue Monge to the river and has restaurants and shops along the way. I have noticed a lot, and I mean a LOT of comic book/comic figurine shops in the Latin Quarter. I am not sure if this is because of the colleges nearby and what ages they are marketing to, but they are everywhere. I also found a bookstore of all movie related books.

After lunch Himelda went home and dad and I went to the Musée de l’Armée at the old Military Hospital. The museum has armor, weapons and uniforms from the early Middle Ages to WWII. They went a bit over board with the amount of items on display. After the third huge hall full of mannequins in original uniforms I realized each hall only covered about 20 years, at this rate it would take hours to get through a century. I am sorry though that the WWI exhibit was closed for renovation, I have heard it had some great items. I was reminded of my last trip to Europe where we would find dozens of suits of armor sitting around in small town museums and churches, then went to the Museum in New York where they make a huge deal out of the eight or so suits they have.

The evening was spent at a performance of Boris Godunov at the Opéra National de Paris. The Opera was pretty good with beautiful music and impressive staging and costumes. It was however hard to sit through. I love Opera, but quite honestly it can be pretty boring. Now imagine an Opera that is almost four hours long, made up mostly of tortured Russian historical personages lamenting their fates (including a twenty minute death by Boris) in Russian with French subtitles. After dinner at an outdoor café near the Opera we went home.

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