FRANCE
Saint Paul de Vence
Today we took a flight from Italy to Nice and rented a car to go to Saint Paul de Vence. When we got there we walked up some steps then got to our home. It was right beside the best gelateria in France. The family that owned it had kids that were named Emma and Fabio. Every day Fabio would come over to play. Sometimes we had French lessons and did stuff. One time we drove to Gorges du Verdon and I got a pocket knife by a French company name Opinel. In Gorges du Verdon we slept in front of sunflower and lavender fields. ps: better than a five star hotel. Oh and forgot to tell you…by our apartment in Saint Paul de Vence there was a small bakery. Every morning we went out around the corner to get a fresh baguette and pain du chocolat.
While we were there there was a festival of fire called St. Jean Festival. To celebrate you jump through fire. I jumped through the fire 3 times. Before you jump you’re suppose to wet your hair. I didn’t know that and just thought everyone was sweating. The fire is suppose to take bad luck away.
Vincent van Gogh
Van Gogh was not that famous in his life. He only sold one painting. Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands on March 30th. Van Gogh had two brothers and three sisters. At the age of 27 he finally decided to be an artist. Before that he had lots of different jobs he was a teacher, a minister, a book shop person and art gallery person. His parents were upset because he did a job then stopped a job and so on. So the parents kicked him out of the house. His brother Theo helped him by giving him money to buy food and paint.
Van Gogh learned to draw using pencils or charcoal sticks and sometimes he painted with oil paints. He loved drawing hard working people and he made a painting called The Potato Eaters. It’s one of his most famous paintings. It’s a very dark painting of a poor family eating potatoes. You can even search Van Gogh Potato Eaters. In his middle years he went to Paris to paint. Then his brother Theo sent a letter that impressionism was a new style. Then Van Gogh was inspired by Claude Monet and Edgar Degas. Van Gogh became close friends with the painters and started painting with brighter colours and he painted people on the streets and at the cafes. He also painted 28 self portraits. Then he moved to Arles, France (and ps: we live very close the Arles). OK so let’s talk about Van Gogh. In Arles, Van Gogh rented a big yellow house to live in and Van Gogh invited Paul Gauguin to live with him. The colours in his paintings become more vibrant and the paint got way more thicker and it takes weeks for his paintings to dry. Van Gogh 100 paintings during that time. Sometimes he painted a painting per day. The two artists had an argument and Paul Gauguin left in 1889. Van Gogh could barely take care of himself and so he went to the hospital. Oh forgot to tell you: people think Paul Gauguin cut Van Gogh’s ear off and some people think Van Gogh cut his ear off. In the hospital he painted 150 paintings in a year and some of his best work including Starry Night.
Van Gogh died on July 29, 1890. Van Gogh was cremated and curried next to his brother Theo. Van Gogh died in the middle of a field. Come people think Van Gogh shot himself and others say someone shot him because the angle of how the bullet entered his body. Some people think teenages shot him because the teenagers regularly made fun of Van Gogh like put salt in his drink. Most of his most famous paintings were painted in Saint Remy de Provence, the place where we stayed.
Beaune
Today we went to a hospital. Well, it’s a hospital for the poor and the real name is Hotel Dieu. The owner of the hospital was Nicolas Rolin. He built the hospital so he could go to heaven, not hell. He had 30 beds for the people and everyone got a mug and a bowl and a plate. They also held mass in the hospital. The smart thing is that if a person can’t walk to mass, they just needed to sit on their bed and watch. The roof has a nice pattern and the ceiling is made of colorful ceramic that was red, green, yellow, black and the patterns had pictures that show you hell and heaven. Oh and forgot to tell you, the people that took care of the sick were called nuns. They were hardcore. They went to bed at 9 pm and woke up at 5 pm and best of all…in World War 2, the nuns pretended that a French commander died and they filled a real coffin with only sand and the commander made it back safely to Hotel Dieu. The hotel was made in not 19, not 18, not 7, not 16, not 15 but 1443. That’s before you were born if you’re a kid and before all your parents were born too!
Paris
Today we went to Paris in a car. Close to the end of the car ride I When we arrived we settled in and the next day went on a walking tour. Because baguettes are so famous in France, they have baguette contests. The cool thing is that anyone can be a judge. You just enter your name and if you’re chosen, you could eat like 200,000 baguettes and they’re all different. If you want to find a good baguette in france the bakery has to say boulangerie. That means they wake up early and have to make it fresh. If places say ‘fresh bread’ or ‘pastries’ that means it’s not da one!
In France there’s literally prize for almost every food.
Centre Pompidou
Today we went to Centre Pompidou, also known as the museum of modern art. It has art that whatever you think it is, it is.
Then we had lunch and went to see David Hockney exhibition. My favourite part was the four seasons. It was a video that was made using 9 cameras filming in different direction while driving in a car. Then he stitched it together and did that for each of the 4 seasons. It was set up in a room with 4 benches and every bench faced a different screen and different season.
Musee d’Orsay
Today we went to the Musee d’Orsay. It’s not like the modern museum. It has much older paintings like Van Gogh but first I want to talk about The Fifer Player, a painting by Édouard Manet. Not a lot of people liked it because it had only 4 colours and they were with black, red, yellow and it was a big controversy because it had no background. Then we went to see Van Gogh. I was like is this the real painting? Then my head was blown. My favourite Van Gogh painting was The Church at Auvers.