Le reste de Paris!

I just got back from an exciting weekend in Munich, and I know I have fallen far behind on my blog. In this entry, I will finish up the story of last weekend, our trip to Paris.

We woke up early Saturday morning to go to the Louvre. After some confusion over the breakfast in the hostel (Cait went down to check it out, but no one understood that she just wanted to look and not eat), we decided to just head out and get breakfast on the way. We got some croissants at one of the metro stops, and then we were at the museum. In the big lobby we saw the point where the two pyramids (one inverted) come together at a point (if you've seen the Da Vinci Code you know what I mean), along with many many tourists. Fortunately with our Museum Pass we got inside quickly.

We spent about an hour and half looking at the collections, seeing Italian and French paintings, notably "Liberty Leading the People" and of course the Mona Lisa (although with the swarms of people around I couldn't get a great look); Roman and Greek sculptures, including the Venus de Milo, and many other pieces, many of which were familiar. The museum itself was also beautiful, and there were so many items inside, it would take a month to see everything. It wasn't like most art museums, where the art is spaced out leisurely- here there was so much stuff, everything was very close together. I really enjoyed it, especially seeing all the art I had previously seen only in replication.

After the Louvre, we walked back over to Notre Dame, and this time we were able to go inside. It was really beautiful, although I must say with all the churches I have seen on this trip, they are getting harder and harder to distinguish, especially on the inside. They all have incredible stained glass, wooden ornaments, and similar architecture, but I suppose that is to be expected when so many were erected in the Gothic style. In any case, it was worth a visit, although unfortunately I didn't run into Quasimodo.

From there, we meandered down toward the Champs-Elysées. One of the girls in our program had bought a bag in Paris a couple weekends before, but apparently they had given her the wrong one, so she asked us to exchange it if we could. We went into the store, which was on a road not far from there, and I was able to navigate the exchange without too much difficulty. It was a designer store (Longchamp, which I had never heard of before the trip, but apparently it's the thing nowadays), and of course I fell in love with one of the bags, which was a different style than the one everyone is (apparently) carrying, but sadly it was 180 Euros, so I had to say goodbye. But of course, now I see Longchamp bags everywhere, but except for the one I really liked (purple!) I don't really see them as that interesting. From there we got some lunch at a stand on the Champs-Elysées and headed to the Arc de Triomphe, which lies at the end, in the middle of a huge roundabout. We actually took the metro since it was quite a distance away, and then we had to walk underground to reach the middle of the circle. Our Museum Pass covered a trip up the 200-some stairs to the top, so I convinced Cait to go along with me, and we got a great view of the whole city. It ended up being my only trip to the top of something in Paris, so it was definitely worth it. We made our way back down, and from there the group went to our next stop: the Musée d'Orsay.

The Musée d'Orsay ended up being my favorite museum in Paris. It mostly contains impressionist works, so we saw tons of Monet, Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, and Cézanne. I really loved it, and I especially liked looking at the paintings up close, and then moving farther backward to see the subject emerge. A couple of the notable paintings were Whistler's Mother and "Jeunes filles au piano," a painting by Renoir. You might not have seen it, but interestingly, for a French grammar assignment two semesters ago, I had to pick a painting and describe it- and I picked that one after finding it online. Imagine my surprise to suddenly happen upon it at the museum! That was really something, and I must say that I can still stand by my description. I enjoyed this museum much more than the Louvre- I think overall the paintings were just more relevant. Instead of seeing two Roman men in battle, I could see a French woman dressed for the opera.

After that museum, we headed to another- the Rodin Museum. That was also very interesting. We could see many of Rodin's sculptures, which for the most part were humans in varying emotions and positions. Of course we saw "Le Penseur," the incredibly famous statue of a sitting man, resting his head on his hand, simply thinking. The museum was inside and out, at a former hotel that was also Rodin's residence, and there were also quite a bit of gardens to see. The museum was lovely, but we didn't spend too much time there. Next, we took a quick stop at the grand Hôtel des Invalides, which was right next door. We didn't go inside, where notably Napoleon's tomb is, but we took pictures from the front.

After that, we were all tired and hungry, so we decided a stop for dinner was for the best. We had traveled close to the Eiffel Tower, so we were in an expensive area, but even so we found a little restaurant with a special. To this day I still say the menu was confusing. The menu read, on one line, "Lasagne salade verte," which means "lasagne green salad." We all wondered, what is that? Some kind of weird lasagne salad? No one knew. We all felt foolish when I asked what it was and our waiter started describing a normal lasagne, with a salad on the side. We all ended up getting it, since it was the least expensive item, along with a carafe d'eau, and so now I can say that of the 3 dinners I've ever eaten in Paris, they all happened to be lasagne.

Our final attraction of the day was at the Eiffel Tower. We metroed over to the Champ de Mars, the expansive green space behind the tower, where there were many people just hanging out and taking pictures. We did also, and although the sun was in an awkward place, by using beach mode with flash on my camera our pictures weren't too dark or too bright. And the tower itself was really a sight- it was my first up close look at it. I didn't really realize the size of it until I was standing right there, and I could watch the elevators going up the legs, and then up the middle to the top. We decided not to go up, for the line would be close to 2 hours long, and it's pretty pricey- and it's even more money the higher up you go. We had a good time just hanging out on the grass for a while. Suddenly, Giselle had an idea. We had been scoping out other people also sitting around, and someone had pointed out a cute guy sitting alone, with no one in his vicinity. "Cait," she said, "I will give you 5 Euros to go sit within a foot of that guy for 5 minutes." Unexpectedly, Cait just replied, "Sure," and starting walking over, much to our amusement. She plopped right down, and began a conversation. We of course were already dying laughing, especially when we saw her point over to us to have him look. We couldn't hear them, but they seemed to be carrying on a conversation. I wondered aloud whether we should wave Cait over when the 5 minutes were up, but the immediate consensus was no, she can figure it out. As a result, the conversation went on for a full 12 minutes before we saw Cait get up and head back over. Apparently they had carried on a nice conversation, although she never found out his name. That was certainly a funny highlight of the trip.

At that point, we were all tired, so we decided to call it a day and head back to the hostel, where we went to sleep pretty much immediately. We woke up early the next morning, and this time ate breakfast in the hostel- we had hot chocolate and orange juice, some bread, and a croissant. The paying for the breakfast was a little confusing- the previous night I had inquired to its cost, and only after asking me which room I was in and how much we had paid for it did the man behind the desk tell me that it was 2 Euros. The previous morning the nice hotel owner had seemed surprised that we hadn't ate there, saying that it was up to us, but he just wanted to invite us to have breakfast at the hostel. In the end, we checked out of the room, and to a 3rd person I mentioned that we had eaten breakfast- he simply replied "c'est bon" and let us go. I'm not quite sure what the real deal was, but in any case we got a nice free breakfast Sunday morning.

The previous day we had purchased an extension to our metro pass to be able to take the Regional Express train, not covered by the Eurail. After some trouble with our needed metro line being down, we finally made it to the RER station and took a half-hour train out to Versailles. We walked a short way from the train station, and there was the palace, and it was quite the sight. It was of course enormous, and incredibly ornate. After waiting in line to get inside, we bought an audio tour and started along the path. The theme to every surface seemed to be an attempt to cram in as much ornament and intricate pomp as possible. It was visually stunning, with much gold and marble, and little details in every corner. The audio tour gave a lot of information about the history of the rooms and what they were used for- I got it en français, and I learned a lot about the décor and the paintings in each room. We saw a lot of notable rooms, including the king and queen's chambers, the famous Hall of Mirrors, and a hall full of busts and sculptures of famous French authors, kings, and other important people, including Descartes.

After walking through the castle, we went out back to the gardens, which were simply amazing. You looked out over huge fountains, tons of flowers, and further back there was a huge green rectangle lawn, and behind that a similarly shaped reflection pool. To either side there were very tall hedges in a kind of maze, and within those there were occasionally sculptures and other things to see. All the time there was classical music playing, as there was some kind of "Music from the Fountains" event going on, so it just added to the royal ambiance. We strolled along the gardens for quite a while until eventually deciding to head back. We got some lunch and headed back to the train, and made it back to Paris. We had still a couple hours before our train home, so we went to the Sacré-Coeur, one of the most famous churches in Paris. It sits at the top of Montmartre, the highest hill in the city, so you can really see out everywhere. We took many stairs to the top of the hill and went inside the church, which of course was beautiful. Cait and Erica also went to the top of the dome of the church (for a fee), but Joey, Giselle, and I stayed behind by the church. It was a good culminating event, since we could see so much and really remember all that we had done. But sadly, soon it was time to go, and we took a final metro back to the main train station, and had an easy and uneventful ride back to Mannheim.

I had such a good time in Paris, and we accomplished so much, but there's still so much more that we didn't get to do. I know that I'll return in the future, hopefully for a longer period of time, and I'll really get to use my French and see more of the city. I must say my friends were glad to have me along to translate, and I was glad to practice- I do know more words than I thought I did, and I could understand whatever people said to me. If only that were the case in German! But already I know I'm so much better than when I began.

I still have much catch-up blogging to do! I plan on doing another entry for last schoolweek, followed by an epic Munich post for our visit last weekend. I'll write it as soon as I can, and I really appreciate everyone who's been reading.

Herzliche Grüße!
Bisous!