ToDo: Invent Brilliant Title

Barcelona was fun. It was kinda all about the art. Picasso Museum. Gaudi buildings. Dali weirdness.

I have far more of an appreciation for Picasso than ever previously.  I’m unsold on Gaudi.  Charles put it best: "He’s a strange one. I don’t instantly dislike his stuff, but it doesn’t do anything for me on either an emotional or intellectual level. Basically he gives me the ‘huhs’."  Gaudi gets props for keeping alive the tradition of taking more than a century to build a cathedral though.  Pillars of the earth, indeed.

On my way out to the Dali Museum, I came across a bunch of Catalans doing what Catalans do – making human castles. There were three groups, the reds and greens seemed to do things the traditional way – adding to the top of their stacks, like Lego (if the pieces were more like Barrel of Monkeys). The purples were a bit fancy – they added to the bottom, not unlike squeezing a very large, colourful, dangerous tube of toothpaste. The kid on the top with the helmet was very cute.

After checking out Dali’s bizarre monument to himself (it seems to trite to mention that it was all rather surreal), I encountered the castellers again. It looked like things had taken a bad turn though, as a green and a purple were supervising a shirtless fellow being palpated in the back of an ambulance. Everyone else was continuing building away though, so it was was either not too bad, or pretty common.

• The trip started excellently.  At the Copenhagen airport, I found two great books.  One was the sequel to the Napoleonic Wars and dragons book I’ve been telling everyone about.  The second was "Night Watch", Russian best-seller and basis of brilliant vampire movie.
• I’m friendly in France.  Or, at least, I must look it.  Every bloody person stopped me to ask directions or for me to take their photo for them.  So much for my off-putting demeanour.  Obviously, I’m out of practice.
• I walked from one end of Paris to the other.  Even the most comfortable shoes can give up after a while, so the next day, I took the Metro if I needed to go further than half a block.
• I went to both the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay.  The Orsay was amazing.  I’m a sucker for Impressionists, post-Impressionists and Art Nouveau, so it was right in my wheelhouse.  And then they go and add a big sculpture of a polar bear.  I was surprised the whole building wasn’t actually dedicated to me.  The Louvre…well, it was the end of the day.  Mona really does look smug and Ms de Milo really has misplaced her arms.  The Rubens Room made up for it.
• The impetus to climb famous monuments has passed me by.  I just like to take photos of the queues and the idiots taking the stairs up the Tour Eiffel.
• M. Night Shaymalan was shooting a movie in the Tuileries.  This would have been cooler if the scene had been less old guys playing boule and more Marky-Mark and Zooey Deschannnelll-thingy.
• I love the Art Nouveau Metro entrances.  So much less obvious then the Copenhagen silver columns with the big ‘M".’
• On Dean’s advice, I went to the Catacombs.  A kilometre and a half of the stacked up bones of six million Parisians, interspered with signs in French discussing the transiency of life (apparently).  My favourite were the signs at the entrance: "The ossuary tour could make a strong impression on children and people of a nervous disposition", "To preserve the patrimony, no photograph with flash", "Any person caught stealing bones will be taken to the police"(this one was only in English; I’m not sure what that indicates), and over the ossuary entrance "Halt, for this is the empire of the dead."  Two thumb-bones up.
• Montmatre was very cute, but no pixie-ish French girls did me any good deeds.
• Paris’s reputation as a city of love and romance is no reason for all the couples and their public groping.  It passed voyeuristic and became tiresome.