Tour Paris 13

Yesterday we went to see an unusual art exhibit.  It is a building that, at the end of this month, will be demolished.  The city of Paris invited several well-known street artists to come and live in the building for seven months and do whatever the liked to the interior or the exterior of the building.  Then for one month, right now, October, it is open to the public before being finally demolished.

I could put up more photos, but you'll find better ones here: http://www.tourparis13.fr/

I also noticed that it got a mention from Bill Cunningham: http://nyti.ms/1bzAd6r .  If you don't know who Bill Cunningham is, then you're probably not very interested in fashion.  That's fine, I don't know anything about fashion either, but even if you think it doesn't interest you, I recommend tracking down and finding a copy of the biographical movie, Bill Cunningham New York. It is a fascinating study on the way one person chose to live his life, entirely devoted to one thing, and radically outside "normal".  But that is an aside.

You'd probably assume reading this blog that we saw the interior of the tower.  We didn't.  We started lining up at 1pm.  By 6:15pm, it was clear we wouldn't get in before closing time, so we gave up.  But it wasn't a waste of time.  We took turns being the queue.  It was an interesting atmosphere.  Every time someone did get in, the waiting crowd cheered.  For safety reasons, they only let 49 people be in the tour at one time.   But long queues are common here.  The thing is, although there are dozens of things to do in Paris at any one time, there are thousands of people, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, looking to do something. Carolyn figures that the Parisians don't mind the queues, because they love to talk, and they spend the time talking.