Monday-- As you probably already guessed based on my other travel stories we got up early. We headed to Paris via the train, starting at St. Pancras (which is the international station right next to King's Cross, for those Harry Potter fans). We got to ride through the Chunnel, which I guess was pretty cool but it was kind of a let down because it's just a really long, dark tunnel. But, the fact that it takes you from London to Paris makes it about a hundred times better.
We actually didn't spend much time in Paris the first day though. As soon as we got into the city we boarded a coach that took us to Chartres Cathedral, which is really famous for its medieval stained glass and gothic architecture and such. Our tour guide was Malcom Miller, who is famous because he's been studying the cathedral for like 40 years so it was cool to hear the history of the building from him. Our train was late so we didn't get to spend as much time there as planned, but we got to wander around a little after the tour in the cathedral and around the town. It was a cute little place. One of the little patisseries also provided my first opportunity to use the little but of French I had learned in our five minute lesson the night before. They had no idea what I said. But I still managed to get my strawberry tart so I guess it all worked out.
By the time we got back into Paris it was decently late, but there was no way we could just stay at the hotel. So, since it was night we decided to go meander (if you can meander on the metro, that is) over to the Eiffel Tower and see it all lit up. A few train changes later we found ourselves looking at one of the world's most famous landmarks in all of it's glory. It was pretty and blue, and therefore we took a ton of pictures. I have to admit that it was different than I thought, but it was still really captivating. Pretty much as soon as we got off the metro (the metro is Paris' version of the underground, but the way) we had a fantastic view of it. Unfortunately the view was tainted a little by the guys who kept approaching tourists trying to sell little eiffle tower keychains ("three for a euro! we're practically giving it away!"). They would come right up and insert themselves into your group and jangle their keychains at you. This wouldn't be too bad if it only happened once, but they were swarming all over the place, and they were at every single touristy place-- Versailles, Notre Dame, etc. By the end of the week I just wanted to avoid them like the plague. But going to the touristy places was still worth it, I admit. Especially because the Eiffel Tower totally glitters on the hour. And I mean it full on glitters-- you know when it starts because you can see the lights reflecting off all of the buildings nearby and even off the clouds. It's pretty awesome. We decided to wait to actually go up in the eiffle tower until daytime, so we just walked around. The whole area is very nicely landscaped with a park and water fountains, and there's a carousel and everything right next to it so it's a fun atmosphere.
We got panini's to celebrate. Well, we might have just been hungry but it could've been to celebrate being there. It was just another one of the many moments where I couldn't really believe that I'm here. I mean, it was a school night. I could've just as easily (make that more easily) have been in Provo doing homework. The whole Paris trip was kind of like that because to me it was just kind of this huge bonus. I've always wanted to study abroad in London, but I hadn't made any plans to go to Paris. When I found out that the program was going there it was a huge added surprise. I'm really glad that we went to France. Obviously having gone to England and Ireland and Wales I've been in other countries, but being somewhere where they speak a different language is a completely different experience.
Eventually we had to go back to the hotel. We figured that we should go to bed earlier than usual so we'd have more energy for our exploits the next day, but as usual we got distracted and didn't fall asleep until like 1:30. But at least we had good intentions. Staying in the hotel was a lot fun. Mostly because it was an actual hotel. We all got to stay in rooms of two. That might now seem like much to you, but after you've been living in a small room with 12 other girls it starts to seem pretty magical. And I got to room with Megan, who is tons of fun. You'll be seeing her in a ton of my pictures. There were two beds in the room, but it was bunk bed style so being the good people we are we switched off every night. The bottom queen bed was like heaven. This was definitely a cheap one star hotel, but the mattresses at the centre are rocks and the one at the hotel was almost soft so I really enjoyed it. We also had lots of fun conversations late at night in our room on philosophical topics such as mailboxes. Good times. Also, I really liked the hotel because they had the most delicious chocolate cereal, and instead of hot water they had hot milk to make hot chocolate. And they had a thing full of whole loaves of french bread with a giant knife to just cut off a hunk to eat. Much better than the questionable meals at the hostels...
Tuesday-- Since we've already talked about breakfast I guess that it's only natural to move on to the second day. We actually started Tuesday off by meeting the rest of the program in the lobby to go to Versailles. I hate to admit it, but I wasn't all that impressed with Versailles. I think I've become desensitized. Show me a giant solid gold plate and it won't even phase me. I've already seen it a hundred times this trip. I know that I should have appreciated it more, especially since all of the other palaces we've been to were pretty much based off this one, but while I was inside I was mostly just bored. Also, they had really strange modern art pieces that totally and completely distracted from the history. As an example, in the middle of one of the state rooms there was a huge sculpture of Michael Jackson and his monkey, Bubbles. Ya. The rest of the works of art consisted mostly of balloon animals, inflatable pool toys, and pop culture icons. Thankfully the outside of Versailles was much better. The grounds were massive. They must have stretched for miles and miles. Of course, we decided to set out to the farthest corner of the grounds to see Marie Antoinette's village. We had to take a break and eat some more panini's before getting there, and by the time we reached the village we were dead tired and kind of crabby, but it was totally worth it because it was the best part of the whole place. Apparently Marie Antoinette had this whole little village made so that she and her friends could escape the court on the weekends and pretend to be be peasants. The houses she had were all really cute, but I'm pretty sure that they looked a lot more like the village in Beauty and Beast than any real peasant's place. In fact, we decided (ok, it was Annie) that one of the houses looked exactly like Belle's in the movie, so we had to reenact the opening song complete with the book. Unfortunately the only book we had on us was P.D. Jame's A Certain Justice that we're reading for mystery class. I'm pretty sure that's not the one Belle was talking about in her song. But nevertheless it still worked for the pictures. And we took a lot of pictures because it was all just to picturesque. There was even a cute little farm complete with goats, donkeys, chickens, and the fattest cow I've ever seen.
With all of the walking involved in visiting Versailles we didn't actually make it back to Paris until dinner time. We decided that after such a workout we deserved a nice sit-down dinner. It's fabulous because since the exchange rate is so much better than it used to be the program has tons of extra money. One of the many benefits of this is that they gave us 80 pounds to spend on food while in Paris. That means we had between 15 and 20 pounds a night verses the 5 we usually get when we're away from the center. This was the source of great happiness. The people I was with ate out every night, because why not? Food is part of the experience of France. Everything I ate was absolutely delicious regardless of where I got it from. Plus, out feet were so sore from walking and climbing stairs (and this is with us being conditioned from living in London on the 4th floor) that it was worth almost any price just to be able to sit down and relax for an hour or two. So the first night after doing a little bit of window shopping we lucked out by finding a place that had a menu in English, which was much appreciated after attempting to read French all day, called Frankl'in Cafe. I got really tasty chicken and french fries. Just to let you know, the french fries taste the same in the states as the do in France. Just putting it out there.
After refueling we decided to be productive and go to the Arc de Triumph. It's a big arch in the middle of the city and it has lots and lots of stairs to get up to the top. But it's totally worth the burn because once you get to the top you can see a ton of the city. It was gorgeous on top because we went up at night so we could see all of the city lights. All of the major streets meet at the arch too, so you can see all the way down them. One of the streets is considered to be the shopping center of the world, so that was cool. After talking to Sabrina and Talyn, who we happened to run into up there, we decided to go for a leisurely stroll down it even though most of the stores were closed in search of some sort of a dessert. I decided on the McFlurry. I know, really high class. But so far I've accidentally had one in every country so I figured that I should keep it up. So far the rankings are: United States a definite first, Ireland in second, the UK in third, and France in tragic last. The one in France just really wasn't all that good. However, I was proud of myself for successfully ordering it. Even though the guy felt bad for my awful French and switched over to English.
Wednesday-- This was our first fully free day. Of course, I mean fully free as in we had a whole list of museums to go to for humanities. But I didn't mind that at all because I'm pretty sure that when you go to Paris you're required to go to museums, and since I don't know all that much about art any guidance as to where to go is very welcome. We actually planned out our whole day while sitting in McDonald's the night before too, so we were way ready when the time came (far too early once again) to wake up. Our first stop of the day was Notre Dame, and yes me and Megan did pose like gargoyles for a picture out front. It just had to be done. The actual church was gorgeous. It's probably one of my favorites, mostly because of it's location. Notre Dame is actually situated on an island type thing in the middle of the Seine, so it's right next to the river and just gorgeous. The inside is pretty, but the best was going up to the towers because you got up close views of the gargoyles and could see the whole city spread out. Unfortunately, in order to see the fabulous view you had to climb a thousand of those tiny spiral stairs. After the Arc de Triumph my legs were not too happy with me. Once you got up there you forgot about the stairs though. And all of the gargoyles are awesome to see up close. Now I want to watch the Hunchback of Notre Dame again, even though I never liked that movie all that much. We were lucky because the weather was really nice too. The whole time we were in Paris it was really cold, but we actually were able to stay dry pretty much the whole time. The weather might not be as nice in November, but it's definitely worth going in the off season because you miss the huge crowds. Apparently usually you would spend the majority of your time in lines, but we were able to walk right in to everything. For example, the next place that we went was the Sainte Chapelle, which is really close to Notre Dame. It was this beautiful little chapel that is made almost entirely of stained glass. At first I was a little skeptical of visiting yet another church, but I'm so glad that I went in because it's definitely one of my favorites. We ran into the Wimmer's in there and they said that even though they had been to Paris a few times before they had never made it into the Chapel because the lines were always too long. I would have hated to miss it. It's much better to be nice and spoiled in the off season. It's totally worth the occasional scaffolding and bad weather.
Oh, a slightly important detail to my story. Going into Notre Dame we had a slightly difficult group of eight people. The church was so massive though that me, Megan, and Tracy kind of lost everyone else. So we wandered around and looked for them for a bit but then decided to give up. So from this point forward it was mostly just us, which actually worked out pretty well because it's a lot easier to manage three people than eight. Especially when all the stores and restaurants are pretty small. We decided to follow our plan for the day as outlined though just in case we happened to run into the rest of the group (as a side note, only two of us had cell phones and we couldn't get them to work in case you're wondering why we couldn't find each other). So after the Sainte Chapelle we followed our schedule and headed to Rue Mouffetard, which is supposed to be one of the oldest shopping streets in Paris. Most of the stuff of the street was too expensive, but it was still fun to go down because there was an assortment of boutiques and food places and it was narrow so you just walked down the middle of the street. We stopped there for a crepe because as usual we were absolutely starving. We decided to get a "savory" crepe, which is one that has meat and cheeses and stuff in it. I'd never had one before and I figured that there was no better place to try one. Man, when they say savory they really mean savory. I got one with chicken, egg, and cheese and it was beautiful. It looked fantastic and tasted good, but there was no way in heck I ever had a chance of finishing that thing. I made it half way, and I'm surprised that I even made it that far. It's not that it was really big or anything, it was just ridiculously filling. And afterwords I felt like I would die unless I got something sweet, like a cookie, stat. Our plan was to get something at Nicolsen Chocolatier, which we were told had pretty much the best chocolate in France, but it was tragically closed for lunch.
So we just tried not to think about dessert too much (which I failed at) and started to make our way over to the Pompadour, which is a museum of modern art we were supposed to check out for class. On the way we got distracted by all of the cool shops that we walked past though. Tracy found a sweet bag and the two of them bought postcards. I was generally just picky and didn't buy anything. Eventually we made it to the museum, which was massive. We ended up only going to the top to exhibition floors to look at their modern art. I found it kind of exciting at first. After looking at a bunch of old paintings for class I welcomed the new kind of art that involved things like rope hanging from the ceiling. Unfortunately by the time we made it there it was only three in the afternoon, and we were already beat. The walls were all white and the exhibits required a lot of thinking and it just sapped all of our energy. By the end me and Megan were just walking zombies. Some of the stuff was a little frightening as well... But they also had a lot of really cool stuff. I think my favorite thing was this Picasso they had. It didn't look very much like you would expect a Picasso to, but I loved it. By the time we reached the end of the second floor we had to get out of there fast though so we could wake back up. On the way out we stopped in the gift shop (of course) where Megan found the exact journal she wanted so that was magical, and right when we left the building we ran into the people we lost earlier in the day and we proceeded to take pictures of us out front being "modern art". I think that they might be my favorite pictures from the whole trip. Minus the one of Megan yawning while trying to read a newspaper in French while waiting for the metro. Nothing could beat that one.
We parted ways with the rest of our group again and headed towards the Louvre, as that was next on the list. On the way we (ok, mostly I) proceeded to get even more distracted than the last time and did some more shopping. It was another one of those things that just had to be done. I was determined to buy something. I hadn't really spent money in London thus far, because I always wanted to wait and see what I found in Paris first since I could always go back to places in London later. So, but the time I made it to Paris my money was burning a hole in my pocket, which was very dangerous. So I went into pretty much every store that looked as if it could have something fun and decently affordable. Eventually we found our way into a launderay store because Megan thought it would be fun to get something for her married sister. And when we walked in there were shoes! So I bought some. I found this fantastic pair of heels that were half off and in my size and I was very happy. They only cost 14 euros too, which made the whole thing even better. So I was pretty satisfied with life. I actually wore them to church today and everything because they match my skirt perfectly, in case you were wondering.
We didn't do too much shopping after that success though, because by that point we were famished and looking for an excuse to sit down for an extended period of time. Our shopping took us right to the Louvre, so we turned up one of the streets next to it in search of somewhere delicious to eat and struck gold when we found this pizzeria. I know, a pizzeria in France? But it was honestly the best pizza I have ever had in my life. I can't even describe it to you. It was just pepperoni pizza but it was like they had gotten every component perfect-- the crust, the sauce, the cheese, the meat... I ate the entire thing by myself by the time we left and it was bigger than the plate. There was just no way you could stop eating it. It was well worth having the waiter laugh at us for not understanding anything. Megan felt the same way. Tracy didn't get the salad but she did get a salad and she said that it was also the best salad she has ever had. And, in addition to eating deliciousness, we got to rest our feet and our museumed out brains before tackling the Louvre.
For those of you who don't already know, the Louvre is massive. I guess I had never really realized before that they Louvre is a full out museum. I had always though it was just a giant art gallery, but according to the map 2/3 of the museum is all artifacts and such. We just stuck to the paintings though, otherwise there would have been no hope for us. The actual building has a really interesting history as well. I don't know all that much about it, but I do know that it used to a royal palace and you can tell by the size of it. The thing that I thought was the most interesting though was that they said for a number of years (I'm imagining it was during the revolution) the palace was abandoned, and so it fell into disrepair and squatters moved into it. Apparently all sorts of people had set up camp in there and were having bonfires inside and everything. That's just a little different from what we picture now. The Louvre we saw was much different. We were lucky, because the night we went they had extended hours until 9:45, and by the time we finally had made it there it was already 8. Since we didn't have all that much time we decided to hit up the touristy things while the crowds weren't as big. First we went and saw the Mona Lisa, which I knew would be a let down but knew I would have to see anyways. I have to admit that I liked it more than I though I would, but I defintely wouldn't pick it out as the best picture in the gallery. But it was still fun to see. And I thought it was kind of funny because it was in this intense frame, in glass, with a table in front, with a bar in front of that, with another rope thing in front of that. And there was a guard standing there. So there was no getting close to the Mona Lisa. After visiting her we trecked over to see Venus de Milo (famous marble statue) and Michael Angleou's Slaves, which were pretty cool. Then we started on our assignment for class, looking at paintings by David and Delacroix and more Picasso and other cool people. I still love seeing pictures in person. Art is so much better when you can actually see the original than when you look at a reproduction. I'm getting really spoiled right now. We didn't have much time though. Our goal was to sit in front French paintings and ponder the revolution while sitting for a few minutes before they closed so we climbed up what seemed to be a million stairs. At one point we turned the corner just to see another impossibly long stretch of stairs and Megan just stated laughing because there were so many and we were so tired. We finally made it to the room we wanted to go to, but as soon as we got there they turned us away and sent us back down the stairs becase apparently when they say they close at 9:45 they really mean 9:30. So we climbed the stairs for nothing, but I guess it was kind of funny. By this point we were completely dead so we just hopped on the metro to go back to the hotel, where we fell asleep and never wanted to get back up.
Ok, so I know that you're going to just be dying in suspense to find out what happened during the rest of the week, but I just can't write anymore right now. It's after midnight here and breakfast is at 7:30 as usual, and I've been writing with only small breaks since dinner. So I'm tired, and I'm sure that after all of this reading you are too. So, in order to make us both feel better we're just going to take a break now. I'll try to finish writing tomorrow and post pictures then. But for now good night! Don't let the bed bugs bite. I hope my long winded entry wasn't too painful to read, and there will be more soon.
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