MAMAC in Nice

These pictures are a continuation from Nice: La Musee d'Art Modern et d'Art Contemporain. The main feautured artist was Robert Longo, entitled Retrospective. It was art work of times pasted, many of which were more sensitive subjects, as you can see from below. For any discomfort I do apologize. I suppose the best art in a way is that which stirrs up the greatest emotion. What is most fascinating to know about the art work is that it is all hand drawn!!! These are not pictures! Nor is it a picture of the guy looking backwards on the first picture below. This guy drew these! And we're not talking about legal sized paper, but large prints! The glass was very reflective covering the drawings, so many of them have reflections of the surrounding in addition to the art, I apologize for this as well.




This is a picture of a very captivating dragon sculputre that was outside the museum. It was all the more impressive as it was a beautiful, sunny day in Nice.



Yes, I did say sentisitve. I apologize. But look at the size of these, and realize they're hand drawn. The detail is incredible, and looks like black and white photography rather than hand drawings. Just incredible.

Moving away from the more serious photos, we have a picture of the planet Jupiter. I was fascinated trying to think how to draw the rings of Jupiter that well! Can you imagine!? As an artist of a different kind, I have the utmost respect for the visual arts, especially of this caliber.

I believe this was a drawing of either a mass in general, a wedding, or some offical ceremony. I should remember but I can't. Five seperate panals that were easily 7 feet tall to create this master piece. Incredible.

I took this picture for my sister, the psychologist. A drawing of Freud's door. Awesome.

Potentially, if you click on this photo below, it will enlarge it, and maybe you can see a little more of the drawing aspect of these photos. I just can't believe it! I really can't.

This drawing was from a different artist, but falls in the same category of wonderfully hand drawn large photos. The Last Supper...Underwater! Yes, if you can't quite tell, it's bubbles that's surrounding everyone. It looks like a sculpture of the Last Supper that was being trasported on a ship and the ship crashed and the sculpture is oxidizing or something as it's corroding in the water. I love this kind of art, mainly because I can see it, understand it, gain something from it, and immediately have respect for the artist. I think I'm too stupid otherwise to find brilliance in Modern Art. I try, I promise! But, sometimes I just don't see it.

To close from the museum, a picture of something for those who want love to go green! How about when you get married you wear this wedding dress made entirely from recycled 20 oz bottles. They are tied together with the wrappers from around the bottle.

I know this close up shot is blurry, but I couldn't use the flash for fear of being yelled at by the guards that were standing watching all of us. Seriously, there is nothing worse than hearing someone yell, especially when it's in french and you have no idea what they're saying...

Now, that's a train!

I love France...

NICE!

So, my mind has lost the order of when we traveled when, but regardless, they are still adventures I want to share. I believe it was a couple weeks ago on a Saturday that we took the day to go to Nice. Nice is a very large ciy close to Cannes. We landed at the airport here when we arrived. Breath taking view, isn't it?

We took a train after brunch at the college and arrived a little after noon. From the coffee and water I drank at brunch, I really needed to use the restroom. I include this because I had to pay to use a toilet in Nice. Really?! I don't understand the reasoning behind charging to have people been good stewards and not just pee on a sidewalk somewhere. I'm not saying I would ever do that, but I do think it's a legitimate question. And, this isn't just Nice.

Thankfully a few weeks ago now I stumbled across a free bathroom in Cannes, but otherwise you have to pay to use any public restroom, or to use a bathroom at a restaurant you have to buy something. And seriously? You have to buy a drink in order to use the bathroom? Doesn't that almost defeat the purpose of using the bathroom in the first place, or in the end causes you to have to find another bathroom down the road?! Yes, it's a tricky business they run here in France. But, I love them.

We left the station, after I used the sketchy bathroom outside of the station, and walked down the main road. The main road runs into this beautiful fountain. I don't know much about it, other than it's asthetcially pleasing!

From there, we made our way over to the beach. I must say, I think I enjoy the beaches in Cannes better. We have sand on our beaches, which other than making you rather sandy afterwards, is much more comfortable than the large stones that cover the beaches in Nice. It's all rather bizarre!

As we were looking out over the ocean, I looked around and noticed that the opera house was close by. Well, here you are you music lovers. The Nice Opera House:

There was a concert that was a couple weeks after we were there that included Krystian Zimmermann playing Rhaspody in Blue by George Gershwin. If it wasn't during the middle of the week, Nice wasn't so far away, and there would actually be trains running after the concert, I would have gone in an instant. Unfortunately it's not that easy...

I went back after visiting the opera house and met up with the group. Off in the distance was this old looking castle thing. We weren't sure what it was, but we had that itch of a climbing adventure, so off we went. Everything in France is a climbing adventure... It would get me into great shape if I didn't eat the amount of bread that I do anyway. It's as they say, "When in France, do as the French", which to me entitles me to all the wine, cheese and bread that I could ever want.

Further up and to the right of the castle in the picutre above, you could see a waterfall. Well, only about half the group decided to make the climbing adventure all the way up to the waterfall, and trust me the view made it all worth it.

This is a view from the castle looking out over the water and towards Nice. As you can tell, it wasa beautifully clear and sunny day, like so many days in France. I love France.

I never counted the stairs to see how many steps we climed to get all the way to the top of this mountain (well, mountain by Minnesota standards...) in order to find the waterfall. It was a beautiful sight to see.


And, a picture of myself and my dear friend, Aude, to have pictorial proof that we conquered the journey up...

We continued to climb a little further to get to the panoramic viewing point above this waterfall. The pictures that bookend this blog entry were taking from that point. It was incredible. After spending much time just taking the view in, we worked on trying to find our way back down. Now, it would have been far too boring to just go back the way we came, so we enjoyed getting drastically lost at practically every turn trying to find our way back down. We eventually found it, and truly the best way to see a city or anything is to get lost in it. We managed to get around to the other side of the mountain, which provided a great view of the otherside of Nice with several very large ships who had there docking stations over there. Very cool.

So, we then continued in and around through Nice. There ice cream shops everywhere. This one that we stopped in had so many options! I took a picture of some of the more creative options. Including different flowers, a catus flavor, and if you look in the middle of the back row, to the left of the coca cola one, yes indeed your eyes are not deceiving you - CORONA! Who knew!?

As we continued around we ran into some churches. They seemed to be everywhere in Nice. This first one is called Eglise Notre Dame de l'Annonciation.

And, they have a organ designed to match the beautiful of this church: (though otherwise rather small).

And a beautiful statue of the Virgin Mother and Child:

From there, we found the Cathedrale Sainte Reparate. Much more gothic in style, and very different from the previous one. Unfortunately, this church was not as well lit, and as it was twice the size of the other church, the pictures didn't turn out quite as well.

And yes, the organ in the back. It looks like quite an organ. I found the console up front. I wanted to search through the organ bench to see if I could find the key. Every organist knows, at least in the states, the key for the organ in Catholic Churches can be found in the bench. I used my better judgement, and refer back to my comment about French people yelling at you in French.... yes, I intend to avoid that.

Afterwards we ended up in a Virgin Records store. There is nothing more calming to me than to looking through classical CDs at a store in France. No matter how frustrating this language might be to me, the is one thing that is international: music. I love it. I just gives me back my chi, my center, my serenity, even if they are outrageously expensive, their existance is all I need.

As a close to the day in Nice, I must talk about the return to the college. First, we rushed back to the train station in order to catch this one train, only to get there and realize we would need to pay more money to be on that train because its an express train, so we got to sit around for 20 mintues, which thus defeated the running to get to the station. In killing time, I went with Aude over to the bank so she could get some money from the ATM. While I stood next to her, a felt a splat on my head. I looked up, and sure enough, three stories above me, a pigeon was sitting on a statue with his bum right above me. A bird pooped on my head!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously, I wish I were kidding right now, I was so upset. Luckily Aude happened to have napkins with her, and another girl had sanitary wipes, so we pretty well got the bird poop out. After I complained, loudly, in explatives how exactly I felt about this, I began playing the Pollyanna role my mother taught me so well. "Well, at least the bird poop only landed on my head an not my shirt, because I really do love this orange shirt, and I don't hink bird poop would have ever washed out of my dry clean only shirt. At least I can wash my hair and be fine." Somedays I make myself ill that I've learned to do that so well...

Well, the trip wasn't quite done. We got back to the train station at Cannes at 6:40, it's a solid 25 minute walk back to the college, landing us right on time for dinner. However, we had walked so much that day, so we didn't want to walk, well, others didn't want to walk, I would have been fine! Well, maybe. Anyway, we got on bus number 2, the bus that goes by the college, and after about 15 minutes, of which the bus ride should otherwise be 7 minutes back to the college, a couple of us began to wonder if this was the right bus. Well, after another 10 minutes, and we realized our group were the only ones on the bus, my friend Aude, who is a French native, went and talked to the bus driver. Well, apperantly there are two bus number 2's. One that takes the top route, which we were on, the other which takes the route by the ocean and goes right by the college. So, we sat on the bus for another 20 minutes as it went back to right were we came from and then continued the proper direction. So, as we had missed dinner we went to leader price and bought wine, chesse, bread, fruit, and pudding cups to finish out the wonderful day. Even if my hair did still have residue of bird poop in it...

Ile Saint Honorat

While it is out of cronological order, talking about the second island close to Cannes makes more sense logically. We went to this second island a few weeks ago. It was a Friday afternoon and we didn't have classes, so we went for an afternoon adventure.

It was in the fifth century that monks inhabited this island, Saint Honoratus as their leader. Seriously, the fifth century. America doesn't know history like France knows history, and it's fascinating to me. The picture of the old monastery that you can see below was built in the 15th century and is still standing today. Now that's engineering! The architecture of the building is also fascinating. Without a dropped ladder (now build in steps), invaders could not get inside this building. The walls are incredibly thick, and as you can see the windows are very small. What's equally fascinating is the windows open up wider on the inside than the outside. This allowed the monks to ward off invaders and easily shoot them down without the invaders being able to get a clear shot inside. Warrior monks, now that's something I would love to have seen!

Below is the main entry way of the monastery. The parts that have survived the best are absolutely breath-taking. I cannot imagine how one would build such a structure, especially in the 15th century. I suppose that's a comment I've made many a time.

The well that you can see in the middle was where the captured rain water, and I believe it became there only source of water. The monks probably showered once a year it sounds like. Again, the bathing practices and the French. Then again, I'm sure history would show similar bathing practices in other parts of the world...

The building is four stories high. The picture below is taken looking up from the well in the center of the picture above. It was one of my more artistic feeling moments.

And for contrast, the picture below is taken from the third story looking down into the well. This was the center and core of the building, which I suppose was why I ended up photographing it so much. Also, it was the most intact part. There is a large area to the right of this core that used to be the dinning center, but most of it has since fallen due to invasions. Yes, while they did their best holding off invaders, it proved a little difficult. Also, above the dinning center was where the bedrooms were. I never got a good sense of exactly how many monks stayed here, considering how few residences I saw. I imagine there had to be quite a few at one point considering how big this structure is. If not because they needed the space to house the people, then more so because they would have needed the numbers to build such a structure.

Now, this island is still owned and inhabited by the monks, after being seized by the government, temporarily owned and funded by the government, and now back privately owned by the monks; quite a history France has. However, their living quarters have drastically improved from these conditions. Below you can see another attempt at an artistic shot of the new church, and further below is a picture from this 15th century monastery looking over to the new facilities.

And again, from closer to the main facilities.

There are currently 18 monks who reside here, and they have capacity to hold 30. Trust me, the thought of joining the monastery, staying here, and working the vineyards and playing for mass did not go without thought! It's a beautiful church that was built around the fact it's primarily a monastery. The main body of the church is 30+ stalls for the monks, with an altar in the middle of these stalls as well as at the front of the church.

And of course as promised about my blog, a picture of the organ in the back. I think the console is up there as well, but I'm not entirely sure.


And, if I still needed another reason beyond the beauty, serenity, and isolation of this monastery to move in, they have their own winery! Yes, I think I could do quite well here. I wanted to buy a bottle, but unfortunately they run around 40 euro or close to $70. Well, I guess I'll just have to wait until I'm a resident to try it!

Ile Sainte-Marguerite:L'Homme au Masque de Fer

Welcome to the Island of Saint Marguerite!

It is on this island that the presumed Man in the Iron Mask was presumed to have been kept. If you've seen the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, this man in the iron mask could have been King Louis XIV twin brother. It's a good movie, but the accuracy of it is in question. It is Hollywood after all, most movies aren't entirely factual. Then again, there's the problem that no one really knows who was in the mask, so it's a good as guess as anyone's.

The island is about a 15 minute boat ride from Cannes. We also traveled here on our first weekend. Needless to say, I am rather far behind in updating, because we've been here for almost 6 weeks now, and I'm still not finished with the opening weekend. It my hopeful defense, it was a rather full weekend, as you can well see. The island can be seen from the coast on Cannes as well as its sister island, Saint Honorat, which hosts a lovely monastery and vineyards. I'll be posting pictures of that island at a later time.

Here is a picture of the "prison" where the he was kept. We were not allowed to take pictures from the inside, so unfortunately this is all I can show you. It was not the best of accommodations, I can tell you that. Tiny room, with what was probably a bed made of straw, and the restroom facilities consisted of a hole in the corner. There was a window, however! Although, there were a double set of cross bars, so he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Further, there was a nice breeze from inside the room, which is more than I can say for my current room, so maybe it wasn't such a bad living situation after all. I'm only kidding, I'd never want to live there.

Equally enjoyable as the museum was the lovely band that seemed to have set up shop on the island right across form the museum. My ears were bleeding by the time we left... Maybe that's why they were forced to practice on the island. The people of Cannes said they had enough and shipped them right next to the prison with the man in the iron mask. Yes, it's making more sense the more I think about it. And, the museum was much more enjoyable than the band...

The rest of the time was spent walking around and taking in the island. It has stayed rather undeveloped, which provides for really great walking trails and scenery with the ocean surrounding you. We walked around the perimeter of the island. It was fascinating to notice the change in whether or not there was wind as well as a temperature fluctuation of about ten degrees depending on what side of the island you were on.

As you can see from the tree blow, many of the trees looked right out of a Dr. Seuss book! I mean, look at it! Apparently, the strong winds from off the sea are strong enough to actually control how the trees grow. I was kind of surprised that as old as the island is (dating to what, the dawn of time, I suppose?!) that the trees and vegetation weren't larger. Then, as you look at your feet, you realize that the sand and clay soil shouldn't be supporting life of any kind anyway. Which, makes it all the more impressive that there are trees to begin with, especially out of a Dr. Seuss book. I wonder if he came to visit this island...

Also, can you see the little table right there in the background? Yup, had a sack lunch there looking out across the sea. Have I mentioned yet how much I love France? Well, more on that in a later blog I suppose...

The only thing left to show is how picturesque this island is. I should think about a career in photography. France just lends itself so well to pictures, and you don't even have to try. I can't imagine what a real photographer could gain from this island. Paths are lined with trees for a far as the eye can see. It's like the road that's ahead of me; seemingly clearly paved, yet you walk a little further and run across bushed which block what is around the next corner. I may never know what is coming next, but something in France tells me, the next adventure will be just a beautiful if not more stunning than the picturesque moment right before the curve.

Another Tiny Village and Gorges du Verdon

The next day of traveling brought more beautiful sights. We were told we were going to the Gorges du Verdon which is comparable to the Grand Canyon. We had breakfast and boarded the bus nice and early. Well, breakfast turned out to be the wrong idea for the journey that we embarked on. It makes sense to sit and think about it, but I didn't think about it before we left. Talk about some twisting and turning and extremely narrow roads with steep drops on the other side in order to get to this Grand Canyon place! And, we're talking about being on a bus with all of this! We often had to try and pull right up next to the rocky cliff in order to let cars get passed us who were coming from the other direction. I have never been so impressed with the abilities of the bus driver until today. And, like all vehicles in France, he was driving a manual transmission bus, through narrow roads and up hills. After my summer of learning to drive a stick shift I had great respect for our driver. I didn't get sick, but it would have been completely understandable.

We made a stop at this village first because, as I found out when we got there, we took the long route on our way to the Gorges. Long route? Oh yes, total traveling time 3 hours on a bus. And, it wasn't the three hours that got old, but the winding, twisting, turning roads. In hindsight I should have taken a video of this drive. Incredible! Anyway, this first village was very lovely. Here's a picture from up above.

Aren't the roofs just glorious? Such a beautiful old french town. The reason that it's from above can be better understood from the picture below. There is a tiny church set atop a hill. Legend/rumor/what have you says that one of the Knights of Templar was traveling and settled here, or left and then returned here, or sought out this place, I'm not entirely sure. I suppose that's why it's a legend. Regardless, there's a cute little church at the top of a hill, which you have to go on a massive climb to find. After three hours on a bus, I say bring it on!

Well, the route wasn't exactly well marked. I figured if we just kept moving uphill we would have found the route to get there. Well, we ended up on the wrong trail. It was a warm-up I told the others, feeling partly responsible for being so headstrong that "yes, we're moving up hill, of course this route is correct!" I took a picture on our way back to the correct route of this lovely little stream with giraffes! Not real ones, but still charming nevertheless!

And so began our climb up the stairs. Yes, look below. We climb all of those stairs! There were quite a few. I would have counted, if it weren't for the fact I was preoccupied with making sure I could still catch my breath and not die on the slippery 400 year old stone steps. The slippery steps became even more problematic coming back down the hill. I was wearing flip flops because we were going to a lake in the middle of the gorge. I was not properly outfitted for an intense climb. My flip flops plus slippery steps almost equaled a broken tail bone, sprained ankle, or a fractured skull - yes it was that treacherous. But, countless visitors to this area, doing this same climb for how many years? Yes, they had been well worn. However, I write to you just fine. Tail bone, skull, and the rest of my body doing well and in tact. It was a great trek.

Here we have a lovely picture of the church from the inside. In part I was kind of disappointed. All that walking and climbing steps for this? However, the more I thought about what it would have been like to have built this church, getting all the rocks up such a trek I only did once, and actually constructing this? Yes, it became rapidly more incredible.

And yes, as with every church I enter that has an organ, I will be taking a picture, and it will be on this website. No matter how seemingly insignificant of an instrument. So here we go, organ no. 1!


Another myth/rumor/legend about this Night of Templar concerns this star in the picture below. Hopefully you can see the little spec in the upper left hand corner. It's a star that is hung across the two mountains (well, French people call them hills, coming from the Midwest, they're mountains...). Across two mountains! One man strung this star out as he said he would when he returned/settled or something. I can't even imagine how this was done, but way to go!

After the long trek, we made it back down in time to get on the bus and head to the Gorge. I took a picture of this water well. It's much bigger than the little spout that was at St. Paul de Vence, but I'm sure this was their only source of water back in the day. It was also my source of water to rehydrate after the trek. I joked and said that if I got sick from this fountain, then I wanted pictorial proof of what it looked like and where it was. Thankfully I did not get sick, but it still makes a great picture and it was the first public water I drank in France. And I lived to tell about it!

From this lovely village we boarded the bus and made our way to the Gorges du Verdon. As you can already see from the picture below it was yet another gorgeous place. This is actually a man made lake. They put a damn further up stream and what transpired from that was a lake. No salt water, no real sea life, just crystal clear water, great sunshine, and boats moving along. We sat here and had lunch and then had a few hours to relax, burn, and swim the width of the lake. It was so relaxing, especially after an excruciating (well, that's a bit strong) hike up to the church.

While we were swimming and tanning, there were parasailers who were landing on the beach. It was fun to watch them. Even more exciting was when a helicopter landed on the beach. We were all convinced something must have gone horribly wrong. After all, with the winding roads it's doubtful an ambulence would have done much good. The helicopter landed, and the proceeded to leave and head towards the mountain that was right near by, then come back and landed again, and repeated the same procedure for a second time. In the end, we're not entirely sure what happened. We speculated that it was training for pilots learning how to land along the winding roads. Oh, how I do love France.

From there, we made our way back to the college. Here's a picture out the bus window. While it's hard to see, the connection between the Grand Canyon and here made much more sense than just the man made lake. It's a far reaching area of canyons and lakes. It was a beautiful day to look out over it. I was hopeful we would have stopped to take pictures, but alas, this is what we're left with.

We did however make a stop at this lovely bridge and otherwise scenic area.

Most notable about this bridge is that you can go bunge-jumping off the bridge! For the small fee of 150 euros. My question, or problem with that fee, is I would need someone to pay me at least that much to jump, and some people actually willing pay that and jump off a bridge. Do you see how much of a drop there is? Are you kidding me? Well, to each there own. We did get to see someone jump off, and you can see the person if you look at the tiny spec in the upper left hand corner of the picture. My stomach filped as I watched them, I wonder how they're doing after...

This was the other place we stopped which was just a little ways up the road from the bridge. Very senic, very impressive, and the marvels of the world continue to amaze me. These large, rock mountain things are so fascinating when you see them in person because it looks like someone just tore off a chunck of rock from it. There's not steady incline, just heavily jagged rock. Incredible. I don't understand how glaciers work but I sure can and do appreciate the asthetics of it all.

While most of us got out and enjoyed the view, there were those who were too exhausted from the beach to wake up and get off the bus. So, for a final end to this post here's a group picture in front of another incredible part of France.