I see London, I see France

For all of you Ryan Nee-ophiles out there—which I'm sure are numerous—you may have noticed that I'm drifting pretty far off of my original itinerary. Well, that's because my parents offered to let me tag along with them for a week in Paris and a few days in London. And as far as I'm concerned, if someone offers you a week in Paris and London, you'd be an idiot not to go. So my original plans of going to Sicily and Tunisia are out the window, for now.

We landed in Paris as the sun set over the cloudy French sky, and I was giddy. My first big trip abroad (with Austin, Carrie and Josh — hi guys!) when I was 18-years-old started and ended in Paris, and it's a place that holds a lot of great memories for me. Once our flight landed, we caught a packed bus to the city center where we checked into our apartment, settling in for an intense week of sightseeing in the city of lights.

Our first day, we headed out into the city to stroll along the Champs-Élysées, Paris' famous shopping boulevard, which stretches from the monumental Arc De Triomphe all the way across town to the Louvre Museum. We followed our trusty Rick Steves self-guided tour, which gave us an insider's look at the world's most famous street. Along the way are many ultramodern car dealerships showing off both new models and futuristic-looking concept cars. We also popped in for a sniff at the massive Sephora store, which has a dizzying amount of perfume and cologne to try out, with professional scentologists ready to help find the right smell. We also had a look at a super-luxury candy store, where you could easily trade an entire paycheck for designer chocolate and truffles. Champs-Élysées is among the most expensive streets on earth, so most of the stores along the way are far too upscale for us Nee folk, but we had a lot of fun anyway. People who live in Paris, especially those shopping on the Champs-Élysées, are absurdly fashionable and are dressed to the nines at all times, even for a quick jaunt out to get a loaf of bread. With nothing but ripped jeans and the same ratty t-shirt to wear every day, I felt like I was single-handedly slumming the place up. Even the McDonald's on the Champs-Élysées had dressed up for the occasion:



The following day, we strapped on our iPods and took a tour through the heart of historic Paris—the little island which sits between the two banks of the Seine—following a free audio tour that my parents found online. With the podcast boom in the past few years, hundreds of these tours have become available, and I find them to be a great way to get an irreverent, informative, and low-hassle tour for free.

We started with a picnic lunch just outside of the gothic Notre Dame cathedral, whose famous flying buttresses have soared in the skies of Paris for more than 800 years. Once inside, the impressively tall structure and enormous stained glass windows were great to see as well. A few blocks away is the older San Chapelle cathedral, whose massive stained glass windows tell some of the key stories of the bible, and were used as a teaching tool back in the days where many believers were illiterate. They were also apparently able to miraculously see tiny images from large distances away.



Nearby is a somber deportation memorial, which remembers the French victims of the holocaust, represented by a narrow underground room containing 200,000 crystals, one for each killed. We gave the nearby neighborhood a wander, which was full of busy cafés, patisseries, and outdoor booksellers. We browsed the stacks at Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, which has served for nearly a hundred years as the Parisian hangout for English-speaking authors such as James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. Later in the day, we caught the metro up to the Trocadero neighborhood, which has an epic view over the Eiffel Tower. Finished in 1889 as the entrance and showpiece of the Worlds Fair, the famous tower was set to be demolished after 20 years, but was kept intact for radio communication purposes despite public pressure to tear it down for being an eyesore. It is now the most visited monument in the world.



Paris is the greatest city on earth to learn about art. Many of the top artists throughout history spent time here painting, and it contains a handful of the best art museums on earth. We spent three days touring the city's amazing museums, which chronicle the incredible scope and dramatic changes in the visual arts over time.

We started at the small Rodin Museum, dedicated to the phenomenal sculptor Auguste Rodin, who is widely considered to be the best sculptor since Michelangelo. The museum, housed on his former home in central Paris, shows off his diverse work including the famous statue of The Thinker, and his emotional ground level statue The Burghers of Calais, which I had learned about in art history class and never really liked, but blew me away in real life. The sheer amount of great work the guy produced was staggering, and the three of us left feeling inspired by the artistic legacy a single person can leave.

We headed to nearby Rue Cler, a great place to get a feel for a quaint Parisian neighborhood. The pedestrian-only street has a handful of vegetable markets, fromageries full of stinky cheese, pastry shops, fashionable botiques, and more. We had a great lunch at a streetside restaurant, where I had a delicious entree of raw beef, which I had never tasted before. Here are the 'rents making the crucial cheese decision at a neighborhood market:



Our next stop was at the mother of all museums: The Musee d'Louvre. The museum's wonderfully simplistic glass pyramids, designed by Chinese-American architect IM Pei, were the star of the show in the recent (and awful) movie The Da Vinci Code based on the (equally awful) book of the same name written by Dan Brown. Thanks to the plundering and pillaging of Napoleon, The Louvre is home to the world's greatest collection of art, starting from the beginning of recorded history and stretching to about 1900. The museum is dauntingly large, so we tried to focus on the big stuff. We saw the requisite Winged Victory, Venus De Milo, and The Mona Lisa, but I especially enjoyed the massive collection of Egyptian artifacts, and the Italian Renaissance paintings, and the more modern Dutch paintings of everyday life. My favorite in the museum was the monumental Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault who captured the brutal scene of death, cannibalism, and exhaustion on a shipwreck by making endless drawings of corpses at his local morgue before painting the grotesque picture.




The next day, our whirlwind art history tour continued where the Louvre left off at the Musee d'Orsay, the world's best museum of the ever-popular painting movement, Impressionism. These days, with an impressionist print hanging on the wall in virtually every cheap motel room in America, it's hard to fully grasp how controversial impressionism was at the time. Impressionists were shunned and hated by the academic art critics at the time, who thought the work looked like unfinished amateurish garbage. They pressed on anyway, forming a group and putting on their own art shows, attempting to give the impression of light and motion through their dabs on the canvas. The museum covers the early impressionists like Monet and Degas, then looks forward a few years as the style started to branch into different forms, as seen in the violent and emotional paintings by Van Gogh, or the almost mathematical pointillist dots of Seurat and Signac. The Musee d'Orsay building itself was great too — it was transformed into a museum from an old train station in 1986.



Later that night, we headed over to Montmartre, the neighborhood where many of the young Musee D'Orsay artists lived the bohemian lifestyle as they shaped the art world. We hiked up to the gorgeous white domes of the Sacre Couer church, one of my favorite churches, where there were tons of people enjoying a small outdoor festival. My parents and I hopped from booth to booth trying a handful of great regional wines, savory cheeses, and creamy paté. We loved chatting with the owners of each vineyard, many of whom were the grandchildren of the vineyard founders. We bought a few of the bottles we liked best, and slowly wandered down through hilly Montmartre along cobbled streets of busy cafés and old homes. We ended the night outside the infamous Moulin Rouge, now a super-seedy and touristy strip club district. Instead of joining the tourist hoardes to watch a pricey can-can show, we opted for a wine tasting and nice homecooked meal back at our apartment.





The next morning, we went walking through a very different neighborhood called Marais, the old Jewish district. There are a few remnants of Jewish history left in the neighborhood, but it is now mostly full of great parks, luxury shopping, contemporary art galleries, and cheap eateries serving up tasty kebabs and felafel. Marais is much less touristy than the areas with the big sights, which gave us a better feeling for how Parisians actually live. My favorite part about Paris is how drastically different the city feels in one area versus another, and Marais was one of our favorite areas we visited.




Nestled into the Marais district is the Picasso Museum, home to hundreds of pieces from throughout the famed artist's career including sculptures, paintings, ceramics, and collages. If you've ever seen a Picasso painting in real life, you probably had this thought flash through your mind: This dude is the best artist of the 20th century? Are you serious? More than any artist I can think of, you've got to see a lot of Picassos at once in order to fully appreciate the guy. Picasso experimented with art to an aggressive degree, and created an insanely large body of work that is stylistically all over the place. The art world had moved pretty slowly and cautiously prior to Picasso, until he opened the flood gates for modern and contemporary art. As a result, most of Picasso's pieces, on an one-by-one basis, are quite disappointing. Taken as a whole, however, you realize how brilliant, creative, and experimental the guy really was. It's hard to say which pieces he personally thought were successful, because nowadays they are all hanging on the walls of museums — from true masterpieces like La Guernica to some random time where he accidentally wiped some charcoal on a piece of paper — the good, the bad, and the ugly are all on display for the world to critique. The Picasso Museum in Paris, along with the one in Barcelona, are great places to get a feeling for the staggering scope of the man's life work.

We continued our epic art history tour picking up on the historical timeline again—this time where the Musee D'Orsay left off—at the Pompidou Center, which covers art from 1900 through the present day. The Pompidou building was designed by famed architect Renzo Piano, and caused huge controversy in Paris when it was built, because the building is exoskeletal — or, inside-out. All of the pipes, wires, boxes, and elevators are on the outside of the building instead of the inside, and all color-coded. Air is circulated through blue pipes. Water through green pipes. People are transported through red escalators and elevators. Electricity moves around in yellow wires. The building has become such an icon of Paris over the last 30 years, that it has found its way into the hearts of Parisians, who now seem to love the place.



Inside the museum was a wonderful collection of modern and contemporary art. For me, contemporary art museums are one of the few chances we have as adults to be a kid again — you get the chance to learn, allow your mind to explore, see new things, challenge the ways you think, and open up to new experiences. I always feel bad for the inevitable guy muttering under his breath about how his four-year-old daughter could make better art, because I personally find the contemporary museum experience to be tremendously enjoyable. It's more interesting than seeing painting after painting of pretty-but-trite images of angels swooping into the heavens, that's for sure. So many people get frustrated that they don't "get it" that they end up with the impression that contemporary art is some elaborate joke on the Average Joe. Although I don't have a great grasp of contemporary art history, most artists I have studied were ultimately very thoughtful and sincere about their work. Either way, it was great to visit the Pompidou to cap off our three day art extravaganza, from Mesopotamia to Michelangelo to Modernism.

My parents and I spent the next day apart, and I decided to go back to explore the area surrounding the Pompidiou, which has one of my favorite public squares and some of the best people watching in Europe. The neighborhood is also very young and arty, full of good street food, and a wonderful place to waste a day. Later on, I ventured over to the new Design Museum. The museum had a surprisingly huge collection, but focused mostly on fashion, furniture and product design spanning the last 200 years. Of course, the highlight for me was the graphic design area, which had original posters designed by Alphonse Mucha, Milton Glaser, James Victoire, and an awesome poster by design god and personal hero Josef Muller-Brockmann.



After an exhaustingly great week in Paris, we finally left on a quick flight across the English Channel to London.

As I arrived in England, everything seemed strangely, well, touristy. I quickly realized that it wasn't that things were touristy, but that everything was written in English. Having spent the previous 312 days in countries without English as a first language—yes, I counted—my brain started to equate English with tourism. Once I got over that, it was nice to be able to understand everything around me. Well, almost everything — about 10 percent of words are different in American versus British English. Bathroom is loo, first floor is ground floor, second floor is first floor, policemen are bobbies, the checkout counter is a till, elevator is a lift, the shopping cart is a buggy, soccer is football, fries are chips, and chips are crisps. Mostly, it's all understandable in context, but sometimes the British version of English is downright bizarre, like this little gem:



My parents and I spent the day at the Tate Modern, probably my favorite museum on earth. The museum is divided up thematically instead of chronologically, which causes very interesting artist mashups from different time periods who made work about similar subjects. The museum had an incredible audio-visual guide delivered on a PDA, where you could hear artist interviews, watch an occasional quick video clip of someone speaking, zoom in and hear about specific aspects of a painting, or see other works by the same artist to give context. They even had separate programs for kids, which my mom loved as a mother who took her kids to a lot of museums. The guide was so much more thorough, thoughtful, interesting, and useful than any other audio guide I've ever seen, and I really hope other museums adopt a similar system.



After a few nights of great and greasy pub food, it came time to part ways with my parents. We had a great three weeks together, and I really enjoyed our chats over a bottle (or two or three) of wine each night, and our action-packed days traversing Europe. I realized I'm a lot more like my parents than I ever imagined — my scrappy and frugal traveling style is apparently the direct result of the way I was raised. Over the three weeks, we rarely argued about where to go, where to eat, or what to do — the normal headaches of traveling with other people. I can't thank them enough for letting me tag along on their trip. Here we are having a bit of last-minute fun as my parents get packed up to go to the airport:



I moved from our hotel over to a nearby hostel, and settled back into the life of sharing everything with 50 other people, and living on the cheap. Although London is one of the most expensive cities on earth, there are a ton of free museums and events around town every day if you know where to find them. Unlike Russia, where you can easily spend 50 dollars per day just to survive, spending 50 dollars wisely and creatively in London can get you a really great day. For me, London has a lot of value for the money, considering how expensive it seems.

Since I had just been to London in 2003, I was luckily able to settle down for a few days of relaxation and take it easy. I did make it out to a few of the lesser-known sights around town, however. I stopped by the Serpentine Gallery, which is a serious force in the international contemporary art world, and an endorsement of your work or a show at the Serpentine can be a big boost in an artists career. I also strolled through Hyde Park on a weekend, and enjoyed seeing families picnic in the grass and people clumsily learn how to rollerblade. I stopped by an urban planning exhibit which gave some insight into how the city of London is planning to grow in the 21st century. They had a model of the 2012 London Olympics site, an extremely controversial topic in England right now, especially after the logo was revealed last week and virtually everyone—from peasants to professional graphic designers—absolutely hated it. Olympics aside, London has a surprising amount of new buildings including the playful new London City Hall, which looks like it's just about to topple over:



I took a break from my nerdy adventures in architecture, and went out to the Covent Garden area, a thriving and bustling center packed with shops, restaurants and great people watching. I had a fun night of shopping and drinking with Chelsea, who I had met traveling in Moscow a month earlier, and her friend Ashley, two American girls living in London on a semester abroad. We watched a football (soccer) game and drank, drank, drank the night away.



I sobered up and made the trip across central London to Whitechapel to visit the Idea Store, designed by David Adjaye, the same architect of new Museum of Contemporary Art | Denver in my hometown. I had met David in person because we used to do design work for the museum at my old office (okay, he asked me where the bathroom was and I nervously gave him piss-poor directions), so I wanted to check out one of his other buildings, which are mainly in London. The Idea Store was great — like a library, community resource center, and cafe all at once, it was exactly what libraries should be like, and it seemed very popular. The area around The Idea Store was fascinating mix of mostly Muslim and Hindi people, and I was one of the few white people wandering among the women in burkas or saris, which was really fun to see inside the city center. London is much more diverse than I remember it being on my last visit, which was a nice surprise.

On the opposite side of the library spectrum, I also made a stop at the British Library, which houses some of the most important works of literature ever created by man. Protected under glass, you can take a look at an original version of Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland; the first-edition prints of several Shakespeare plays; handwritten scores by Beethoven, Chopin, and Mozart; a gorgeous gilded copy of the Qur'an from 1304; a wide array of hand-painted illuminated manuscripts; an original Gutenburg Bible; written copies of indulgences, the written promises purchased from the church to guarantee forgiveness from God; a landmark book from 1610 Galileo published about astronomy; a manuscript featuring stamps from the Stamp Tax, which ultimately started the US revolution and democracy as we know it; and four of the only copies that exist of the Magna Carta, the hugely important document from 1215 that took away the divine power of the king and started the movement which would ultimately lead to the governments which give us freedom today. Most importantly, they had original drafts of lyrics to Yesterday, Hard Days Night, and other Beatles classics, which are more important than democracy or freedom could ever hope to be.

Later, I stopped by Trafalgar Square, the setting for many of the political protests throughout London's history. I happened to stumble upon Critical Mass, an event which happens once per month in cities across the earth, including a very small version in Denver. The idea is simple: get a bunch of people together and cycle through the city in protest of the dominant car culture. As a result, traffic gets completely jammed up city-wide, and it has become a serious headache for city officials who don't often have legal grounds to keep bikers off the streets. Although I'm not a cyclist, I like the middle-finger-to-the-man aspect of Critical Mass, and it was fun to see some of the decorated bikes on the street:



The rest of my time in London was spent poring over exhibits at the Victoria & Albert Museum, which houses a great collection of international applied art. I also visited the small but interesting Design Museum, which featured some solid exhibits and a bathroom with the only Dyson hand-dryer I've ever come across, which was loud as hell, but completely dried my hands in about two seconds. On a rainy day, I spent a few hours wandering the huge Harrod's department store, where I found a lot of things I liked, but nothing I could afford. I laughed when I found a set of matched luggage that cost more than my entire trip — which would you choose? In the basement is a memorial to Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed, the heir to the Harrod's fortune, who died together in a car accident in Paris ten years ago.

I mostly spent my time in London aimlessly wandering, my favorite activity, getting a feel for the distinct character of each neighborhoods along the way. I actually covered a gigantic portion of London on foot — from Gloucester Road to Kings Cross, and from Victoria to Whitechapel. My feet hurt.

I left London on a flight to Istanbul and I've been here in Turkey for almost two weeks now. I'm having a great time so far — mostly it's been a lot of partying, relaxing, and avoiding museums for fear that I will explode if I go to one more. There should be a Turkey update here fairly soon — I'm going to try to get completely up to date with the next entry, so watch out for that.

Thanks for reading this gigantic update! I really appreciate you guys remembering me, eleven months after I left home.

Ryan!

Also, be sure to check out my friend Lee's blog — Lee Saunders, Mexican — which chronicles his adventures living in Mexico City. I only wish my blog was this good: "Right angles were a completely lost concept on the street-builders of Mexico City. Pythagoras would shit a brick in this place."