hoofing it

No shoes are comfortable enough to compel me to walk for more than 6 hours straight, but walk I did. And for most of the day yesterday. I got to the Louvre in time to be in the first 20 people to get in. I met a lovely woman, from Orange County, in line - she was on her way home after a month here solo - and we ended up meeting for lunch in the middle of our respective tours. She was incredibly sweet and even got choked up as she told me that she was leaving the next day.
Many people have told me that one could spend weeks in the Louvre and not see everything. I felt like I got in a good tour in 6 hours. I suppose that having been to the Met in New York a couple of times as well as SF's Legion of Honor and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, I have seen a lot of really old and fantastic paintings. I loved the instalations of Napoleon's rooms from Versailles, and the halls wherein they keep the paintings by David, Da Vinci, Velåzquez, Titian, Caravaggio and Delacroix. It was interesting how when walking through the halls, these painters, in particular Da Vinci and Jacques-Louis David, really jumped out at me. So intense. There were many paintings that I did not care for at all. After six hours, I walked a bit more: to the Metro, back to the apartment. Then went out dancing later that night.
I ended up at this little underground club, literally a cave, where a blues/swing band was playing. Lots of people were dancing. I was one of three people there under the age of 50, but you'd never have known by the way everyone danced. It was a blast. Finally around 1am I left, hoping to catch a bus or taxi home. Little did I know what kind of super-human feat that is in downtown Paris on a Friday night. I had never stayed out past the 12:30 Metro curfew before. So, not only was it raining, but I was not wearing waterproof shoes. Nor did I know which bus to take from there, and none of the bus destinations were familiar. I bought an umbrella from a cute Tunisian guy named Karim, who invited me to return next year and go to Tunisia with him. I swear, the men in France are as flirtatious as their reputation suggests. My host is really the only exception so far. Anyway, after about and hour in the rain with wet shoes and absolutely no empty taxis in sight, I ran into a couple of people who were in the same predicament, and after about two sentences of my limited French, the guy (David) broke into perfectly American-sounding English. The girl, Sheila, was from Poland and spoke about as much English as I French. So we spoke a mix of languages to each other which was fun. They had just met that evening through a mutual friend, and post-party, had also been trying to get her a taxi for awhile. When we realized that it was not going to happen, David invited the two of us to crash at the apartment where he was staying, which was a few blocks away. Given the fact that Sheila and David had a close mutual friend, and the fact that they were both clearly kind and interesting peole, I had no qualms about going along. It was one of those perfect traveling experiences, where one ends up somewhere one never expected to be. It was too far to walk home, and I gave Laurent a call and left a message that I would be home in the morning. The lace where David was staying was this lovely flat with a pull-out couch that Sheila and I shared. We spent awhile swapping videos on YouTube (she had not seen "Shoes") and David showed us a few awesome short films. One called Overtime, a very moving Jim Henson tribute, and a Sundance-nominated film by a friend of his called GRATTE-PAPIER. David is the son of Belgian parents who lived in Turkey for most of his childhood. He's a 6'2' tall, blonde, blue-eyed Turk who speaks 5 languages and works in PR. Sheila is from Poland, here because she just started her own advertizing agency. Needless to say, we had a good time hanging out. Got about 5 hours of sleep and then off in different directions on the Metro. Now I"m back at Laurent's place (we've by now figured out how to get a cable internet connection hooked up) and Laurent, his friend Brice and myself are eating chocolatines and critiquing my French workbook. Tonight there's a party after the slam poetry contest Brice's girlfriend is competing in. Sadly, I'll miss the poetry slam, but I'll meet up with them later. I'm meeting some other folks from couchsurfing.com for drinks before that. It's so loud here, but I've been so tired at the end of each night that I've had no trouble sleeping through it all. Angers tomorrow!