November 6th

Today we woke up in uncomfortable ways on the floor and bench of the boat and decided to find another place to stay for then next few nights. We went into Centre Pompidu planning to meet Nir at 11:00, only to find out he was not coming, but Joy's band did want to play at 11... and through the confusion, Joy and I ended up doing the Centre Pompidu ourselves for a few hours. (Incidentally, it was free, as many many things are on the first of the month in off tourist seasons.) We went to a children's light exhibit that played a lot with shadows, and then to an "Invisible Maze" exhibit there. The invisible maze was very cool. You put on a headset and walked into an empty room. The headset would vibrate whenever you "hit a wall" and you had to find your way through the maze. Next we headed upstairs to the usual Pompidu artwork. It has been recently rearranged into an
exhibit they call "Big Bang" and is organized based on themes rather than chronologically. I have to admit that there wasn't anything that particularly grabbed me from the exhibit, though that may have been due to tiredness. It is also a lot of artwork to take in at once, a feeling I remember having last time I saw it.

After grabbing a sandwitch Joy and I went next door to the Brancusi Museum. It is set up exactly as his studio was, the entire studio having been given to the french government in hopes of saving the space that he carefully organized while he worked. All the works he sold were replaced with plaster replicas. Beautiful space!

Next for the day was a bit of grocery shopping for dinner, and then Joy did meet up with the Good Looking Bastards to play in front of the Pompidu, where all artists are allowed to work and play for free. I listened to them for a bit and then wandered around the square peeking at the other performers. At about 5:00 they packed up and Joy and I checked into a Hotel for the night, then headed back to the boat to make dinner and collect our things. Joy had told her boatmates that we would be cooking, and the party expanded, so we were afraid there would be tons of people there. Insead, there were only six of us, as had been originally planned. We cooked, ate, and sat at the table for several hours enjoying the company, then walked up to the train
station singing musical numbers, which Nir even knew in Hebrew. Avie, Joy, and I were very amused.