Pacifying Max

Saturday started with going to a local supermarket (a little hole in the wall like C-town) and getting some breakfast supplies. "Cooked" breakfast (fried some eggs) at home, yelled at Max for dropping half of it on the floor, and, on the wrong foot, head out for the day.

After about 40 minutes getting lost in Metro, we emerged from underground at the foot of Notre Dame. The mass was in progress with huge TV screen showing how inside the cathedral a bunch of young people in circus cloth getting blessed by the main clown-in-charge (sorry). The sound system was broadcasting some singning (quite beautiful). A crowd of people was sitting on the chairs (fenced up from the public) in front of the cathedral. We walked about, bought Max his homburg hat - black, polyester - we did try to talk him out of the idea, but he insisted (as expected, I ended up carrying it later in the day). Buying the hat started first of many tricks we employed to pacify Max throughout the day. He lost his yesterday's cool, got pissy early and stayed that way...

From Notre Dame, we walked to Luxemburg Gardens, where we had picnic of some street French food and, yay!, McDonald's (chalk it off to Max).

Thus fortified, we did a tad more walking and arrived at Center of Pompidu (museum of Modern Art), where some of us (wink-wink, Max), ran out of juice again. We sat at nice cafe, front row seats (suspiciously empty), in front of the museum. We ordered two cokes and a coffee and a tea... A street artist performed in front of us. Tourists of all sorts walked by... The waiter came with our order and announced the total - it was 20 (twenty) euro for four non-alcoholic drinks. Which explained the empty seats. But who cares - Max was happy again and we went into museum. Some shocking exhibits nonwithstanding (a nude woman exercising with hoola-hoop), a couple (parts of a couple) having graphical sex on 12 by 12 (feet) canvas (we somehow saved Max from seeing that) but you are welcome, Leon, the visit was a big success. Max was so inspired by a video exhibit of artist-puppeteer Alexander Calder (do yourself a favor and see this video), that he wanted immediately to stop by an art supply shop, get some clay, wire, fuzzy wire (huh?) and start sculpting... He insisted that I use my Blackberry (duh, Dad) to locate the closest such shop. So, the rest of the way was spent "looking" for art supply shop.

... I'll stop for now here.... More, and the pictures, later... It is Sunday now (the Internet was not working yesterday when we came home) and we need to get going...