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Published: March 2nd 2008
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Getting there
Aboard the high-speed TGV train to Paris. I don't think I am creative enough to find any other adjectives to describe my week in Paris except for AMAZING.
I absolutely loved the city, and didn't find it particularly dirty or dangerous as it has been described in the past. Maybe it's just easier to break down each day to retell my many adventures:
FRIDAY: We left Besancon and got to our hotel in Paris at about 9:30 and went and ate at an authentic Vietnamese restaurant right down next door. I ate duck soup (sorry Cordelia...) but chose to pass on the frog's legs. I don't think I'm french enough for that yet. After eating, we were going to meet up with our friend Thomas, who is Parisien and is studying in Besancon, but after some miscommunication and malfunctioning phones, we ended up waiting for eachother for over an hour, when in reality we were about 50 meters from each other. So we ended up giving up and started walking back to our hotel when all of a sudden, another one of our french friends pulled up in a car! Random... but we ended up going out with him and his friends and two Icelandic boys!
View from our hotel
We were on the 5th floor and had a beautiful balcony! Yay for culture integration. Anyway, they took us to this bar and as we were going in, I looked across the street and, like a dumb tourist blurted out "Oh man, is that Notre Dame???". I was pretty excited that we were going to a pub with bad karaoke across the street from Notre Dame Cathedral.
SATURDAY: We took our time getting ready and then went out to explore a little bit. During the morning, Sarah Dene and I went to Notre Dame (the inside this time), and then fed the sparrows. Whoever said Parisiens were really rude and unhelpful is very very wrong. All the Parisiens I encountered were always happy to help and very generous. I was expecting this man who gave us the bread to feed to the birds to charge us but no, instead he showed us how to do it and even took pictures for us. I felt ashamed afterwards for having a pang of fear that he would run off with my camera. Then we found this little Moroccon (I'm butchering that spelling, I'm sure) restaurant and I had the most wonderful couscous ever and a free glass of wine. After some souvenir
Dame. Notre Dame.
The Notre Dame Cathedral shopping, we went to go meet Thomas (and actually succeeded this time!) and he took us to the Eiffel Tower. Surprisingly, it seemed smaller than I would have imagined it to be. And like with everything else, it was almost unbelievable to actually be there, and it was really hard to register it as THE Eiffel Tower in my brain. We wimped out and didn't go up because it was pretty cold, so I'll have to add that to my long list of things to do when I return to Paris. Because I will return!! That night, the Nebraska group went to go see two Eugene Ionesco plays at the Official Ionesco Theatre "Théâtre de la Huchette". It was this tiny, intimate theatre that was perfect for french absurdist theatre. I even got to explain a little of the absurdity to the french woman sitting next to me. And to top of the night: delicious Italian Gelato...mmm. Now I don't have to go to Italy!
SUNDAY: On sunday, after checking out the National Opera Theatre of Paris, I decided to have a 'Kara day' and go off by myself...in Paris. It was one of the most liberating and exhilarating
experience to exercise my independence like that. I went to the European Museum of Photography and spent about 3 hours looking at the exhibits, then walked around the Place de la Bastille and the Place de Vosges. I also did a lot of window shopping (but didn't buy anything... she pats herself on the back) at a lot of little quirky boutiques and ridiculously expensive clothes stores. To top off my Kara day, I went to a little japanese restaurant close to our hotel and tried Sushi for the first time. Yes that's right, I ate fish! Raw fish, at that. And surprisingly loved it! Look at me broadening my horizons... After getting back to the hotel, we had a mini get-together in our room just enjoying each other's company and watching trashy MTV in French ("Shake ton booty!").
MONDAY: Tackled La Louvre. Unlike the Eiffel Tower, it really IS as big as everyone describes it. It is almost overwhelming, and then throw in a bazillion tourists running around taking pictures of everything with their cameras, not even actually stopping to appreciate the art as it was meant to be appreciated. In addition to the over-rated Mona Lisa, the
Inside Notre Dame
Stunning stained glass windows museum has tons of really intricate and beautiful Greek statues, Egyptian antiquities, and my personal favorite of the day: neo-classical Italian art. And that's not even half of what the Louvre has on display. Like I said, overwhelming. We got there at 9:30, and left at about 4. Talk about exhausting. That night we went to the National Opera Theatre of Paris to see "Orphee et Eurydice" a ballet/opera, with tickets that costed only 7 euro but said right on the ticket ''sans visibility''. It was a little disappointing at first, but then (being the sneaky American tourists that we are) we snuck up to the fifth floor and found and couple of unlocked private booths and watched the show from there and could see EVERYTHING! I've never seen anything quite like that: very interpretive dancing melded with traditional opera. I can't wait to go back and sneak back up to "our box" for another show.
TUESDAY: Day two of big museums - Musée d'Orsay. I actually liked this museum a lot more than the Louvre. Whereas the Louvre had more antiquities and historic art, the Musée d'Orsay had the contemporary art and sculptures such as those of Renoir,
Notre Dame Ceiling
Sets a new standard for "vaulted ceilings" Rodin, Monet, Van Gogh, and Whistler. AND I got to see ALL of the artists that our characters cited in "Six Degrees of Separation". I now know exactly what a "Matisse", "Toulouse-Lautrec" and a "Cézanne" look like. When we left the museum, we went over to the Champs-Elysees (singing the song all the while) and got a small lunch and of course, a crepe. Then I napped. For 4 hours. But I don't even care that I lost half my day because I was napping IN PARIS. And then I was ready to go out for what would have been nearly a 70 euro meal at this Parisien Bistro... but since our program had already paid for it, it was free! (in some sense..) I can't even begin to describe it, but it was definitely all I that I dreamed Parisien cuisine would be.
So there's the quick (?) summary of my Paris stay. And for those of you who were wondering, the Madrid thing did not work out. But it's okay because Paris was GRRRREAT!
So now, please enjoy the pictures and be jealous. Be veeeeerrry jealous. 😊
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