Banff, Alberta --- Around Town

We started the morning off with a quick stop at the Cascade Gardens.  The spot has potential, but we are here too early in the season – all the cascade pools were empty and most of the flower beds had only just been planted.  Instead of leaving the van parked at the gardens for the morning, I attempted to find a spot closer to town.  But Saturday in Banff can be frustrating if you are driving a 22-foot van and all the public parking spaces are closed off because of festivals, bike-a-thons, and various other civic activities.  Our town map indicated that there was a great RV parking lot near the bridge, but when we got there it had been barricaded off for this car show – look at all the prime parking spaces they are taking up! 

We did manage to find parking a few blocks away and headed to the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies for a tour of some historic homes in town.  I was a bit disappointed in the tour, actually – the tour was very brief, just 30 minutes, and both homes were a little more recent (1930’s-50’s décor) and decorated with fewer antiques than I’d imagined.  The Whyte house was interesting because Catharine and Peter had both been painters and the parks service still uses the studio area for artists in residence.

We then went to the equally unexciting Banff Park Museum.  Back in the early days of the park, visitors came here hoping to see wildlife without having to work too hard to do so.  The park created a Natural History (read: taxidermy) museum where visitors could view wildlife specimens up close.  There used to be a zoo so that people could see the bears without putting on their hiking boots.  Although the zoo has since shut down, the taxidermy museum has been preserved much as it was back then and some of the 100-year-old stuffed animals are showing their age.

We saved the best stop for last – the imposing Fairmont Banff Springs hotel.   It sits on a hill with some of the best views of Bow Valley.  The historic hotel was built in 1888 and at the time was the world’s largest hotel.  According to our guidebook rooms start at $439/night – we’ll take the $30 campground, thank you very much.

Most of the hotel is accessible to tourists.  They have a few antique items and photos on display (Marilyn Monroe played golf here once, apparently).  Originally we had contemplated hitting the hotel spa, but we quickly torpedoed that idea once we saw the prices – $179 for a 50-minute “relaxation” massage.  At that price, I doubt I’d be able to relax at all – with tip that’s like a week’s worth of campground fees!  We wandered off in the direction of the hotel bar, but were lured out on to the patio by the sounds of bagpipe music being played.  It was sort of relaxing (as relaxing as bagpipe music gets, anyway) and at least the view was lovely. 

Turns out there was a wedding reception at the hotel that afternoon, which was why the piper was piping.  We snuck a peek at the reception hall before leaving the hotel – very elegant. 

The sun came out just long enough for us to head north of town to hike near Lake Minnewanka.

The map made it out to be a nice leisurely stroll along the lakeside.  As we started the hike and it kept gaining altitude through a thick forest we thought maybe we’d taken the wrong trail.  But then we came around a bend to a clearing and realized that the trail actually was going along the lake – but it was about 250 feet above the shoreline.

Free Museum Day: Louvre & Centre Pompidou

Today was our last chance to check out the Paris museums for free (first Sunday of every month).  Our plan of attack was to spend a few hours in the Louvre in the morning then go home, take a break, and tackle the Pompidou Center in the evening.  Despite the long line to get in via the Louvre's Pyramid entrance, the Porte des Lions entrance did not let us down and we were in without any line at all, other than waiting for the five people who walked in ahead of us to take their stuff off the security x-ray belt.  We then zoomed past the Italian Renaissance paintings to the pyramid area.

From there we explored some of the galleries we didn't see on our previous visits.  Scantily clad people seemed to be the order of the day.

Grande Odalisque by Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres

Venus de Milo

Remember this guy from our walk along the Promenade Plantée?

I tried to hold back from taking too many photos of specific pieces of art.  Instead I tried to capture an overall impression of the museum galleries. 

Italian renaissance paintings

large-format French paintings

Northern Europe late gothic sculpture

Italian sculpture

Greek antiquities

View down into the central sculpture court

Something people always say is "Remember to look UP when you're in the Louvre".  So I made sure to do that from time to time as well...

We appreciate the Louvre because its layout allows you to go from room to room without having to backtrack (very much) through rooms you've already seen.  It's actually a pretty good museum design, even though the building wasn't originally intended to be a museum.

In direct contrast was the Pompidou Center (to me, anyway). The escalator runs along just one side of the building.  This is the main pathway to get to all the floors.  On a crowded day like today, there are considerable traffic issues when there are a lot of people coming down and someone who is going up (on the outside lane) needs to cross over into the museum space.

But then again, the plexiglass walls of the escalator do give a great view towards the northwest of Paris.

My other main complaint was that there wasn't really a good "flow" from one exhibit room to the next...we found ourselves walking back through rooms we had already seen to get to new areas.  It's almost as if the designers focused more on how the building would look from the outside than how it would work as a museum.  Anyway, the classic modern "greats" were very well-represented, including Braque, Miró, Dalí , Kandinsky, Matisse, and Picasso.

Top right: Henri Matisse Pink and White Head, bottom right: Pablo Picasso Portrait of Young Girl

Dado's La Grande Ferme deserves a closer look.

The more recent modern art was a mixed bag...some of it I really liked, like Chuck Close's portrait of  Arme Glimcher (Arme).

Other pieces that I found interesting were this (perhaps?) couch, this reworked chain-link fence, this out-of-focus-on-purpose painting, and this...well, whatever this is.

Clockwise from left: V. Panton Siége, Demakersvan Panneau Lace Fence, M. Fornes *Y/Struc/Surf., B. Frize Oma

 
Here are three works by Yves Klein.  Amazingly, his monochromatic paintings have sold for multi-millions.  This gives me a serious case of "Uhhh...I can do that".

Don't be deceived, Mimmo Paladino's Elmo has nothing to do with the popular Sesame Street character.

Some of the art just seemed very pretentious.  Definitely do not touch the oversize croquet pegs leaning against the wall.  Stay behind the black line on the floor, please.

André Cadere Six Round Wooden Sticks

If you hadn't guessed, Modern art isn't really my cup of tea.  But usually I can understand why it is art.  There were a couple of cases where I honestly felt like the artist was "putting one over" on the art dealers, curators, general populace, etc.

Allan McCollum's Plaster Surrogates 1985

This looks like something you might see at a Home Depot or Mr. Bricolage:

Marthe Wéry Peinture Venise 82

And this one just looks like a kindergarten geography/craft lesson gone awry: 

Thomas Hirschhorn Outgrowth 2005

I'm sure it all comes down to personal preference...art is very subjective.  For me, it's enough to call it art if it looks like the artist at least put a little creative effort into the work.  Painting/arranging boards, hanging blacked-out picture frames, and papier mâché-ing a bunch of globes seems to me a bit like phoning it in.

But...one of the very nice things about the Pompidou Center is the view from the roof terrace.  It was early evening and a little overcast but we could still make out Sacré Coeur.

We could also see the colorful figurines in the Stravinsky Fountain down below.

We thoroughly enjoyed our last free museum day, it is wonderful that the city of Paris opens its museums to the public once a month like this.  A fun fact that I've recently learned from a tour guide is that if you looked at every piece of artwork in the Louvre for 3 seconds it would take 3 months solid to see it all.  I am sure we only scratched the surface, and probably missed many great artworks, but for now it will have to do.

The Panthéon

Today we took a walk in the 5th district, past the Panthéon.  It was originally built as a church to honor Sainte Geneviève.  After the French Revolution, the building alternated between being used as a church and for secular purposes until 1885, when it was made a civic mausoleum dedicated to the great men and women of France.

The Panthéon was built in the neoclassical style and modeled on the Pantheon in Rome.  Twenty-two Corinthian columns line the portico.  Construction was completed in 1790.

The interior contains a mix of religious artwork depicting the life of Sainte Geneviève and monuments honoring the country of France.

At first glance it seems like any other church or cathedral until you realize that there is no altar.  Where the altar would be is instead a grouping called The National Convention, which shows a female personification of France (called "Marianne") surrounded by patriots and revolutionaries.

For the most part the ceiling has been left bare of frescoes, which gives the interior space a light and bright feeling.

The exception is the central dome which has a colorful fresco depicting the Apotheosis of Sainte Genevieve by Antoine Gros.  The dome is constructed with three layers.  The fresco is on the middle layer and is seen through an oculus (hole) in the first layer.  The third layer of the dome is the outer layer, built of stone and covered with a lead roof.

French physicist Léon Foucault experimented here in the Panthéon with a pendulum suspended from the center of the 272-foot dome.  In 1851 he was able to tangibly demonstrate the earth's rotation on its axis by watching the apparent "movement" of a pendulum swinging in an arc (it is an illusion, as the pendulum's arc is stationary -- the earth is what is moving.)  Too complicated for me to explain in a few sentences, the wikipedia article actually has good animation with a scientific explanation to show how it works.  There is still a pendulum on display in the Panthéon, here it is in action:



We then went down to the enormous crypt, which is where all the great men of France rest for eternity.  Flanking the entryway are the tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau.  Clockwise from left: Voltaire's tomb, Rousseau's tomb, statue of Voltaire.

Three literary greats are buried in the same crypt: Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Emile Zola.  The remains of Dumas were only just moved to the Panthéon in 2002.  On the right are Pierre and Marie Curie.  Marie Curie is the first woman to be buried in the Panthéon for her own achievements (the first woman interred there was someone's wife).

France has high expectations of its current citizens, because there are several completely empty crypts, just waiting to be filled with "great men".

We came back upstairs just as a tour was leaving for the dome.  You can only go up there as part of the tour, so we joined in.  The birds-eye view allowed us to see the Foucault Pendulum from above.

Another view of the main floor.

Getting up close and personal with the ceiling allows you to see the damage that gravity and time can cause.  Other areas were covered with netting to prevent bystanders below from falling stonework.

We were then led outside and climbed more steps to walk around the exterior terrace on the dome.

The views were pretty great, and you could walk all the way around the dome to get a 360-degree view of the city.

Eiffel Tower, Invalides, Saint-Sulpice with La Défense behind

Notre Dame with the Pompidou center behind

The church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, just around the corner

And a couple more snaps of us enjoying the view.