Paris!

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Hi Everyone!

How are you all? Getting excited about xmas? I am, surprisingly, since it is going to be a bit of a weird one! Kiwis and Aussies in out little wee appartment! I suspect alcohol will help merry things up a bit!

So anyway, what have you all been up to? Holidays yet?

Eamonn arrived in Paris on Wednesday morning, Paris was almost entirely covered in fog, couldn’t even see the Eiffel tower, but it was great to see him again. After a breakfast of real french pasties in a little cafe he slept most of the day, bowled over by the cold, jet lag and only 4 hours sleep on the plane! So glad i’ve always been able to sleep while travelling. We went out for dinner though, and went for a walk around our hotel, which was smack in between the bastille and republique, so it was really central. Nice area too, quiet, but close to everything and filled with great restaurants. French, italian, thai, japanese etc etc.

On Thursday we went to the Louvre, where I had been before, but again only managed a small portion of it ! That place is just so enormous...and incredible. We looked at the french paintings, italian sculpture and paintings as well as some amazing egyptian stuff, levant artfacts and other muslim stuff. So many differet styles and cultures....quite inspiring!

Friday we went to the Musee D’Orsay which was awesome! Several of my papers covered European art movements this semester.....it was astoudnign seeing some of these things in reality, and is so much cooler when you know even a tiny little bit about them.

We did the usual touristy things like walking down the champs elysee to the arc de triomphe, and we went up the eiffel tower...something I didn’t get to do last time and it was totally worth it. We met up with torse (and lauren who we’d stayed with in Prague) and walked the first 2 levels....more than 600 steps (our calves started spasming when we’d got down again...very odd feeling!) before getting the lift to the top. Utterly incredible views, and luckily we scored a fine day, with not too bad visibility!

It started raining in the afternoon though, so we went to the modern art museum, where torse and I went kinda crazy seeing the wacky things we studied in our retarded french art lectures. We saw Duchamps’ ‘ready mades’ and some dali, kandinsky (which i actually kinda like!) etc etc. Oh but prolly best was the sculptor Brancusi’s studio that he donated to paris, which is still set up as he had it, with replicas of lots of his work displayed (many of the real ones were inside the actual museum....really beautiful) The museum is in a really cool building too, the pompidou centre....totally modern with all the piping on the outside and these giant black balls hanging from the roof inside.

Hung out with Torse and Lauren on Sunday (yesterday) in a cafe mostly, but also went to Sacre coeur which is huge, white domed and breathtaking. Though we kept getting told to be quiet while exclaming over the architecture!!

We went out for dinner in the latin quarter last night, typically bad french service unfortunately, but was still enjoyable.

Eamonn and I caught the TGV back to Lyon this morning, and it was really nice to be back ‘home’ again. Crazy how comfortable you get somewhere in 4ish months.
Well, gotta figure out how the heck we’re gunna get to Portugal, so better be off, sorry for the tourist guide update of paris...feeling emaily uninspired :p

Hope you are all great, enjoying any glimpses of summer you scrape,
Have a wonderful christmas and new year,
Love Samara xxoo

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Photos

The Louvre
Eamonn and me outside the Louvre, wandering through the gardens before getting lost in the art and museum wonders inside.

Paris
Some random building we found with the moon overhead on a walk along the Seine back from the Louvre