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Metro Stations, Marais, and the Musée d'Orsay

View from one of the clocks in Musée d'Orsay

Bonjour!

This weekend, I wound up going to BHV on three consecutive days. BHV is a gigantic department store with an extensive papeterie section and a bookstore. I learned about it from this article on the Damask Love blog, which is full of other recommendations that I need to check out. As always, I enjoyed spending an extensive amount of time looking at stationary and books.

View of the massive BHV Marais from the metro station

On Saturday, I spent an excessive amount of time trying to find Violette & Co., a queer and feminist bookstore that is supposed to be thirteen minutes away from my homestay. After the thirteen minute mark was long gone, I decided to take the metro to Marais, Paris' gay district and home to BHV, to visit Les Mots à la Bouche (Words in the Mouth). Les Mots à la Bouche is a gay bookstore that was, unsurprisingly, not very intersectional. Like, their website has categories for "Sélection gay" (2037 books), "Sélection lesbienne" (982 books), and "Sélection généraliste" ("general interest", 349 books). In addition to highlighting the fact that this store is missing representation for many people in the LGBTQ+ community, their website also demonstrates the fact that the majority of the books in the store are geared towards cisgender gay men.

After a somewhat unsatisfying morning, I got lunch and spontaneously decided to go to the Musée d'Orsay. In order to get there, I had to take a large train, which was a new and exciting experience. The museum itself was incomprehensible beautiful. Since my trip was entirely unplanned, I went by myself. Your results may vary, but I found that exploring the museum on my own allowed me to enjoy it more thoroughly. I will cede all efforts at describing this museum with words alone to these photographs I took and some brief explanatory captions.

I've never been to New York, so this model of the Statue of Liberty is as close as I've gotten to the real thing.

This beautiful crystal projection was tucked away in a display with many pottery items and paintings.
This impeccably designed room was empty, except for those of us taking pictures.

Van Gogh's famous Portrait of the Artist

The real icing on the cake of this weekend was the handout a very smiley man handed me as I left the metro station. It is for a film about Scientology! I have always thought that Scientology successfully found converts in the United States because of American culture's emerging secularity and worship of celebrity. But apparently it has spread to France? I am very tempted to check it out to satisfy my own curiosity, but I likely will not because Scientology is scary.


Best wishes,
Lydia

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