Toupary

We had the conference dinner for the second conference of the week at a restaurant called Toupary.



It was on the 5th floor of a department store on the bank of the Seine. Here is a view from the restaurant window of a ship going under the famous Pont Neuf bridge.



We enjoyed ourselves at the banquet.



Especially dessert.

Another Picture

There's another picture from the Louvre over at Christina's TravelBlog, for you fans of The DaVinci Code.

Mona Lisa Overdrive

Yesterday, after the first conference I'm here for ended, we went to the Louvre. It's open late on Wednesday, so we were able to get a few hours in. They say you can spend a whole month there, but since I'm generally interested in more modern works (a preference Christina shares to some extent), I think we had enough time.

We started out with some Egyptian antiquities...



Then we made the obligatory pilgrimage to the Mona Lisa...



There she is!



One of their Vermeers was in Frankfurt, but they still had "The Astronomer" around.




We amused ourselves by making up fake captions to some of the pictures. My caption for this Reubens was, "Can I get a little help here?"



My favorite painting may have been Hieronymus Bosch's The Ship of Fools. And not just because I like saying "Hieronymus Bosch." It's a fairly cutting satire of religion...see the nun in the center playing the lute and attempting to take a bite out of some sort of food. (Sorry that the image isn't clearer, but it's hard to take pictures without a flash.)



Despite the best efforts of the museum staff to fail to give us directions, we made our last stop at the Venus de Milo. Perhaps because of the lack of crowds, perhaps because of the size of the piece, perhaps because of the setting, she was more impressive to me than the Mona Lisa.

More Images of Paris

Yesterday, between the conference and banquet, we snuck over to the Musee D'Orsay. Sadly, it closed at 5:45. This was particularly sad since the sign said they closed at 6. Ah, Paris.

Here's Christina with Whistler's Mother...



Here she is with a Degas painting...



When we woke up this morning, it was snowing. It make look pretty, but it makes getting to the conference a little tricky. (The coffee never arrived at the conference due to snow delays. Luckily, I don't drink coffee.)

Here are a couple of pictures out our window.

Images of Paris

Greetings from Paris. I suppose I (or Christina) will have a travel commentary later, but I need to run to lunch soon. So in the meantime, enjoy these pictures I've taken.

The first one is of Paris from the Pompidou Center. I kind of like the "artistic quality" of this one.



We went to see the modern art museum in the Pompidou Center. Here's Christina walking through one of the pieces.



Here's a piece called "Fibonacci Crocodile".



If you look closely, you see the Fibonacci numbers coming out of the crocodile.



Here's Andy Warhol's "Ten Lizes".



Here's the Eiffel Tower from our window. They have a light show every night that is actually fairly tacky.



And here's Christina on our walk home from dinner last night.