My last classes at the high school were a bit bittersweet.
The kids were (mostly) really adorable -- one brought me a special landaise
pâté and a couple others brought me cake. I took pictures of them all, and they
are so cute. I really am going to miss them (except for like one group, that I
was pretty fed up with, haha).
On Friday, I packed up after class and jumped on a train to
Paris where
Vanessa met me the next morning. It has been a seriously fabulous
week, but I'll try to just hit the highlights.
After we got settled into our wonderful apartment in the
11th district, we took a stroll to Père Lachaise and Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.
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| Really cool tomb in Père Lachaise |
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The grave of Chopin
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| The legendary Sarah Bernhardt |
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| Parc des Buttes-Chaumont |
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| Gazebo in the middle of Parc des Buttes Chaumont |
On Sunday, we headed over to the Latin Quarter to look at
the book market, wander « le pont des arts » ("the bridge of arts")
which is covered in love locks, and take a walking tour of the city.
Unfortunately, due to a minor mishap on Saturday in which Vanessa stepped into
a hole in the cobblestone, her foot was hurting pretty bad by the end of the
tour, so we cut the day short and headed home to rest up a bit.
Rearranging the schedule, we headed back to the Latin
Quarter on Monday where we explored the Musée Nationale du Moyen Age (National
Museum of the Middle Ages -- aka Musée Cluny). This little treasure was
amazing! The only disappointment was that one of the greatest medieval
tapestries wasn't on display while we were there. Fortunately, however, the
rest of the museum was still amazing, and we had a lot of fun looking at all
the art and other tapestries.
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| Dude just carving some other dude's eye out |
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| The remains of the roman baths. |
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| The man we dubbed "Mr. New Booty" (I mean, how could we NOT?) |
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| A larger picture perspective on Mr. New Booty |
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| Whoever this is has no hands. And he's not happy about it. |
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| Manuscriiiiiipt |
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| ....WHAT? |
After Musée Cluny, we had a pretty relaxing lunch before
heading over to the famous bookshop Shakespeare & Co. The bookshop was
unfortunately overrun with tourists and not really at all what I was expecting.
I think the space would be nice if it wasn't so crowded, but it was kind of
hard to navigate with all the people, not to mention browsing books. The books
were also not what I was expecting -- I kind of figured such a quirky place
would be a used bookstore, but it was actually just regular books (not signed,
not special edition, just books you could more easily order off Amazon). There
were some really cool books upstairs, but they were part of a library (which if
there hadn't been so many people, and had been a bit more time, I would have
enjoyed reading in).
We also hit up Sainte-Chapelle on Monday, which I've never
found to be particularly beautiful -- it's ornate, of course, but so
overwhelming that I cease to see the beauty. If the room was a bit plainer to
highlight the stained glass (or vice versa), I think it would be amazing. As it
is, it mostly just hurts my eyes to look at. They did have a video of the
cleaning process they're going through with the stained glass, and that was
very interesting.
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| Panorama of the stained glass at Sainte-Chapelle (it's pretty this way because you don't see the rest of the gaudy decorations) |
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| (Always pictures of Notre Dame) |
Tuesday morning, we tried to get up early to get to the
Catacombs, but ended up only being about 10 minutes early (which meant we had
about a 2.5 hour wait in line to get in), but we met a really nice girl from
the states who was in line behind us and so the time didn't pass *too* slowly.
Plus the Catacombs are worth it.
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| These were some super sort tunnels |
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| Excellent carvings |
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| "Stop, you are entering the domain of the dead" |
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| This guy had such an amazing nose! |
After ascending
from the depths of Paris, we headed over to Montmartre where we climbed up to
Sacre Coeur to enjoy the view. We also hit up a tiny little museum of Romantic
writers and artists (like George Sand and her beau, Chopin) which was
absolutely amazing. I love George Sand, so I pretty much just fangirled the
entire time.
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| I'm not sure who this is supposed to be, but there's totally some evil guy creeping in the background. |
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| The arm of George Sand and Chopin's hand |
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| Surprise photo! |
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| Sacré Coeur |
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| Favorite Gargoyle |
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| This guy was amazing -- I've got video of him to put up later |
After dinner, we headed over to the erotic museum, which was
a little disappointing compared to when I went last time -- less history, more
strange art exhibits. :(
On Wednesday morning, we went over to Montparnasse Tower
(our tour guide had recommended it) and took in the view over the city on the
highest terrace in Paris, and then had a coffee at the café and stared out at
the skyline.
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| It looks a lot smaller in the photos |
After Montparnasse, we headed back to the Latin Quarter to
have a picnic lunch by the Seine (okay, we ate crepes) and then we went to the
Archeological Crypts in front of Notre Dame. Seriously worth it -- I'm sort of
in love with archaeology even though I've never studied it formally, so it was
really interesting to see the origins of Paris (and, ultimately, France).
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| The remains of the port |
We were going to try to go into Notre Dame, but there was a
huge line to get in to look at the cathedral (and we've both been inside before
anyway), so we decided to skip it. (I know, blasphemous; my poor Notre Dame
will think I don't love her anymore.)
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| The Lady herself |
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| Me with one of my oldest friends |
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| Lightsaber tourguide -- you're doing it right |
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| Me with my two oldest friends. :D |
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| I am clearly Quasimodo |
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| Imitating the lions in the Saint Michel fountain -- they look like they're hacking up a hairball |
That night we had dinner at Le Procope (I'll gush about the
food in a different post) which is the oldest café in the world (started in the
1600s). Many famous people used to
frequent this restaurant, including Rousseau, La Fontaine, Voltaire, and even Benjamin
Franklin. It was a really interesting place (fancy fancy!).
Then we decided to do a night on the town à la « Midnight in
Paris ». (If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend it; it's pretty
fantastic.) So we went wandering in the Latin Quarter, having a few drinks,
before heading over to the Saint Etienne du Mont church at midnight to sit on
the steps, waiting to be swept away to the 1920s. No time travel occurred. :(
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| Waiting for the car together |
We got up late Thursday since we are both old ladies who
apparently can't stay out past midnight.
We headed over to the « Maison Victor Hugo » ("Victor Hugo's
House") in Place des Vosges which was a rather fun, small museum that
showed where Victor Hugo had lived.
After relaxing in the park in the square of Place des
Vosges, we headed over to Tour Jean Sans Peur, which is basically a medieval
tower in the middle of Paris. It was actually quite interesting to see, but
involved a LOT of reading, which my exhausted brain had trouble handling.
That night we had dinner at Au Fil des Saisons (rave reviews
in an extra-special foodie post).
On Friday, we went to Fontainebleau. I recommend. I so very
highly recommend. If you ever come to Paris and only have time to leave the
city for one day, skip Versailles and go to Fontainebleau. First, it wasn't
completely overrun with people like Versailles tends to be. Second, the
architecture is just better. The decorations are better. It's just all around
better. The only thing that Versailles has is better gardens (but you can
totally check out the Garden of the Tuilleries in the heart of Paris which was
done by the same guy who designed the Versailles gardens).
I was absolutely in love with the
ballroom at Fontainebleau, and they had a neat exhibition of paintings of
Bonaparte and his family (including a creepy painting of his son as an
extremely seductive baby??? I don't even know; it's France).
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| The gardens at Fontainebleau |
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| The chateau itself |
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| Henri IV -- the most fun-loving king there was |
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| This is the creepiest baby I have ever seen -- he looks like he's trying to seduce the camera. "Hey baby, wanna play with my rattle?" *wiggly eyebrows* WHAT IS THAT?! |
It was kind of confusing to get to Fontainebleau, though.
The directions say to go to a certain train station and take this train in a
certain direction and get off at this certain stop. Very simple. Except there's
no clear place to buy tickets for that train??? Luckily, we went to the metro
information window and asked, and the lady sold us the tickets right there.
On Saturday we headed to the Musée d'Orsay, which was
amazing. So amazing. SO BIG, but so amazing. But maybe that's just because I
love Van Gogh. They had a wonderful exhibit about Van Gogh's life and work
based on a book written by some other guy whose name I can't remember. But it
was pretty spectacular. They also had an exhibit about Gustav Doré which was so
cool! I knew that he did wonderful illustrations, but he was also extremely
multi-talented and dabbled in drawing, painting, sculpting, and engraving. It
was a really really awesome exhibit. We spent a good 2 hours wandering the
museum before we hit our limit.
After another lunch of crepes by the Seine, we headed over
to the Eiffel Tower. Mostly for a photo-shoot. It's way too expensive and time
consuming to go up the tower more than once (and we'd both already been).
Finally we headed up to the Arc de Triomphe since we figured it would be
something easy to visit. (Someone *ahem* mom and dad *ahem* gave me the impression
that there were no stairs, just an elevator.) Actually, it's like 300 stairs to
the top and the elevator is only supposed to be for handicapped people. So, it
turned out not being as easy as I thought. But the view was pretty nice.
Sunday was a really chill, relaxing day during which we
mostly ate, so I'll save that for the foodie post.
As I type this, I'm just sitting at a café -- Vanessa got on
the RER to CDG about 1.5 hours ago so I'm left alone for the moment before I
meet Melissa (in about 1.5 hours) to head over to Beauvais airport (aka --
there's an airport in Paris that isn't CDG??) and then onto Manchester and
(ultimately) Cardiff.
(I'm actually home now, though when I wrote this, I was still in
Paris... Foodie Blog and Cardiff Update to follow probably sometime this
weekend or next week.)
Can't believe I go home in less than a month 17 days! Until next
time, DFTBA.
