Finally Finished the Louvre!

Luckily for my readers, Abbey has been bugging me rather incessantly to update my blog since sometime Saturday. Since I really enjoy any excuse to not write my essay for my literature class, I’m going to do it now to appease her.

Thursday after classes Abbey, Nick and I headed over to Centre Georges Pomidou, a really cool modern building near the center of Paris. From the top floor you get a pretty good view of most of Paris’ major monuments and the building itself houses a very popular public library and Paris’ modern art museum – we went to the museum. The three of us got in free since we have student ID cards that say we’re art history students (thanks to our architecture calss!) so that was nice, because I don’t think I enjoy modern art enough to pay 9 euros to see it… We did, what at least I felt was, a very thorough examination of both floors of modern art. We even attempted to examine and discuss and attempt to understand a couple of pieces at the beginning, but really solid color canvases only say so much to me. It took us about 2.5 hours to cover the two floors of art and by the time we finished my legs were killing me it was already dark so I couldn’t take pictures of the back of the building (the coolest part!) so I will hopefully have a chance to go back and take those this coming weekend sometime.

Friday I stayed home in the morning, relaxed and did a little bit of homework. Abbey came over around 3 after going to La Defense and we headed over to the movie theater together to use our free tickets we got for being class delegates earlier in the semester. We decided on watching The Dutchess since it seemed interesting and fit our time slot the best. We had a little bit of time before the movie, so we meandered around the nearby Christmas market (they are everywhere in Paris!) and got soft serve ice cream from my favorite place in the shopping center. I enjoyed the movie, although it wasn’t as light-hearted as I had been hoping (I hadn’t read a synopsis or seen a preview). It was kind of strange sitting in a movie theater watching an American film, I felt like I could have been back in Albuquerque until I walked back out of the cinema and saw the Christmas market in the plaza.

Saturday morning I headed to the Louvre and was able to do the entire 3rd floor, so I have now officially seen everything I could see in the Louvre (there are 2 or so exhibitions that are currently closed). I saw lots of 15th-18th century paintings from France and also Flanders and Italy. I got to see a couple more paintings that I had studied in my art history class last year, which was cool. It always interesting to see a painting after you study it, because often I have no idea how big it is when I look at the picture in the book and just imagine it as being a certain size. A lot of times they are a lot bigger or smaller than the way I thought of them. I also got to see a couple of the very famous La Tour paintings. They weren’t displayed at all how I imagined they would be. The paintings are so dark and what makes them fascinating is the way the light from the flame illuminates the images and reflects like a real flame would. I would think that these would then be displayed in a room with a complimenting ambience, not extremely dark, but something with a somber, heavier feel and coloring to help emphasis the light within the painting. But, no! The paintings were in one of the lightest, airiest, most modern room of the Louvre I’ve seen! I felt so distracted by all the sunlight and white that I didn’t feel like I could really appreciate the paintings, just another thing to add to the list of things I dislike about the Louvre. Anyway, I’ve now finished with it, and don’t have to go back, at least until I’m here again.

Sunday I decided to do part of one of my walking tours that took me through Parc Monceau (a very pretty park in a ritzy area of town) before meeting up with Abbey at the Musée Jacquemart-André. I couldn’t believe just how dead Paris is Sunday morning at 10am. There was no one and I mean no one around except the joggers in the park (and there were plenty of them, you would have thought it was a marathon!). I walked through the park, narrowly escaping being stampeded on several occasions, and also looked at some of Parisian style mansions that border it. I left on the opposite side I entered from, and headed down a couple of deserted streets to meet Abbey. The museum is a Hôtel Particulier, an old mansion of a rich couple from the 19th century. They had a beautiful house and a rather impressionable art collection (including enough Italian artifacts to display assembled together as an “Italian Museum”). Abbey and I both especially admired the double spiral staircase that took you from the winter garden (read: indoors, with lots of marble) to the Italian fresco. I would have loved to eaten lunch at the restaurant there, apparently very popular with the older female population according to our French prof., but I didn’t feel like plunking down 26 euros for brunch!

After the museum Abbey and I checked out the pagoda listed in my walking tour (who doesn’t want to feel like they’re in Asia in the middle of Paris?) and then the Russian Orthodox Church (unfortunately it was Sunday and I felt too awkward to take pictures of it while congregants were standing outside chit-chatting). We then headed to metro and went out separate ways.

This week is the last week of classes for me. I have finals Monday through Wednesday of next week and head home Thursday. After I get my last couple of assignments done, I’m going to divide my time between studying for finals and sightseeing. I’ll try to update when I feel like procrastinating.

Pictures to come soon!!

Random Tidbits

French police don’t drive around one or two in a car, like in the U.S. In Paris you always see police in groups of three, sometimes four and sometimes they are plain-clothes officers, making the sight even weirder. It is a very strange and for some reason, somewhat unsettling, sight for me when I see three policemen standing around one single car that they’ve pulled over for a traffic infraction (though this in and of itself is rather rare in Paris where traffic laws are much more suggestions than their name implies). They make the driver get out of the car and one stands with him or her while another stands near the front of the car pacing and looking very inquisitive, like they are trying to find something else that is wrong and the other stands at the back of the car, inspects the license plate and who knows what else. This is an even stranger sight when it’s three plain-clothes policemen stopping a motorcyclist – it looks more like a mafia operation (or at least some sort of organized crime) than a traffic stop.

Tonight for dinner my host mom made salmon and then what I decided was the French version of macaroni and cheese. Here it is known as “pâtes gratin” or pasta gratin (like the potatoes). It’s basically pasta (in my case spirally pasta) mixed with crème fraîche and gruyere cheese and bread crumbs on top all in a casserole dish, baked in the oven. It’s was rather simple but tasty, although I am still looking forward to some good old American style macaroni and cheese when I get home (what would the French say about velveta cheese, or worse: powder cheese?!?!).

An amusing anecdote: the other night my host mom got a phone call during dinner (this is actually a fairly common occurrence, she is quite popular on the phone). Anyway she excuses herself to go answer it and I continue eating at the table. She’s chatting with whoever is on the other line for a little bit and then I hear her ask if she can call them back later because she is currently eating with “her little American.” Hahaha, I was quite amused…

Almost Cultured...

My eclectic weekend of French culture and Americana in review.

Thursday night IES put together a Thanksgiving meal for the students. It was in a room labeled the “crypt” of a church, which all of the American students found very amusing. We started off with hors d’oeuvres like bread sticks and pigs in a blanket with hot cider and soda to drink (the hot cider was made from French cidre – which is alcoholic and carbonated – so it was rather odd, but nonetheless recognizable as cider). Dinner was set-up as a buffet, an idea that is incomprehensible for most French people, but these caters seemed to get the idea pretty well. We had a green salad, turkey (only white meat, which was AMAZING!!), stuffing, a little bit of gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans, mashed sweet potatoes and creamed corn. The lack of extra gravy was slightly disheartening, the stuffing was an interesting mixture of couscous and bread, and the sweet potatoes had what we decided must be crème fraîche in them, which gave them an odd creamy/ sour taste. For dessert we had brownies and pumpkin pie, which were both good, and the brownies were especially appreciated because they’re not something you see often in France. The meal overall was decent, although we were all still missing our families’ meals, but it was a good attempt at recreating Thanksgiving for all of us American students and I think we all appreciated the idea if not the actual food.

Friday was a whirlwind day of sight seeing. First, I had an Architecture walking tour in the morning. We met under the Eiffel Tower and it was freezing cold!! Of course this was the one day I was in a hurry when leaving the apartment and I forgot my scarf… So we walked around the neighborhood around the Eiffel Tower and looked at a couple of really cool Art Deco/ early 1900’s building and then crossed the Seine to look at some more down past the Trocadero into the 16th arrondisement. I found at least another 2 places where I want buy an apartment in Paris! Most of the buildings were pretty cool to look at, but I don’t think I really learned any more about the architecture style, maybe that’s because I was talking with Abbey and Nick too much, hmmm.

After the walking tour Abbey, Nick, a couple of other girls from the class and I all went to get lunch from the falafel place in the Marais that we love oh so much! After that Nick and some of the other girls had to go to their Art History field trip and Abbey and I went to Musée Carnavalet to explore for a couple hours. Musée Carnavalet is a museum of the history of Paris so Abbey and I wandered the floors looked at the artwork and recreated rooms and tried to catch tidbits of the guided tours a bunch of elementary school aged children were getting. It was definitely more closely aligned to my interest level in the artifacts and history, but oh well. I was quite impressed with how interested the kids seemed about the stuff they were learning, how much they new about historical dates and events all ready and how eager they were to ask and answer questions. I was also surprised and how much the adults seemed to shut them down and not let them… in the U.S. I feel the teachers are always begging the kids to be more interested and engaged.

Abbey and I had decided to meet Nick, Brad and Erik at the Orangerie (a museum in the Tuilleries Gardens) after Nick got done with his second field trip at 4pm. So once we were all finally there we did the downstairs collections first, impressionist and perhaps also post impressionist paintings, there were a couple of Renoirs I really liked and the rest was interesting to see, but not all that excited. Afterwards we went upstairs to see the Nymphéas, a series of 8 huge paintings by Monet depicting the lily ponds at different times of days. The were displayed in two different oval rooms so that they surrounded you from all sides, almost in a continuous manner, when you were in the middle. They were very large (think wide-screen) and impressive to see, but I preferred the slightly smaller Nyphéas at the Musée Marmottan I saw a couple of weeks ago, I felt like these were almost too big.

By the time we got done looking at the Nymphéas, we were all tired, cultured-out and didn’t feel like returning to our respective apartments to make ourselves dinner. We decided that since most of us had yet to try McDonald’s, or McDo as they call it here, and we had been told that it was tastier here than in the U.S. we would give it a shot. We walked up the Champs-Elysée past an amusing and quite popular Christmas market and past numerous brand-name stores until we finally reached the McDo at the top of the Champs-Elysée. It was huge and even had a separate café part. I ordered a BigMac without cheese and had to wait around for a good 5 minutes for them to make it. While waiting a family, who I believe was Russian, came up after me to order. The mother started talking in English to the girl behind the counter (who was Asian), the dialogue was rather amusing since English was obviously everyone’s second or third language. The daughter chimed in to help her mother order and was doing just fine until she requested her ice tea “without yellow.” The girl behind the counter gave her a strange look and pondered before replying, “No ice?” “Yes, no ice!” replied the girl. Her mother and brother turned and looked at her and started mocking her for asking for no yellow. She then tried to explain that she had been thinking of something that sounded to me like “yerro.” I assumed that it was how you said ice in Russian but when I got upstairs and recounted the story to the rest of the group, I was informed that the way you say ice in Spanish is similar to that, so I decided that must have been what she was thinking of and simply got confused between her English and her Spanish – oh the difficulties of being at least tri-lingual… We ended up sitting, eating and chatting at McDo for an hour and a half – definitely something that doesn’t happen in the U.S., but I didn’t find the food to taste much better than McDonald’s in the U.S. although I can’t remember the last time I ate a McDonald’s hamburger anyway. It was an experience nonetheless, and afterwards we all headed home.

Saturday afternoon and this morning (Sunday), I spent cooking in preparation for our Thanksgiving lunch. It was an experience in its own right considering that my host-mom’s kitchen is not well equipped at all in my standards. She has no kitchen knives, spatulas, mixing spoons or whisks. I also had to convert all of my American recipes into metric measurements. I made chicken, stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, gravy, dinner rolls and pumpkin pie for dessert. My host-mom was rather concerned by the amount and variety of herbs I wanted to put on the chicken and wouldn’t let me put them all and kept freaking out when I put more rosemary on it. For lunch it was my host-mom, her friend who is originally from Luxembourg, my friend from UPS Abbey and me. We had Kir and toasted nuts for aperitifs before the meal and my host-mom added in a green salad in between the main courses and dessert in order to not completely scare of her friend accustomed to French meals. Her friend was quite horrified that in America we don’t have a cheese course after the main course and seemed rather weary of sweet potatoes and pumpkin. Apparently the French aren’t accustomed to mixing sweet and salty tastes during the meal. In the end I think everything turned out decently well. My host-mom’s friend was impressed that I had made the dinner rolls from scratch. The stuffing was a little different because I made my own bread cubes instead of buying the pre-toasted ones like I do in the U.S. My host mother and her friend declared that the piecrust wasn’t good, but Abbey and I figured it just needed to be cooked slightly longer (the French are accustomed to a very cooked crust on their tarts). We now have lots of leftovers and I’m looking forward to getting to eat them the rest of the week. I wonder how much I could scare the French by my post-Thanksgiving sandwich with everything piled on top each other??

Photos (finally!):

Versailles (previous post)

2nd Floor of the Louvre (previous post)

Art Deco and Monet

Joyeux Thanksgiving!!!

Well I have certainly neglected to update recently. So, last weekend, here we go…

Friday was the IES trip to Versailles. Versailles was home to the French monarchy from Louis XIV until the French revolution in 1789. For American’s it is most widely recognized as the home of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. The gardens are immense and include the Hamlet Marie-Antoinette had built so she could go and pretend she was a shepherdess and heard sheep (which, according to legend, were pink and perfumed). We started off taking a tour of some of the areas that the general public isn’t allowed to tour, or at least wasn’t allowed to see that day (unfortunately we did not get to see the opera because we were late getting there). Our tour-guide was rather snobby, kept treating us like we were uneducated Americans and kept implying that we didn’t have a high enough understanding of French for him to do the tour in French, even though we understood just about everything he said except for the name of the illness one of the kings died from (small-pox – if you are curious). We were all quite happy when the tour was over and we spent the next hour walking around the rest of the chateaux on our own (without feeling belittled) before lunch. There is currently a modern art display happening at Versailles. It is all the work of an artist by the name of Jeff Koons. It is quite strange to be walking through all of these Rococo rooms and then all of a sudden come across a “piece of art” made of Vacuums or a large metal heart. I did not find the contrast appealing and felt that there are more appropriate places to display modern art, but I’m sure there are others who would disagree and say that the contrast was the whole point of the display.

Lunch was at one of the restaurants in the gardens so we got to see some of them as we walked down to the restaurant. Due to the weather being cold and windy, and that I’d already been to Versailles in the spring two years ago I did not feel like spending the hour and half we had left after lunch outside exploring the gardens. Instead I headed back to the castle and explored the gift shops and then just sat in one of the rooms enjoying the decoration until it was time to meet up at the bus.

Saturday was a day of recuperation from the week and was also spent getting a little bit of homework done. Sunday I headed to the Louvre in order to tackler the rest of the 2nd floor. This half of the floor didn’t interest me as much as the paintings on the other side, but none the less I got to see some interesting “objets d’art” including lots of Sevres porcelain which I now feel like I can recognize from a distance – at least the most common design. By far the highlight of the trip was getting to see Napoleon’s apartments, although I might have appreciated them a little more had it not been the same weekend as Versailles. The rooms were all grandiose, ornate and huge, especially the living and dining rooms!!! Hopefully the pictures will speak for themselves.

This week has been classes and another trip back to the American grocery store for more pumpkin and gravy mix. Tonight IES has coordinated a Thanksgiving dinner for the students, so that should be an interesting experience. I’m interested to see what the French catering company makes for a Thanksgiving meal (or more so, how it tastes!).

A Short Note...

I think I've been here too long. The other day on the metro there was this girl sitting across from me who I kept finding myself thinking was quite weird but I couldn't figure out why she gave me this impression. All of a sudden I realized what it was, she was smiling! I couldn't believe that I now thought smiling people were weird, but apparently I do... what's going to happen to me when I get back to the States and people who I don't even know say hello to me? I'm going to think the whole country is insane!

Other than this, it's been a fairly quiet week so far. I've been working on finalizing the menu for the Thanksgiving Dinner I'm cooking on the 30th for my host mother, two of her friends and my friend Abbey. Tomorrow I'm returning to the American grocery store to purchase Libby's canned pumpkin and perhaps another goodie or two for personal enjoyment (mmmm peanut butter M&M's!) Well I'm off to Versailles on Friday and who knows what Saturday and Sunday... I'll try to write Sunday night!

Americana and Castles

Another packed weekend in Paris! After classes Thursday Abbey, Brad and I headed out in search of an American grocery store called “Thanksgiving” that I’d heard about. I’m cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my host mom, a couple of her friends and Abbey the Sunday after Thanksgiving so I wanted to see what type of ingredients this store had incase I couldn’t find something in the French grocery stores. The store was very small, but incredible! I didn’t realize how nice it is to have familiar brands and labels looking back at you on the grocery store shelves… there was Kraft mac and cheese, Fluff, and three different brands of peanut butter. They also had all the basics you need for Thanksgiving: stove top stuffing, ocean spray cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie spices and even pans for your turkey and basters! I loved just standing at the window looking in. I decided not to purchase anything unless a substitute really couldn’t be found in a French grocery store since the prices were kind of outrageous (4.80 euro for a can of cranberry sauce!). Since we were already in the area, I wanted to head over to the falafel place and get an early dinner since it was one of the nights my host mom doesn’t cook for me. On our way, we walked by a Boulangerie/ Patisserie (bread and pastries store), which Abbey said had the best pastries so we were, of course, obligated to go in and make a purchase. I decided to buy a beignet (French for doughnut) since I had yet to try one here and remembered my days of making beignets with my grandma when I was younger. Here they are round like American doughnuts, but without a whole in the center. I ordered one and the lady turned to me and was like “chocolat?” – I had no idea that there was anything in them, but I decided what the heck and said sure. It was THE MOST DELICIOUS THING EVER! I was practically dying outside the store as I took my first bite. I made Abbey take a taste and she definitely felt the same way, it was heaven. So I quite contentedly ate my doughnut, which had been sliced in half and had a layer of chocolate in the middle, as we walked over to the falafel place. Falafel was delicious as always and we did some window-shopping as we ate before heading back to the metro to go home.

Friday, I got up early because I was taking my first field trip with IES and had to meet the bus at 8:30am. We were supposed to go to Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Victomte, but Vaux-le-Vicomte was already closed for the winter or something like that so we ended up going to Fontainebleau and an artisan village called Barbizon, which was an area where painters of impressionism and realism gathered and painted in the forest back in the day. It was a really cloudy and foggy day and as we left the city I turned around to look back and couldn’t tell for the life of me that we’d just left Paris. It took us about an hour to get to Fontainebleau where it was equally cloudy and cold. We split up into two groups and my group got this really nice tour guide lady who gave us a tour (in French) and stopped often to make sure we were understanding what she was saying or to make a joke about something she said. Many of the kings and both emperors of France used the castle when they had the itch to go hunting. It was originally built for François I, but all of the kings after that made additions and/or changes within the castle. Pope Pius VII was also kidnapped and kept there for like a year and a half after he had come to Paris for Napoleon’s coronation (by kidnapped they meant that he wasn’t allowed to leave the grounds, he could however walk around the gardens, receive visitors, and his living space – including multiple receiving rooms and a large bedroom – was probably as big as my house!).

After Fontainebleau we went to lunch at a nearby restaurant. The dessert was très tasty! We had profiteroles, which are puff pastries cut in half with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle and then homemade chocolate sauce on top, delicious! (and pretty too) Feeling sufficiently full and tired, we got back on the bus and drove the 20 or so minutes to Barbizon. There we took a tour of an old inn that used to house artists. They had painted all over everything there, the walls, the furniture and apparently even the dog! It was cool to get so see what was left of their wall and furniture paintings and upstairs they had a mini display of some of their canvas works as well. After that we walked down the main street for a while and our tour guide pointed out some of the more notable artists’ residences. After that it was back on the bus and back to Paris… it was nice to be back – the countryside felt too quiet.

Yesterday (Saturday), Abbey and I decided to do two of the walking tours out of my guidebook. We started off with the Ile St. Louis tour that took us by pretty bridges and parks, a large house now owned by the Rothschild family, many cute little boutiques and Berthillon ice cream (again). We stopped in Berthillon (the actually parlor and not another restaurant selling Berthillon) since Abbey had yet to try it, she got tiramisu and I tried some sort of semi-dried plum and liqueur ice cream and raspberry rose. The plum was good and the raspberry rose was out of this world!!! It was such an interesting combination of raspberry and rose flavors, but they were simply amazing together and made a very pretty red color. After Ile St. Louis we walked over to the Bastille area to do the second walking tour. We started at the Canal St. Martin (where I tried roasted chestnuts for the first time – interesting, but not sure I’d get them again), headed up to the Bastille, walked around the “Place” a little and then took some side streets down and around (they had an interesting assortment of restaurants and cute boutiques – definitely want to go back). We finished off by walking along this raised walkway (about 2 stories up) that was lined with tree and other plants. It was really cool and I would have never known it was there. It used to be railroad tracks, but now they converted it into this path that takes you from close to the Bastille all the way to the Bois du Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris. We didn’t follow it all the way because by this time we were both feeling the effects of walking for 3 hours straight and figured it was time to head home.

Today was a relaxing day… I took my time getting ready this morning and then headed out in time to meet up with my friends for lunch. Originally, we wanted to go to some place Shaina knows about that serves bagels, but apparently it’s closed on Sundays so we went to a restaurant called “Breakfast in America.” Our hostess was of Asian descent and spoke with an Australian accent, something I found rather amusing given she was working at a place trying to imitate the U.S. in Paris. The food was delicious and I think everyone had a great time. We spent an hour waiting in line to get into the restaurant and most of that time was passed by discussing every item on the menu and how much we liked/ missed/ wanted that particular food or commenting on how they explained certain item in French (ex. Cream cheese was described as cheese Philadelphia style and salsa as Mexican sauce). I got a bagel and cream cheese and a pancake on the side. It was a rather carb heavy lunch, but quite enjoyable and made us all feel back at home. After we all cleaned our plates thoroughly and paid the bill we headed our separate ways as everyone else had homework they needed to do. I was actually good this weekend and got my homework done ahead of time!!

Fontainebleau pictures here.

Walking tour pictures here.

Walking, Walking, Everywhere!

Well the election is over and perhaps I will now not be bombarded with the question of who I’m voting for every time someone finds out I’m American. A lot of kids from my program went out to American bars and such last night, staying up to watch the election results as they came in. I decided I preferred sleep and set an alarm for 4am so I could check out what was going on then. Abbey also called me at 5am after they had officially called the election for Obama to let me know.

This past weekend was Fall Break! I spent most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday procrastinating from writing and then eventually writing a 5 page single spaced paper as part of an application for a summer internship… Monday I went to the Louvre in the morning and walked around half of the second floor looking at French and Italian paintings from the 15th – 18th centuries I believe. I saw a couple of famous pieces I had studied in my art history class last year, which was pretty cool. I saw the Mona Lisa from a distance as I negotiated the crowds around it to get to the next room. I really find it unimpressive and not worth being jostled around my impatient tourists all using their cameras’ flashes when all the signs specifically say you can’t! I’m really unimpressed with the Louvre as far as their artistic esthetic goes… they seem to spend very little time organizing paintings so that you can fully appreciate them, often putting them one on top of another two or three high in small rooms where you can’t get far enough away from the wall to see the higher painting. I feel they are much more interested in the quantity of items collected!

Monday evening I finished up my essay and felt quite relieved to have it behind me. Tuesday my friend Emily, who was here the weekend before, was back in town, just for the day. She and 3 other friends went to Italy for fall break and their plane arrived in Paris at 8am and their train back to Nantes wasn’t until 9pm. I met up with Emily and one of the other girls (the other two went to the Musée d’Orsay for the day) and we set off for what became a day of walking. We started off at Monoprix where they bought breakfast and I went next door to get a Starbucks. Ok, I know I said my last Starbucks was going to be my only one while I was her, but they just came out with the holiday drinks here, which are completely different from the holiday drinks in the U.S. so I was just dying to try one! Here they have three holiday drinks, Morello Cherry Mocha, Crème Brulée Latte and Praline Mocha. I got a Crème Brulée Latte which tasted kind of like a mix between a Cinnamon dolce Latte and an Eggnog Latte, pretty yummy, but not obviously Crème Brulée. After having gotten our food we headed to the near by Luxembourg Gardens to sit, eat and enjoy the surprisingly clear and sunny weather. It was November 11th and thus a “Jour ferié” or holiday that everyone has off work and school for so the park was fully of families and couples. Children were sailing mini boats in the fountain and runners were making their rounds around the perimeter of the park. After a while there, we decided to do a bit of wandering, first in the direction of the Panthéon (which you have to pay for to get in, so we admired the exterior), then another church, which a random guy told us was the most beautiful in Paris, but it didn’t open until 2pm. We ended up on boulevard St. Germain, which is known for it shops and is home to two famous cafés: Café Flore and Les Deux Maggots. We walked along for a while and would stop and look at all the shoe stores as we are all in search for cute French boots at a reasonable price. We stopped at a Fragonard boutique (brand of French perfume) and smelled, sprayed and tested many scents until our scent cells were dead. We continued down the street until we hit the Seine and decided to cross to the other side and start thinking about lunch. We walked along the Rue du Rivoli and decided to go to the Louvre for lunch and eat gallettes (like crepes, but with buckwheat instead of normal flour). Emily had also decided at this point, after having pleanty of time to spell the top, heart and bottom notes of the perfurme, that she wanted to purchase one of the Fragonard scents so we went to the Fragonard boutique at the Louvre so she could do so.

After that we decided to go search out the famous ice cream parlor Berthillon on the Ile St. Louis. It was a little bit longer of a walk from the Louvre to the island than I had originally anticipated, but we got to admire more of Paris and I used my newfound knowledge from my architecture class to interject random facts about places as we walked by. It was my first time on the Ile St. Louis and I’m definitely planning on heading back, everything is cute and tiny and there were pedestrians (albeit mostly tourists) everywhere! The ice cream parlor was closed, but there were a number of other little restaurants along the same street that sold their ice cream so we shelled out the money for the rather pricey deliciousness and headed to the park behind Notre Dame to enjoy the frozen delicacy. I got caramel made with salted butter, white chocolate and praline/ pine nut. I enjoyed the caramel and the praline/ pine nut immensely, but the white chocolate had a very strange texture that we decided was cornstarch and was less than impressed. Ice cream finished, sun starting to set and wind picking up we were all quite cold and decided to take a walk around the interior of Notre Dame to warm up. After that, we headed back across the Seine the meandered aimlessly down streets in the general direction of Montparnasse. At 6:30 we met up with the other two girls at the Montparnass train station and headed to dinner. I only had a hot chocolate since I was scheduled to eat with my host mom that evening and a little after 7 I said my Adieu’s and headed back home on the metro.

Today and tomorrow it’s back to classes and Friday I’m going on a field trip to Fontainbleau (a chateau) with IES. I have recently discovered reruns of old episodes of Gilmore Girls and JAG on French TV, which I find highly amusing. Sadly, at the moment it’s time to get back to the the homework done I ignored over the weekend! Pictures to come later…

Theta-tastic Weekend in Paris!

Well it was a simply fabulous weekend after a not so fun second half of the week. I had midterms Wednesday and Thursday, so I was really looking forward to Thursday evening at 8:20 when Emily’s train showed up (my friend in Nantes who I went and visited a couple of weeks ago). We headed back to my apartment and watched some Gossip Girl before retiring for the evening in preparation for our whirlwind sightseeing tour. Emily had already been to Paris 4 years ago so she wasn’t dying to hit all of the must see spots, so we got to do a couple of different things during her three day visit.

Friday we headed to Le Marais so Emily could try Falafel because she had never had it before! It was yummy as usual and while we ate we walked to Place de Vosges so I could show off some of what I learned in my architecture class about Places Royales before heading to Chez Janou, a restaurant recommended for its chocolate mousse by our French prof, Michel, back at UPS. We ordered the chocolate mousse, a crumble, hot chocolate for Emily and a café crème for me. It was all amazing, but a little cher (expensive). They bring the chocolate mousse out in this huge bowl it’s made in and then scoop some out on a plate for you. The crumble was an interesting assortment of fruit that we decided consisted of banana, mango and perhaps pear? After eating our hearts out we headed back through the Marais towards the Rue St. Honoré where all of the famous designer’s boutiques are so Emily could see them. We also took a quick detour to take a look at the Madeline. After Rue St. Honoré we headed over to the Petit Palais, which has a small permanent art collection that free to view. We wandered through the museum for a while before deciding to head back home to buy groceries for dinner. After dinner we went to a friend, Janelle’s, house from IES to watch scary movies and eat microwave popcorn with Abbey for Halloween. Her host family’s house is amazing! It’s hidden in a courtyard behind and apartment building. There is just this one little cobble stone street with cute and rather large French houses on either side, I had no idea something like that existed in Paris!! It was so nice to just lounge on big comfy couches with a blanket and junk food. We watched Halloween and part of Halloween 2 before calling it a night since we had to catch the metro back before it closed, definitely a great experience.

Saturday we slept in and then headed out in the rain to La Defense. It’s the business district just outside of Paris and has the Grand Arc de la Defense, which can fit Notre Dame Cathedral inside of it, to give you an idea of its size. It’s in alignment with the Arc de Triomphe, Place de la Concorde and the Arc du Carousel. It was cool to see, but quite rainy so Emily and I chose to meander around the huge, American style shopping mall next door – going in and out of different clothing stores. After lunch and breaking down and buying my one and only Starbucks for the time I’m here (at $6 a pop they’re definitely a luxury), we headed back into Paris to the Musée du Marmottan which has an extraordinary collection of Monets. The metro stop for the museum happens to be in the middle of a neighborhood which houses a lot of ambassadors’ residences. I dragged Emily on a quick detour when I spotted what turned out to be an Iraqi flag. The best part of seeing the Iraqi ambassador’s house was the fact that it had a huge black Hummer parked just in front of it – the only Hummer I’ve seen in Paris in the past 2 months. We also stopped to admire the Italian and German ambassadors’ houses before continuing on our path to the museum. The Marmottan Museum was incredible! It has a huge Monet collection along with numerous paintings by other artists from the same time period and the building itself along with its décor was great to admire too. It’s definitely a favorite in Paris and I am planning on returning before I leave. After the museum we headed over to the Trocadero to get a good view of the Eiffel Tower all lit up at night. It’s now lit up in the EU’s colors – blue with white sparkly lights ever hour. It was windy and really cold so after taking a bunch of pictures we retreated to the warmth of the metro and my apartment for the rest of the evening.

Sunday we got up early because it was the first Sunday of the month, which meant the Musée d’Orsay was free and also means long lines in France. We met up with Abbey at 9:30 in line and got in relatively quickly. We visited the 2 of the 3 main floors, making sure to get too see all of the Impressionism. After 2 hours there, we said good bye to Abbey and headed to see the Catacombs, but the line was WAY too long so we decided to walk over to the Tour Montparnasse instead and get a good view of the city for slightly cheaper than the Eiffel Tower and with no waiting in line! The view was pretty good (40km) and you could pick out most of the famous monuments of Paris. They actually let you up to the very top of the building on the roof so you can take pictures that aren’t through glass windows! Then it was time to head over to the train station that was just next door so Emily could catch her train back to Nantes.

Sunday night I spent cramming for my architecture midterm that was today and I got up extra early this morning to finish studying. Now I am absolutely beat and going to bed.

My pictures - here!

Emily's pictures from the weekend - here.

Cuisinez! and Monet

The past couple of days in review:

Went to classes per usual and did homework – not so exciting, even in Paris. Tuesday afternoon Abbey, Nick and I attempted to do a little sightseeing but the combination of a closed exhibit and rainy weather severely limited our outing. Friday morning we had our second architecture visit looking at 17th and 18th century architecture, I believe (I should probably figure that out for sure shouldn’t I?). We saw a couple of Hôtel Particuliers that were quite pretty (well their façades at least) and also the inside of two churches. I suggest reading the first part of my friend Abbey's blog for more details about the architecture tour, she does a pretty excelent job describing not only what we saw, but also our somewhat nutty professor! Look for her name under the list of my friends' blogs on the left of this page.

After the walking tour I headed straight to the Louvre to meet up with my host mom, her friend and her friend’s husband to go to a cooking exposition. They basically had all of these booths set up demonstrating different products (blenders, whipped cream canisters and peelers to name a few) and foods/ drinks such as whisky, flavored dulce de leche and juices. There were also cooking demonstrations by chefs, some of whom are seen often on French cooking channels. To my Albuquerque readers – it kind of felt like a giant “Now We’re Cooking,” but with more food samples = heaven for Devon! I did some taste testing, including a raspberry milkshake (the idea seemed quite foreign to most of the people watching they kept asking about the ingredients and if you could just put them all in the blender at once), Tropicana juice “smoothies” (I love how the French pronounce the word smoothie – the concept of blending different fruits together for juice also seemed to be a difficult idea to grasp), whiskey (a ten-year and a sixteen-year – I liked the sixteen-year old better), apple liqueur (delicious! I bought a mini bottle) and crème de cassis (also bought a mini bottle so I could make a homemade kir or two!). Overall it was quite a fabulous and delicious afternoon, but I was quite exhausted by the time we headed home.

Today (Saturday) I went to Giverny to see Claude Monet’s home and gardens as well as the American Art Museum. I had to get up early to take the metro to the St. Lazare train station and from there I took a 45-minute train ride to Rouen. Giverny is just the next town over across the river and I took a special bus the rest of the way. The American Art Museum’s collection was rather “petit” but there was a wall with four paintings on it, of which I absolutely loved them all. I bought a postcard of one of the paintings before heading over to Monet’s house. His house was very pretty and decorated mostly with Asian items and had brightly colored walls. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take photos. The gardens were gorgeous despite this being the last weekend they’re open until April! Wild flowers were everywhere and the streams and ponds with water lilies were fabulously picturesque. I felt as if I was standing in the middle of one of his paintings – which I guess I basically was. After Monet’s gardens I decided to splurge for lunch and ate at a hotel restaurant down the street. I had a gallette with Roquefort cheese and walnuts, a boule of cidre (glass of cider) and a lemon sugar crepe. It was all delicious!! There was a dog at the next table over that resembled Whisky quite a bit and seemed very ready to come over and play with me, but sadly his owner wouldn’t let him, despite his barking and wining to do so when I smiled at him. His owner did however make a special trip out to the car after ordering his food just to get the doggy’s bowl, jar of food and cheese. The wife then mixed the cheese with food before giving it to the dog who seemed less than interested. She should have let him play with me! After lunch I wandered down the street a little more, enjoying the tiny, picturesque French town in all of its autumnal glory before taking the bus back to the train station.

Three of my four midterms are next week and then my friend Emily is coming to visit for the weekend Thursday evening, so I’m dedicating tomorrow to making study guides for my exams! Perhaps you will get a post if something interesting happens between then and now, but most likely there will be one either while Emily is here, or shortly after her departure.

Click on the title of the post for pictures of Giverny!

Cow, Wind Turbine, Chateau... Repeat.

I had a fabulous weekend in Nantes with Emily (a friend from UPS who is also a Theta)! I was able to get all of my homework for Monday done Thursday night, so I just brought a little reading for Tuesday with me incase I was bored on the train. Friday I took the metro to Gare Montparnasse and caught the 11am train to Nantes. The ride was only 2 hours and I spent 40 minutes or so dozing and the rest staring out the window, fascinated by French countryside after being in Paris for a month and a half. I felt like I had more culture shock seeing wide-open spaces with trees and cows than adjusting to living in France. I loved looking out the window and seeing not only farm houses, fields and cute small French towns, but also wind power turbines and numerous chateaux (French castles)!! I definitely decided that one of those needs to be on my “To Buy” list…

So I got to Nantes at 1pm and Emily met me at the train station. We hit the ground running and headed over to her IES building because they were taking a field trip to the “Mechanical Island” and I was tagging along. I left my luggage in one of the offices and we took a 10 minute walk over to the island where they have among other things, a giant mechanical elephant!! It was quite cool to see, but a ride on it lasts 40 minutes and we decided it wasn’t that cool. We looked around the rest of the workshop where they had other mechanical animals such as a squid and crab that also moved and squirted water. After we had exhausted the possibilities there we went back to IES to pick up my suitcase and then to Emily’s house to drop it off. She introduced me her host mom who told us she and her husband were heading to their other house for the weekend so we would have the house to ourselves. It was now 3:30 or so and I still had not had lunch so we went to Monoprix and decided to buy a snack and we would have a later dinner. We ate our food at Place Royal… very pretty, I’m sad now I didn’t think to take a picture. On our way back to Emily’s house we stopped to admire wedding dresses in a couple of the store windows. Back at Emily’s we ran into her host mom and dad finishing packing up the car to leave. We went upstairs wasted some time on the computer and then decided at 7 we were tired and needed to nap before going out since we were meeting up with some French friends of Emily’s at 9:30pm for a “verre” (glass of wine). We napped for a little while and finally headed out to dinner at 8:30pm. We found a Thai/ Vietnamese restaurant with reasonable prices and what turned out to be yummy, but smaller portioned food. After dinner we met up with her friend and some of his friends at a small place that was half tea parlor, half bar. I enjoyed it a lot! I introduced Emily to Kir (she got a raspberry flavored one while I stuck to the traditional cassis) and we stayed there until about midnight chatting.

Saturday we met up with another one of Emily’s French friends, Beatrice, and went to the marché (market). We meandered around the stalls and bought lots of fruit (Italian grapes – my favorite! – orange, the most delicious strawberries I have ever tasted – and perhaps the most expensive – pink pomelo – not sure how it was different from grapefruit – and a coing which resembled a pear-apple cross, but tasted like star-fruit to me). We then got sandwiches for lunch and sat at a café and ordered hot chocolate since it was chilly but sunny. By this time Emily and I were exhausted from all the walking and headed home to relax, we spent the afternoon watching old Gossip Girl episodes since Emily just started watching the show. We decided to get Chinese takeout for dinner, a process that took us an hour from leaving the house to get back, but had quite the feast of curry chicken, basil beef and chow mein. The evening was spent watching more gossip girl.

Today we slept in and then had brunch before heading out to see the local chateau and cathedral. We meandered down a couple cute French streets and admired the gothic architecture. A little French park then caught my eye before heading back to her house to pick up my suitcase and head over to the train station. I took the train back into Paris and got a little bit of reading done before falling asleep for most of the rest of the trip.

Now I’ve unpacked and eaten dinner, I might try to do a little more homework before heading to bed. Classes tomorrow again…

Click the title for photos!

Why Don't You Drive Like a Native?

So it seems to be standard driving practice in Paris for many cars to sit in the middle of an intersection waiting to make a left turn and when the light for oncoming traffic turns red about 6-8 cars turn left (2 at a time into one lane) on the red. Well this afternoon I was waiting to cross a street and watching this phenomenon when I noticed a minivan that seemed to have made a somewhat wider turn than the other cars and thus got cut off from merging onto the side street. Well this isn't usually something you see in Paris, and what's more the minivan wasn't cutting it's way back in after the first car went by! I had to investigate further to see who could possibly be driving this timidly in a capital where the only rule of the road I have yet to figure out is that anything goes. So I look more closely at the driver (male) who is sitting in a rather familiar, but at the same time foreign, position.. leaning back, one hand on the wheel. As my eyes refocussed to get a better look, I noticed a license plate sitting on the dashboard from, drumroll please.... Florida! Laughing with my dawning comprehension of the source of his inability to drive correctly in Paris and tried to give him a commiserating smile as he drove by.

P.S. Mom - I've been meaning to tell you, everyone in Paris drives just like you - you'd love it!

Long Time, No Post...

So it appears that I have gotten worse about updating my blog, not better like I had hoped. This week once again seems to have escaped me, despite my best attempts to get ahead.

Since my last update I have had my first Architecture of Paris visit, gone to the Louvre twice and also visited the Père Lachaise cemetery (something I’ve wanted to do since Mme. Sowar read us a story senior year of high school!). I also went to class (duh!) and tried to get ahead on my homework since I knew I’d be missing classes on Thursday for Yom Kippur. I thought I was on track to be successful, but still somehow managed to not have most of my homework for Thursday done ahead of time. Well I guess I’ll start at the beginning for the interesting stuff.

My architecture visit consisted of visiting Notre Dame, St. Severin (another church) and Hôtel Cluny (a large mansion from the middle ages – now a medieval history museum, I believe). Notre Dame was spectacularly huge as usual and also rather filled with people. We sat in the pews and my professor lectured a little about the capitals and what was early gothic and late gothic and then we walked around the church and she talked some more about vaults and support columns. Then we head over to St. Severin, which was much smaller and I found prettier, because you could actually see details and didn’t feel like part of the masses (no pun/ reference intended). We did get kicked out a little early because they were starting Mass, but got to see some great contrast between “rayonnant” and “flamboyant” gothic styles. Last on the list was Hôtel Cluny and by this time in was starting to rain. So it was just a quick lecture in the courtyard and a quick look at one of the few examples of medieval style gardens, which I found quite pretty and rather modern looking (sadly I don’t think I took a photo).

I’m going to try to combine my two Louvre visits into one, so as not to over bore you with random artifacts. I have now covered the entire basement and first story of the Louvre (I am rather proud of this feat – and look forward to covering the second and third stories in the near future). There is so much more in the Louvre than I could have possibly imagined when I was there 2 years ago. I'm still astounded half the time when I walk into a new room and see everything they have, not to mention how gorgeous the building is in and of itself! Last Friday my trip consisted solely of ancient Egypt, while today I covered what amounted to the ancient Middle East (Babylonia, Syria, Iraq and probably some other areas that I’m now forgetting – My brain has now officially been overly immersed in French, I just tried to spell Iraq the French way and could not figure out why spell-checker didn’t like it) and French sculpture. The French sculpture that was originally intended for gardens and other outdoor areas is kept in what used to be an outdoor courtyard of the Louvre which they covered in a high glass ceiling to keep the effect. My overall impression from these two visits is that the Louvre must have what amounts to these countries’ entire collections of artifacts and I wonder how there could possibly be anything left there or for any other museum. The collections are gigantic and in many cases they have whole parts of walls and what seem like buildings within the Louvre. I can’t even begin to imagine how they got everything there.

I did almost trip over Hammurabi’s Code today while at the Louvre. I was walking along and saw this big black stone and thought to myself, “ok…,” but then there was some big French writing on the wall next to it so I started reading it (it was an extract from what the stone said) and as I started to think that these rules sounded familiar and then I looked at the other wall and in big letters it said Hammurabi and I went “OHHH!” I didn’t even know the Louvre had the stone with Hammurabi’s Code. Sadly my pictures of that didn’t come out as well as I thought, so I will be returning next time just to snap a couple of better photos.

Père Lachaise was pretty amazing as well. It’s a huge cemetery with a fair number of famous people and many more beautiful graves. My walking tour book had a walk specifically for Père Lachaise, so I did that and then went in search of the grave of Abelard and Heloise. They are famous lovers and my French teacher in high school read our class a story about them, which kept the class, at least the girls, after the bell to hear the ending (If you would like to know more click their names… This doesn’t do the story justice like the telling I heard, but I believe it was in French and thus do even less justice than this for most of my readers). Sadly, the grave is currently being restored so it wasn’t the most photogenic of opportunities, but I snapped a couple of photos nonetheless.

I have yet to decide what I am doing with the rest of my weekend. I want to go to Giverny, but I’m not sure if that will end of being this weekend or the weekend after next, it will be quite a long day trip involving a train and a shuttle bus so I want to make sure I have the time and energy for it. Hopefully it will still be beautiful in the fall. Next weekend I am off to Nantes to visit my friend Emily, who is also a Theta back at UPS and studying abroad for the semester! I am quite excited and have already purchased my train tickets for that. Her host family is being very kind and allowing me to stay at their house, so luckily I won’t have to pay for a hotel room as well.

I really will try to update at least once if not twice before then, and definitely once I get back!

Click below for photos:

Louvre (sorry there are some repeats from the last post)
Gothic Architecture and Pere Lachaise

A Week of Haute Couture, Homework and Hebrew

So I have been rather terrible about updating my blog this past week (read: didn’t do it)… I let the stress of classes and missing classes for the Rosh Hashanah get the best of me and got lost somewhere under the pile of assignments and reading and I had to do. It is Thursday night, meaning the end of my school week, and I have finally resurfaced! So let’s start at the beginning.

Saturday I went to the Madeline district which is basically composed of the Madeline (a really HUGE church constructed in the ancient Greek/ Roman style) and lots of designer/ couture shops that made me really depressed I’m not living off of a large trust-fund. Dior had some amazing looking purses as well as Hermès in addition to their coveted scarves. I also wandered past the windows of Chanel, Longchamps and many others. Sunday I stayed at home, rested and tried to get ahead on homework since I knew I’d be missing class on Tuesday… obviously that didn’t work out so well, despite that I thought I got a decent amount done.

La Madèline

Monday I went to classes and then synagogue in the evening with Shaina, another girl from IES. I found a conservative synagogue in the 15th arrondisement that I really like – it feels almost like I’m back in the states, except for the French. I went back again Tuesday for services, but after 4+ hours my brain was feeling tired from trying to be trilingual. I returned to the apartment and tried to get a little more homework done before setting out for the Eiffel Tower to do Tashlich by the Seine (Tashlich is a service done between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur where we symbolically cast away our sins from the previous year by throwing bread crumbs in a running body of water). I met up with Shaina and we waited a little while for the rest of the congregation to show up. As we were getting ready to start, an Orthodox synagogue showed up and we all scooted away as to not intermingle – silly Jews! We did Tashlich and then as Shaina and I were about to leave this lady came up to us and started talking 20 miles a minute in French about Orthodox Jews: how she used to be one, how there were so many girls there just to find husbands and numerous other things. She barely gave Shaina and I a chance to throw in a “oui” or “d’accord” in acknowledgement so I’m not sure if she even figured out we weren’t French by the end of the mostly one-sided, yet very interesting, conversation. In the course of her telling us a good chunk of her life history I figured out she was the cantor’s wife! She seemed really friendly, so maybe I’ll run into her again at services.

Where we did Tashlich

Wednesday and Thursday were just playing catch-up from what I missed at school. Today this girl at school told me about a designer consignment shop in the 17th arrondisement, which I am dying to go check out. Aparrently most of the stuff is only worn once and they have Prada shoes, Louis Vuitton and Hermès purses and Hermès scarves... While still out of my price range one of these items might be buyable at the end of the semester if I'm good about not spendin too much money!

This evening (Thursday) my host mother invited the couple in the apartment next door over for an “aperitif.” Angeline and Loren (?? Maybe I’m not sure if that is his name now) are in their early 30’s I would guess – Angeline might be a tad younger and the both seem really genial and kind (they’re also Jewish – and there was much talk about who was Sephardic and who was Ashkenazic and making fun of the Sepharadim by the lady who is Ashkenazic – I’m sorry if I’ve lost my non-Jewish readers). We got invited over to their apartment tomorrow night for a surprise birthday party for the man’s daughter from his previous marriage (she’s turning 7!). I also got invited to go out to dinner with them and Angeline’s brother next Friday at 10:30pm at some restaurant, I can’t even remember there. Angeline also is planning on taking me out clubbing sometime soon as she was horrified to hear I haven’t been yet and her brother is a DJ at one of the big clubs in Paris. She seemed very excited to have someone to go clubbing with and warned Marie-Claire that we might not get back until 4am… at least we live in the same building so I won’t be going home by myself at that hour! I think that’s all for now, I’m rather exhausted, would like to catch up on my American TV a little and I have my first field trip for my architecture class tomorrow!

Une Baguette, s'il vous plaît

The rest of my week went well. I had classes again Wednesday and Thursday. I’m still not sure what I think of most of my classes and I haven’t really figured out how difficult/ easy they will be. It seems to me that they will be mostly reading, except for my French language class. My reading for my PoliSci. EU class was extremely long and would have been challenging in English, so it was definitely a task in French. But it seemed like most of my class felt about the same way.

I didn’t have class today (Friday) so I spend the morning running errands. I bought a new book to read for pleasure since I finished Harry Potter. They didn’t have the seventh Harry Potter book in the cheaper pocket size, so I bought the second book in the Golden Compass series. If that goes well I’m thinking about buying Anna Karenina next sine I never got around to finishing it this summer. We’ll see how ambitious I’m feeling – it might end up just being Le Petit Nicholas (children’s book for 7 year olds – very cute and amusing, nonetheless). After Fnac I went to Monprix to do my grocery shopping. I’m hoping it will last me two weekends (besides maybe a new baguette and some more lettuce). I was better about healthier items this time, now that I wasn’t feeling quite as overwhelmed. Buy bread still causes problems for me. For some reason whatever type of bread I decide I want is never labeled with a name – all the other one’s are, just not mine (and I did try the walk up to the counter and ask for a baguette idea, the baker looked at me and was like which type?). What I want is probably never labeled because it is like one of the most basic types and every French person knows what it’s called. But for me this leads to a very complicated process of me trying to tell the baker guy which loaf I want without just pointing. I sounded especially like an idiot today. But I finally ended up with a batard (yes they call a type of baguette “a bastard” here). So maybe I’ll just stick with that for now on to limit my mumbling descriptions.

So after running errands I was ready for lunch and made myself a salad and had some hummus and little toast crackers with it. Then I headed over to the Louvre for a couple of hours. I figure since I have unlimited access to the Louvre I can take it slowly so I just chose a section and walked around that, it was almost all sculptures. I had so little time last time I was in the Louvre, I didn’t really have time to admire the building itself. You see this amazing, huge building from the outside, but when you get inside you’re distracted by all of the artwork. The building itself is amazing!!! I really wish I could take a tour that talked about that and not the art. I tried to make a point of really taking in each room as a whole and then looking at the sculptures.

I decided to mail some postcards from the post office in the Louvre because I was feeling too tired to find one of the post offices in my suburb. While in there, this American couple came in and asked about buying a phone card. The guy behind the counter offered them a 6 euro phone card, but the guy just wanted to call a restaurant to make a reservation. The post office wouldn’t sell them anything less, so I offered to let them borrow my cell phone (I figure I could always use a little extra good karma).

By the time I decided I was tired and should head home, I was really hungry and it was only 4pm so I figured I could get a crêpe somewhere as a snack. I refused to buy my first crêpe in Paris from the Louvre food court, but sadly the Louvre is surrounded my touristy shops and then super chic and ritzy areas (literally – I stumbled upon the Ritz in my search for food). So there were sadly no crêpes for Devon (the only ones I could find were pre-made and then the guy would just heat them up and add filling – not authentic!). I headed home, even more tired from my crêpe search, and made dinner. I should really start thinking about doing some of my homework, but I think that will just have to wait for tomorrow…

Is that French or Italian I Hear??

Well I had my other three classes today. It was a VERY VERY long day. I left the house at 8:10 and didn’t return until 6:20. My literature class seems like it will be a little dull – but maybe that will also translate into not too much work? One can hope! I think I will really learn a lot in my politics class about the EU – that is as long as I can understand my prof. He’s Italian, and French spoken with an Italian accent is about the most confusing thing my brain has ever heard!!! I felt like I was listening to someone speak in Italian except for the fact that a large percentage of the words sounded familiar. Hopefully I will grow accustomed to his accent and it won’t take quite so much brainpower to comprehend.

Other than that I spend my two two-hour breaks reading, mostly for class – a little of Harry Potter. I also got lunch at my favorite Boulangerie (a chicken panini) and I returned a couple of hours later for my first French éclair. It was coffee flavor and pretty yummy although a little too sweet and large for me.

I forgot to mention in my blog yesterday that I was once again asked for directions, this time in the shopping center in my suburb. I was wearing my bright yellow shirt, which is basically a large “I’m not French sign” considering everyone here wears neutral colors with the occasional shade of teal, eggplant or pale pink. Yet this lady stopped me and asked me where a store was. Luckily I had walked around the shopping center enough to have seen in before and was able to point her in the right direction. I should really get a start on my reading that needs to be done for Thursday, but I just don’t want to do anything tonight but read or watch a movie.

Continuing Love Affair with Falafel and Fnac

While Sunday was the second day of the “Journés du Patrimoine” Abbey, Brad and I were all feeling a little less ambitious after our rather full Saturday. We decided on going to Victor Hugo’s house at the much more reasonable hour of 10am and then perhaps another sight in the area. Victor Hugo’s house was a nice change of pace after the Elysée the day before. No line! There were people there, but it was much more manageable. I wasn’t really sure who Victor Hugo was before Saturday night when I read in a quick Google search that he had written “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” upon getting to his house I also discovered that he wrote “Les Miserables.” I have fond memories of watching the musical movie version during many of the summers I spend at my Aunt Therese and Uncle Peter’s house.

A bookcase in Victor Hugo's house.

A cool chandelier.

Victor Hugo's desk.

After Victor Hugo’s house we decided to go check out the Picasso Museum, but unfortunately when we got there we discovered that it is closed for renovations until the 24th of October!! Slightly disgruntled we decided to give up on more sightseeing and head for the delicious falafel place only a couple of block away. With our craving fulfilled, we all headed home for a quiet relaxing afternoon. I spend the afternoon in bed: reading, watching Something’s Gotta Give in French, and doing a tad bit of my homework.

Today (Monday), I had my first day of real classes. I started with my France/US comparative politics course. I really like the professor; he seems genial and interesting. I hope the class continues in that direction! After that I had my Architecture of Paris class. I think I can really learn a lot in this class, not only about architecture, but also Parisian history. I was really happy to discover that I don’t have to buy any books for either class! Both teachers put together a course reading packet with photocopies of all of our assignments. This afternoon I did the rest of my French homework and went and bought a USB hub at Fnac, my favorite 2 in 1 combo of Border’s and Best Buy! Tomorrow I have my other three classes (the first one starts at 9am and the last one ends at 5:30pm) so it’s going to be a long day. I’m off to bed now.

Large and Shiny Objects

Friday I woke up feeling the start of a cold, but wouldn’t let it get the best of me. We had our IES “Welcome Lunch” on the Eiffel Tower at Altitude 95 (The restaurant on the first landing). It was very delicious! After that, Abbey, Brad and I tackled the stairs and climbed up to the second landing – it was a little more than I had bargained for, but we all survived. The view was excellent and we decided we didn’t need to pay 4.20 euro to go up to the top (the school had only bought us tickets to make it up to the first landing…). IES had also given us tickets to take one of the tour busses that go around the city and stop at all of the famous tourists sites. In theory you get off at each one and then get back on when you’re done looking (the ticket is valid for 2 days). We were feeling to lazy to get off at any of the stops, but sat on the top level (they’re double decker busses with an open upper level) and took lots of pictures and listened to the descriptions of all the sights. By the time we got off the bus we were hungry again and decided to do dinner together and pick what sights we wanted to the next day for the “Journées du Patrimoine.”

*** The Journées du Patrimoine is a weekend where all of these national sighs are opened and entrance is free. Not only can you go to your normal assortment of museums and old buildings, but also some sights that are closed to the public the rest of the year are open especially for this weekend.

Today I woke up at 6am to try to get to the Palais d’Eylsée (Presidential Palace) before the crowds. The building is not normally open to the public, so everyone wants to see it this weekend. I got there a little before 8 and found a long line, but not as long of a line as it was 40 min. later when Abbey and Brad arrived. Luckily they were both able to cut in line with me so we could go in together. I spend an hour and a half in line outside the gates and then a little more than 2 hours in line in the Palace gardens. It was quite the wait, but people had told us we would wait in line 4-5 hours and we made it in under 4 so I was proud. We also got quite the surprise while waiting in line. President Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni showed up in the garden! I made it within 4 feet of him and got a pretty good picture of the two together. When we finally made it into the building, it was quite lovely – well except for the one room and hallway that had been redecorated in 1970’s modern fashion. The palace reminded all of us of a miniature Versailles. We made our way through the many rooms, including the President’s personal and official offices and also got to see a display of presidential vehicles throughout the years.

After the Eylsée, we headed to Les Invalides and took a break on the lawn to ease the pain from standing for so long. After that we got some lunch and Abbey and Brad went to the Army Museum while I went in search of a toilet and then Napoleon’s tomb. Last on my list for the day was the Bacarat Museum, which was very sparkly and made appeased my affinity for shiny objects. It was then time to head home and rest as I could feel my cold resurfacing. Tomorrow is another day of braving lines and people to enjoy the last day of the Journées du Patrimone!

Pictures linked to title of post!

Le Marais

Wednesday was a pretty blah day. I didn’t have class until 1:30 so I slept in a little that morning and then changed my sheets and tidied my room up. I read some more of my book and ate a leisurely lunch of bread, cheese and hummus. After class I returned home because I had an essay to write for my French class as well as a test the next day that I wanted to review for. During dinner my host mother started talking about Thanksgiving and we decided that I would make Thanksgiving dinner for her since she wanted me to make authentic American food and I was not making hamburgers!

Today was much more interesting. I turned in my paper and took my test and then did a little bit of research/ reading in my guidebooks before setting off for the Marais section of Paris. Marais is one of the oldest quarters in France and is now a mixture of trendy boutiques, the Jewish quarter, and old architecture - could it get any better for Devon? I decided to do both walks #5 and #6, which looking back I probably should have done separately and taken more time to enjoy them, but I will definitely be going back to the quarter again soon! So anyway I started out at the Hotel de Ville of Paris (this is where the mayor work – and may or may not live, I’m not sure how it work here). From the Hotel de Ville I had an amazing view of Notre Dame’s size on one hand and on the other I could see the extremely modern and colorful Georges Pompidou Center (I will be going there soon and you’ll get more explanation then). From there I walked past an amazingly large department store called BHV – shopping trip anyone? (BHV had an annex store a block down that was dedicated solely to items for dogs, well at least pets – ‘Rents: tell Whisky he’ll be getting a present). I meandered around a couple of streets, walked by St. Gervais (well technically I sat down and ate gelato in front of it) and then continued on to the Holocaust Memorial. I didn’t go in today, but there was a wall with plaques full of names along it called the Wall of the Righteous and it lists the names of people who helped Jews while the Nazi’s were in France. From there I continued on down a road that ran parallel to the Seine and past the Hotel de Sens which according to my guidebook is one of the few remaining examples of gothic architecture in Paris. Across the street was a section of the wall that used to surround Paris in the 12th century and now guards a playground for an elementary school. I then continued on my walk through a series of courtyards that were once a part of Hotel St.Pol and then past the church of St. Paul. From there I started my next walk.

My first main stop on this walk was the Place des Vosges. It was build as a country retreat for Henry IV. In the center is a park, which is contained on all four sides by “town homes.” My guide book says that each side is 9 homes… I definitely want to own one of them one day! Next I headed to the Carnavalet Museum, which can be found in two connected mansions. One the homes originally belonged to a Mme. de Sévigné who was part of Louis XIV’s court. The museum consists for the most part of salvaged rooms from historic homes that were torn down in Paris and some amazing artwork. By this time I was more then ready for lunch and headed to the main street of the Jewish quarter to get some falafel, it was sooo delicious!!!! The pita tasted fresh and it was filled not only with falafel and tahini, but shredded cucumbers, cabbage and grilled eggplant. If it was so out of the way I would be eating there all the time, but I expected to go back a fair amount nonetheless. After thoroughly enjoying my falafel, I went into one of approximately four Jewish bakeries on the street and bought a small Challah and a huge baklavah. Challah in France tastes different from its American counter-part, but I enjoyed the bit of both I ate and now have the rest awaiting me tomorrow. I then continued on past the Museum of French History and skipped the stop at the Picasso Museum (I want to save that for a day when I have energy to fully appreciate it) and headed towards the Temple Square. The Temple Square was once the site of castle of the holy Knights of the Templar Order and was where Marie Antoinette and her son were held prisoner, but it was destroyed during the revolution. By this time I was thoroughly exhausted and my shoulder was killing me from carrying my school bag all-day so I headed for the metro and went home.

I basically spent the rest of the evening curled up on my bed reading at watching The Family Stone dubbed in French. Tomorrow IES is having a Welcome Lunch – a little late I feel – on the Eiffel Tower and I haven’t decided what I’m going to do afterwards. I still have to figure out my weekend plans too. All my classes start on Monday and I won’t have the free time during the week like I do now.

Click the title of the entry for the photos!!

The Bois and More!

Monday I had French class from 9-11am. After that, Shaina and I decided to venture over to the Bois du Vincennes, which is within walking distance of where she lives. We made a quick stop at her apartment so she could drop off her things and take a quick shower (she was in Spain all weekend and took a sleeper train back to make it to class that morning) and then we were off! We entered the woods from what appeared to be a very unused area and had to meander around for a while using the map from my guidebook to find the populated pretty part. There was a beautiful lake, which we walked halfway around until we saw the zoo and decided to take a detour there since Shaina is a biology major. The zoo was pretty quiet as it was a Monday afternoon, but we wandered around and got to see Giraffes much closer up than you would ever be in the U.S. There was only a small ditch and a rope fence between us. The zookeeper did have to come out once and yell at the Giraffe for getting too close… The monkeys also provided a great deal of entertainment and there were a couple of baby monkeys that were extra cute to watch interacting with the adults. I would guess we spend a good 20 minutes just staring at the monkeys. After we were done at the zoo we continued our path along the other half of the lake and then I headed home for dinner.

My host mother made zucchini mousse (aka soup) and a chicken and green bean dish. It was rather delicious! I took a picture of the table because it just looked so cute and French! We tried this new red wine last night that my host mother really liked and I found interesting. Red wine here seems to have a lot more flavor than in the U.S. I had tried a red wine from Spain that Shaina ordered at lunch last week and it also had a lot flavor – almost spicy!


Today I went to class again… oh the repetition! And then I decided to go buy tickets for High Holiday services. Well first there were metro problems… there was some sort of technical problem at the Montparnasse station (really big – has like 4 or 5 lines through it) and it was backing up trains 3 stations away. So after sitting around for like 10 minutes and changing train 2 or 3 times I finally found one that was going somewhere and made it work for getting to the synagogue I was trying to find. I got off at the metro spot, picked a street that I hoped was the street I saw on Google Maps a day earlier and hoped I was headed in the right direction. Luckily I was, and I found the synagogue without too much of a problem. The secretary was really nice and printed out maps and hours and everything for me so I’m all set to go now, I still can’t get over how expensive tickets were though! After that I headed back to the metro, but it was lunchtime and I was hungry. I sat down outside at a café next to the metro stop and ordered a kir (white wine with crème de casis liqueur) and a sandwich with goat cheese. Both yummy, but I’m still trying to get used to the fact that the French put butter on their cheese sandwiches… it’s slightly strange and I can feel the extra calories!

This evening I went to see Mamma Mia with my host mother and her friend, tickets were only 3.50 euro because of a special “back to school” type promotion!! The movie was cute, but I felt guilty listening to so much English. I did however have to read the French subtitles a couple of times when I could understand/ hear what they were saying in English! For dinner we had Farsi tomatoes (hollowed tomatoes stuffed with a beef and herb mixture with eggplant and squash on the side – all baked). Now I’ve just about finished my homework and am debating between just going to bed or reading for a little while. I don’t have class until 1:30 tomorrow!!

One last thing. I was just talking to my dad on the phone and looking at the schedule for High Holiday services and I noticed that this synagogue does Tashlich (for all my non-Jewish readers: a symbolic purging of sins by throwing bread crumbs into flowing water) on the Seine by the Eiffel Tower… how amazing is that?! I’m definitely going!!!

Five Times Over the Seine

I set out for Paris this morning and decided to take bus #72 instead of the metro. My host mother had recommended it to me my second day but I had yet to feel adventuresome enough to take it. Anyway the bus goes through my suburb and then through the 16th arrondisement and follows the Seine into the heart of Paris. This basically means that you get awesome views of all the big tourist sights, aka amazing Eiffel Tower photo opportunity. But alas I wasn’t feeling touristy enough to start snapping photos in the bus, but maybe next time.

I got off right by the Pont d’Alexander III, a really ornate pretty bridge. Walked across took lots of pictures of the bridge and the Eiffel Tower from the bridge. From the other side of the bridge you are smack in front of les Invalides, so I took pictures of that as well. Then I went back across and walked by what I thin was the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, but haven’t verified that. There was a huge line to get into one of them and I saw a sign that said something about biannual antiques… I will have to investigate further. My walk along the Seine took me to Place de la Concorde and many more pictures ensued between the Obelisk, fountains, Champs Elysée and la Madeline. It just wasn’t the same there without my French group from high school and Mme. Sowar though. After that I took the Pont de la Concorde across the Seine and ended up at the National Assembly – think our capital building. Took some more pictures and wandered back behind it and down a side street and then back up to the Musée d’Orsay. I didn’t really have time to actually go in the museum, but I figure I’ve got all semester to go at least twice. I then went back across the Seine and into the Tulleries Gardens, which are in front of the Louvre. I made a quick detour into the Louvre to use their “facilities.” I tried to find the entrance that take you directly to the “Carousel du Louvre” – the shopping part instead of museum part – but sadly I couldn’t remember where the entrance was and only found the entrance for special groups. So alas I had to wait in line and go through the main entrance at the pyramid. After that I deviated from my guidebook’s instructions slightly and went around the other side of the Louvre on the rue de Rivoli and around the backside. I then headed back to the Seine and took the Pont des Arts back across. Next time I will have to actually take the Pont de Neuf, but the Pont des Arts gives you the ability to take pictures of the Pont de Nuef and the island. After stopping to admire the Institute of France (now on my short list for the Jour du Patrimone) I took a street that was lined with art galleries (sadly not my preferred style of art, but none the less made interesting window shopping) and headed towards my metro shop.

This afternoon I accompanied my host mother to the event at the Mayor’s office. They have two days where all of the clubs and organizations in town set up tables and people can come and get info about the activities. Her golf club had a table and she needed to go collect the checks they had received. We meandered around a little and I saw there is at least one if not two places to take figure skating lessons, so I might look into that. The evening was quiet… I did my homework finally and read a little more. Now it’s time for me to go to bed, I have class at 9am which means I have to leave at 8:15am!

If you click the title of this entry it will take you to an album of my photos from today!