I Saw de Sade

You know you are staying with a thoughtful and generally wonderful family when, on their way to Normandy, they not only leave you a breakfast ready to prepare (including an entire loaf of brioche!), but put beans and water in the coffee machine so all you have to do is press "on". Needless to day, I pressed "on".

Today was a Musée D'Orsay day: we can get in free with our ISEP cards as French students. This is fantastic news. We waited outside for a while, under a statue of an elephant. Considering the depth of my passion for elephants, it is unsurprising that I felt the need to take a picture.

Just pretend he's right-side-up.

We went our separate ways once inside the museum, and I stumbled upon an exhibit on de Sade and the artists influenced by his work, which was due to close on 25 January. After wandering in and reading some of the descriptions, I was fascinated enough to pay €5 for an audio guide. I took over two hours to get through the exhibit; it was fascinating en an often-disturbing and yet fully artistic way. That is, it was compiled elegantly and the pieces were excellent (tons of Rodin, Delacroix, Cézanne even, etc.), so even though the subject matter was frequently rated R or worse, it was not overwhelming. Perhaps two steps down from Game of Thrones.

When I emerged from the exhibit, everyone had left. They had tried to contact me, but who even knows with my crazy little phone, and I was hidden in the deep recesses of "Sade". Knowing that, without any phone numbers or wifi, I had no chance of finding them, I went home.

We met for dinner at Flam's, a Tarte Flambée restaurant chain that I have dined at in Erstein (my recommendation, again). Then, we took the métro to rue Moufftard for some entertainment, and I found myself in the single sketchiest métro tunnel, right at Châtelet of all places! If you took a métro tunnel and horror-movie-ified it, this is what you get.

World's creepiest métro station, as poorly captured on film above.

Walking to rue Moufftard, I met a new friend, the Dino.

For future reference, the Métro at Châtelet gets significantly creepier the later it gets (p=0.05). In fact, I believe the relation is exponential, such that it is always better to be with someone after midnight in this station. Don't bring your children. Let's put it this way: never before have I seen such bright red eyeshadow.