Pompidou and circumstance

On Day 2 of our visit to Paris, we went to the Pompidou center and I had the nutella crepe I had been craving. I got a sugar crepe for Josephine and Amelia to share but I was stunned when Josephine said she didn't like it. She must have gotten a bit without sugar, I don't know, but anyway, more for us! The Pompidou Center had a great children's exhibit with transparency machines (yes, overheads) setup in all sorts of ways with lots of shapes and patterns and materials that you could project onto nearby screens, patterns and surfaces. It was very hands on and interesting. They also showed a few short movies created with similar techniques which the girls enjoyed. One was from an African-Canadian called "Black Soul" that was very powerful but difficult to explain to a 4 1/2 year old. On the upper levels of the Pompidou were fantastic views of the city (which paled in comparison to the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower but at the time they were the best views we'd seen) and an exhibition of modern art. I gave Josephine my camera and told her she could take photos of any piece of art she liked. These photos will be posted shortly. There was a special exhibit from a private collectors that included a number of pieces from Africa and also Robert Mappelthorpe. I'm sure all the grandparents are happy to know that Josephine didn't seem to notice the Mappelthorpe pieces.

Josephine's favorite parts of the Pompidou were the escalators. Amelia was asleep after the movies in the children's exhibition so she missed much of the fun. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and visiting the park, where Amelia had her unfortunate experience in the carousel as related by Dan in an earlier post. She was all strapped in and happy as a clam until... who knows what... then she couldn't get out fast enough. They had to stop the ride and I had to run around and take her, her strewn mittens and sloughed sneakers out of there to regroup. Amelia had a tough afternoon actually. She wanted to go in a play park but it cost money and was closing in 15 minutes. So, I asked if we could go in for free and the answer was "non!" Then there was the carousel. Then she wanted to ride the ponies. We tried that twice but each time she was too scared to get tied into the saddle. Then, finally, we said she could ride the swings (again, for a price) but some sort of not-listening-sufficiently-to-the-rules type catastrophe occured and we took her out. She nearly stripped naked right there in the park she was so upset. Don't ask me why but Amelia's typical reaction to not getting what she wants is to start taking off her clothes. I think she knows that it gets a pretty good reaction from the adults around so it works for her. Things got better from there -- we had a nice pasta and pizza dinner and everyone went easily to sleep.