Paris: Part III

Bonjour de la Ville-Lumière! We are back in Paris and my trip is slowly winding down. I've been doing pretty much everything I planned on, so hopefully for the next two days it will be the same!

Tuesday night when we landed at Beauvais it was after 22:30, so by the time the bus shuttle from the airport to Paris it was almost midnight. We didn't want to risk missing the Métro, and didn't want to take an hour to get home, so we caught a cab instead. It was awesome; we drove right down le Champs Elysses and saw l'Arc de Triomphe, la Tour Eiffel, Musée d'Orsay, and Notre Dame all in about a ten minute period. Pretty fantastic.

Yesterday morning was very slow; I didn't wake up until noon and was able to shower and do laundry before I went out into the city for my own adventure. Maureen had to study, so I Google-mapped my route and set out for an afternoon of sight-seeing and picture-taking. I started with Saint-Sulpice, and got moderately turned around on the way there, which led me to see the Pantheon; not too bad. I then went looking for a café that someone I work with had recommended, and got turned around again; that led me to find le Theatre Odéon, and made it easier to find the café, so I wouldn't say that was terrible either.

From there it was on to the Tuilieries, which was awesome to walk around. A lot of the statues were of figures from Greek mythology, which I took an entire class on in Spring 2008. It was fun to guess what the statues were before reading the plaques. Some random guy tried to talk to me, so I pretended I didn't understand French and headed back to the Louvre to take pictures of the pyramid. I went out on the wrong side and had to walk back around to cross the Seine again, since Saint-Chapelle and Notre Dame are both on l'Isle de la Cité. It was already 18:00 by this point, so I had to book it back for dinner, but I ended up getting lost somewhere between Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. Effective use of bus maps got me back to Maureen's by 19:00, only half an hour late. She had made rice and vegetables, so we ate and got ready to go out for the last part of our evening: le Louvre!

Since the Louvre is discounted and open late on Wednesdays and Fridays, we were able to go for almost three hours and see the Mona Lisa (La Joconde is super tiny, but at least this time I was able to get closer than I was four years ago), the Venus de Milo, Napoleon III's apartments and various other exhibits. We made it into all of the sections of the museum (Denon, Sully, Richelieu) even if we didn't see everything. Definitely a good second visit.

Today we woke up with pancakes (aka amazing) and then set out for Musée d'Orsay, my favorite museum in Paris. It used to be a train station, so it's strangely organized, but we started at the top and made our way down. In the front of the museum are a lot of impressionist paintings by Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet, Manet, Degas...etc, and there are random exhibits everywhere you turn. As you walk through the hallway on level three, there's an exhibit on shadowbox theater, and on level two there are seven or eight of the same bust, in various stages of creation, to show how sculptures are made. I guess you have to make do with the space you have when your building was originally a traffic center.

On each side of the museum are galleries of furniture, sculptures, and even more paintings, including the exhibit "Voir Italie et Mourir." We have no idea why there is an exhibit called "See Italy and Die," but it was pretty fitting considering our recent trip. There were a few drawings of places we'd seen, including the Pantheon in Rome and Piazza San Marco in Venice; very cool. We also went to the very end of the museum's main level and went up this random platform that allows you to look over the entire main entrance and get a good view of the clock that I love so much. It's really strange how I love cool looking clocks, but hate being early...

I had to make it back to the apartment by 16:00 to talk to Shannon, who is in Hong Kong, about the UGBC Comm budget, which we then submitted a full 24 hours early. Dinner was pasta at 18:00 so we could get to la Tour Eiffel and climb to the top! We took the equivalent of the B line for the Métro, which I think is awesome because it's called Étoile-Nation (Star Nation! But really it just runs from Étoile station to Nation station...say that five times fast) and ended up very close to the tower. The line was huge if we wanted to take the elevator all the way up, so for the second time in my life I climbed the 700 stairs to the second level before taking the mandatory elevator to la sommet. At least this time I wasn't conducting a physics experiment.

At the top you can get a 10€ glass of champagne, but we opted to just take pictures from every angle imaginable. I accidentally blocked someone's picture, but that was the most embarrassing thing that happened at the top of me; it seemed like someone had gotten sick before we got there, so at least I didn't have that problem. The observation deck is one level above a walled in room with distances from la Tour Eiffel to various countries, including two numbers for the US! Boston was not there, but New York/Washington were, as was Los Angeles! This amused me.

We rode the elevator all the way down and then walked down the Champs de Mars to take pictures of ourselves jumping in front of the tower. They came out well enough, just very dark, and we effectively made fools of ourselves in front of a lot of people. There's a cool glass monument at the end with "peace" covering it in many languages; reminds me of the Holocaust Memorial at Government Center. We couldn't find cheap crêpes anywhere, so we took the Métro to Jussieu and walked down Rue Mouffetard to go back to the awesome Greek crêpe place for des crêpes sucrées! I got one with bananas and Nutella; so delicious. I wish the US had more crêpe places.

I just got back and will probably be up all night editing pictures and playing games. Tomorrow we don't have many plans, so I can wake up super late and not feel bad. Maureen wants to go to her Italian place on Rue Mouffetard for dinner, and I want to wander through the Luxembourg garden for a bit, so that should be it for the day. Saturday I'm going with Maureen and her roommates to a sit-down restaurant that serves crêpes, and apparently they are amazing with ice cream and other delicious things. Then we're going to the Centre Pompidou, l'Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame for souvenir shopping before dinner at a French restaurant. I have to pack, which I'm not looking forward to, and then my flight is at 13:30 on Sunday! I can't believe I only have two days left.

Only a few more posts to go! Until then,
Sam