Paris holds the key to your heart

Day 79

Last week we spent five days in Paris!! So amazing. We took the Chunnel, or Channel Tunnel, which runs under the English channel from London to Paris, and gets there in just a couple of hours.

Waiting at the Chunnel station

Sooo excited to go to Paris!

My first view of Paris
The first day we actually drove out of Paris to a little town called Chartes ("shart"). It's a remarkable cathedral, both architecturally, and because of it's number of medieval stained glass windows. Also, it has mismatched towers.Some of the medieval stained glass
This is pretty typical of cathedral doors, but still, considering most of them have two or three, look at how much carving that is! And each of those is a different prophet from the Bible, distinguishable by some object they're holding or standing on.
Beautiful French sunset
The next day we went to Versailles, legendary palace of Louis XIV, the Sun King, fame. It's absolutely massive. This is just the front, and you can kind of see how far out the arms extend from the front of the house. And it's all exceptionally grand and full of art inside. It also has huge grounds.
And for some reason, there was a lot of random modern art by some guy. This is "balloon flower (yellow)" in the main courtyard. Weird.
The chapel. Gives you an idea of what it's like inside.
It's very colorful.

The back
Dear Katie and Karin. This is for you.
Part of the very long lake you couldn't see behind me in the picture above.
Marie Antoinette had her own little villa a short way from the main palace. Supposedly, it allowed her more freedom away from the restrictions of court life. Also, she had a lot of lovers.

When we got back to Paris, we decided to go up the Eiffel Tower and see the city by night. It's all lit up in blue with a ring of stars for the EU this year.
Paris by night. The "City of Lights"
Also, it sparkles.
And how can you go to Paris without visiting the Louvre? ("loov"). It's built in one of the old palaces. And it's huge. Absolutely massive. And the whole thing is packed with art. Give yourself a couple days to get through it. The famous glass pyramid entrance.


Recognize this headless wonder? Nike Winged Victory of Samothrace. It's set out on a plinth at the head of a big flight of stairs. So I'm just walk along, and all of a sudden it appears, and I was like, "whoa, guys, is that...?" "Yes, yes it is."
One of the Italian painting hallways. As you can see, you can't see the end.
The Mona Lisa! Or, La Giaconda. It's sort of really small and roped off behind a large sheet of glass, but still really cool. I had a nice little conversation with some young American dude who happened to be standing next to me.

Dude: I don't think that looks like Leonardo in drag
Me: ummmmm.. no, I don't think so either.
Dude: I still don't think she's that attractive though.
Me: Hey, don't be judging her just because she doesn't have any eyebrows.

She really doesn't, by the way.

Victory leading the people. It's a big deal in France.
The Venus de Milo. Of course.
Another immense hallway. This one of statuary. You probably just don't even understand how big this place is.
Additionally, the staircases there are really annoying. If you want to see all the art on one level, you'd think you could just go up the stairs to that level, and then walk through. But no, you go up the stairs, go along one wing, down two flights of stairs, across a landing, and across the mirror two flights of stairs to continue along the same level. And by this point my legs and feet were already in a lot of pain from all the walking and standing we did that week, so it was pretty awful.

It's also very common to see people with sketch pads or easles copying masterworks or drawing the statues. Here's a whole class that showed up Tuesday night.

Copying a work by David.One of Napoleon's state rooms. I've seen a lot of different palaces and state rooms this semester, but I think Napoleon's take the cake for opulence and extravagence and general rich glittering.
They had a whole room of giant French paintings. And this isn't the biggest by a long shot. But it's famous, from the story of the Sabine women.

The Louvre has lots of art by Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, some Michelangelo, Jacques-Louis David, Boticelli, Ingres, Filippo Lippi, Gericault, Rembrandt... basically, what famous person is not in the Louvre?

We walked down Rue Mouffetard, which is the oldest street in the city. I think it goes back to Paleolithic times or something. Anyway, it has a lot of great little touristy shops, and also the most amazing crepes. For those of you unfamiliar with French crepes, allow me to enlighten you. First off, they're huge. Like 12" across. Second, none of this stacking them up like pancakes and then picking whatever toppings you like. Toppings are added to the crepe while it's on the griddle. If you're getting a crepe with egg, they crack the egg right on the crepe and let it cook on top. Savory crepes have things like egg, ham, cheese, mushrooms, eggplant, lettuce, tomato, onions, bacon, etc. You can also have a sweet crepe, with Nutella, chocolate, bananas, jam, sugar, etc. They are so good.

I have no idea what this building was, but it's cool.
Pretty little fountain and street on Mouffetard.
we spent a lot of time looking at this map.

Paris is great. You're just walking down the street, and all of a sudden, hey, Notre Dame!Notre Dame, in addition to being a marvelous Gothic cathedral, was made famous by Victor Hugo, in his novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
For some reason it feels unusually tall inside. Maybe it just is.

Quasimodo's view of Paris
Some of the famous gargoyles (though strictly speaking, gargoyles are water spouts. These are just statues of fearsome birds, mythological creatures, and monsters.)
The transept of the church, which appears to have saints marching up and down.

Outside Notre Dame, of course.
The Palace of Justice, near Notre Dame. I tried to look stern and judicious, but then I laughed.La Sainte Chappell. Near Notre Dame, it's really cool because it's still painted the way churches used to look. This is the crypt, but you can still see how colorful it is.
But the chapel is what you really want to see. More medieval stained glass, but just look how much there is! And considering when this was built, I don't know how they managed to get the ceiling so high with so much open space in the walls. It's so bright and colorful. It's beautiful.
We just stumbled across this chapel, Saint Germain.
The coolest part was the carved stone staircases.
And next door is the Pantheon. It's neo-classical, so it has lots of cool columns and Greek and Roman statues and such.

More about Victory leading the people.
The Crypt. Which is very cool and has people like Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Rousseau, Alexander Dumas, and Marie Curie.
Next we went by the Royal Opera House, where Phantom of the Opera is based. The grand Masquerade staircase.
The stage
The modern looking painted cieling.
The beautiful ballroom. This made me miss ballroom so bad. I would love to have a dance in here. The whole hall is polished and illuminated with chandeliers, and there are windows all down the left side and mirrors on the right. So beautiful. Tracy and I are being ballerinas.
And then we danced the polka.

We also went to the Musee de l'Orangerie, which has huge displays of Monet's waterlillies. There are two giant white oval rooms with high cielings and skylights, and around the walls are huge long canvasses of Monet's waterlillies. It's so quiet inside, and you just sit on the benches drinking it in.



Then we went to the Rodin museum. (Rodin = "roe-dan"). I love Rodin. I'm just going to put up a couple of the more famous ones, but there's a whole house full of his statues in addition to the garden.

The Gates of Hell The Thinker, probably his more famous work.
The Three Shades, who are featured at the top of The Gates of Hell. Actually, The Shades and The Thinker are both enlargements of the smaller versions originally made for the Gates of Hell.
I think what I love about Rodin is that not only are his sculptures fantastic in terms of technique and anatomical accuracy, but the figures are real interesting. They don't just stand there, they're always twisting or moving, and they have such remarkable portrayals of emotion. I love Rodin.

The side of the Pompidou Centre. It's a modern art museum and theatre, and also a cool building.

The Musee d'Orsay, built inside and old train station. It has fantastic displays of Monet, Manet, Degas (who I've only just discovered, and also love), Millais, Renoir, Van Gogh, Pizzaro, Cezanne, etc.
Cool exhibit of model Paris under glass. I'm over the Opera House.
Giant train station clock
which you can look out of.
Some people from the shadow theatre exhibit.
The Arc de Triomphe. And more flags.

View from the Arc
We got rained on quite a bit.
Anti-suicide precautions
Yes, we walked up all of the stairs to get up here.

People with their umbrellas

My first creme brulee
Cool modern art on the sidewalk

You can't actually read the name of this cafe, but the signs say "Hippopotamus". Many times. In bright neon letters.

Not sure what it is about Paris, or France, or whatever, but they have a ridiculous number of flags there. Mostly French flags, hanging off buildings, but there are also a lot of EU flags this year since the EU president is French, and this particular building had an additional row of random flags next to it.
Yet another of the many amazing pastries eaten in Paris. This is something I can't pronounce that translates to "million layers".
We even broke through a police barricade while we were there. Viva la France!
We sat at a cafe to enjoy some hot chocolate and watch the pedestrians. They were actually bowls of hot chocolate.
Michelle is building the Eiffel Tower. Out of sugar cubes.

The SeineThe lights on the Seine by night. They call Paris the "city of lights."
I am so French, with my baguette and French building. Unlike London, Paris has a much more unified building structure. They're all about the same color, and with similar architecture to this one.
One of the very colorful and moving window displays
I don't have pictures, but we also went inside an upscale shopping centre and walked through the International Designers floor, where all the dresses are multiple thousands of euros, and you're almost afraid to even breathe on them, but they're totally awesome.

Okay, so you can't actually see what we're eating, but it's amazing. It has a pastry crust, and then a white cheesy creamy layer, and then berries and sauce on top. I've already decided, it's going to be my wedding cake someday. Nevermind that the shop is in France. Tracy and I have it all worked out.
A store with my name at the train station!!
Paris was amazing. I basically survived on crepes and pastries. I'm totally converted to French cooking. I seriously don't know how they stay so thin. It was an exhausting experience though. Once we left the hotel in the morning, we rarely stopped or sat down until we got back to the hotel at night, which was anywhere from 9-13 hours later. My feet and legs hurt so bad, but I just kept telling myself that it wasn't for very long. So basically I'd be standing in front of some of Degas' fantastic pastel work in the d'Orsay, going "My feet are in so much pain, but it's so pretty! Oww!" and they I'd limp off the next painting. Except you can't really limp with both feet, so I just sort of hobbled. So worth it though.

It was a weird experience to be in a French speaking country. On the one hand, they do get a lot of tourists, and a lot of the people speak at least some English, but on the other hand, I felt really bad going to their country and not speaking any French. I felt a bit helpless at times. And a bit rude. I mean, how would you feel if your city was suddenly overrun by French toursists who all expected you to be able to converse with them in French? I got really good at saying "pardon" and looking confused whenever someone tried to talk to me in French. For the most part they were all nice, or at least patient, but we did get one old lady at a patisserie who was incredibly rude to one of the girls. Everything in her expression and voice, and she practically yelled at the girl when she miscounted her change, and then stood there tapping her nails on the counter while my friend looked for the right change. Coming from a culture where we're taught that the customer is always right and no matter what they do, you're always suppsed to be polite and helpful to them, I was almost shocked.

On the plus side, Paris seems to have an impossibly high number of stunningly attractive young men.

I was really happy to be back in London though, where people speak English, and I understand the city, and feel comfortable. Even though when we walked into our house the dining room was full of strange people having a party, which was a little confusing. After 5 days on the Paris metro, I was so happy to hear the voice recording of the Tube lady: "Please keep clear of the doors." "Please, mind the gap between the train and the platform." "This is a Circle Line via Paddington." Isn't it funny what you miss? Even the next day, when I went to Trafalgar Square, I bumped into someone and started to say "pardon" and then they started speaking English, and I was just happy all over again.