Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Paris: Je t’aime!

Paris, I'm in love! I've just spent the last three days in Paris and it was absolutely amazing. I had such a wonderful time. I saw so many different building and museums and works of art and spent the whole weekend in motion, and yet I still barely scratched the surface of what the city has to offer. I will definitely find myself in Paris again, and will love every minute of it. I stayed with the Simons, our good family friends who live 20 minutes from Paris by train. They were so good to me and gave up their weekend to cart me around the city, and they know so much about history and art and Paris that it was like having my own private tour guides. Thank you so much for putting me up, and for putting up with me; I love you guys and had a wonderful time!
 
I left Thessaloniki early in the morning and had a stopover in Rome. It was funny to think that that's actually the first time I've really flown by myself--the only other time was when Katie and I went to Minnesota, but she was still too young to technically fly alone so we did the whole escort thing (which basically meant we were just the last to get on the plane, since mom dropped us off at one gate and Aunt Beth picked us up at the other). It was a pretty uneventful experience and I found all my gates easily.
 
The Simons picked me up at the airport and we went straight into the city. Both Friday and Saturday we spent all day hoofing it around the city, walking everywhere or taking the subway to see as much as possible. We saw some amazing works of art, architecture, and history. That was part of what made Paris so amazing, the abundance of art. Everywhere you turned and every building you entered, there was some painting or sculpture or building of beauty and significance. There were more museums than I could visit, but I loved the ones we did. It's not just the museums, though, it's the city itself. I could have spent a few days just wandering around the streets, or sitting in one of the parks. It was a little overcast, slightly rainy, and winter, so there were no leaves on the trees or flowers in bloom, but it was still so beautiful! All this combines to make the hipster in me very happy....
 
Anyway, some of the things I got to see:
 
The first place we went to (none of my pictures came out) was an English-language bookshop right near Notre Dame called Shakespeare & Company which set a magnificent tone for the rest of my France trip. It was run by a woman who was a member of the Resistance during the war, and it’s cute and cozy with books haphazardly lining the walls, floor to ceiling, and piled around the room. If you’re any kind of writer they let you stay overnight for free in one of the little rooms—it was just so cute and kitschy that I fell in love.

After, on the way to a place for lunch we ironically walked through a street that was row after row of Greek restaurants and Greek-style tavernas. How funny would it have been to practice my Greek while in Paris? I don’t know if you can see in this picture, but one sign says “Meteora” and another further down says “Gyros”.

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Louvre: I got to see the Louvre, which was very interesting, because when I say see the Louvre, I mean I glimpsed a tiny fragment of it. With over 35,000 pieces of art, it would take nine months just to glance at each piece. Keep in mind that the Louvre was originally a palace, so the rooms and setting itself it beautiful to see. We followed an audio tour that took us by three of the most famous works; Venus de Milo, Victory of Samothrace, and the Mona Lisa. VoS was really well done and amazing, especially the lead-up to it, since it was placed with swooping wings at the top of a wide flight of stairs. The Mona Lisa was absolutely mobbed with people. As a painting I’m not actually that thrilled with the Mona Lisa—at the risk of sounding pretentious I think Da Vinci has far better works—but I did walk around and it’s true, her eyes really do follow you!

Venus de Milo, Victory at Samothrace, Da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks, the Mona Lisa (watching you from both angles!) and two pictures of the Louvre itself.

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Musee d’Orsay: Housed in a former train station, this museum displays mostly Impressionist works. I love Renoir and Monet, so it was fun to see some of their paintings, but I also discovered Degas, who I liked a lot. I got yelled at for taking pictures and had to stop, but go google Degas’s Ballet Lesson. Pictured, Renoir’s Le Moulin de la Galette, and Degas’s Blue Dancers.

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Eiffel Tower: Despite initially losing the tower, we did manage to see it in the end. Did you know that Parisians initially hated the tower, and the only reason it was saved from being torn down was that it was perfect for radio transmissions? Now people hawk miniature versions of it everywhere, even out in Versailles.

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Our last stop day one was to see the Arc de Triomphe and have a glass of wine on the Champs-Elysees and watch the world go by. How much more Parisian do you get than that?

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That night the Simons took me out to an absolutely delicious meal at a restaurant in their town. It was scrumptious, but and I went to sleep soon after. The food, the wine, and the massive amounts of walking I did that day (I don’t know if you can tell from these little blurbs, but we walked far to each of these places!) exhausted me. It was an amazingly fun day, though.

That’s all for day one. Since I had trouble with file sizes when uploading Istanbul, I’m going to break it up again. Days two and three to follow!

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