The Final Paris Post

My last week in Paris was absolutely fantastic. Having my mom there sort of softened the sadness of having to leave such a wonderful place. We kept even busier than I had been during class time, running from museum to museum and boutique to boutique, stopping for delicious food at every opportunity.

On our first full day together we went to Angelina, a famous tea salon right next to the Tuileries. Everyone says you HAVE to get their famous hot chocolate, but we only made it a few sips in before getting overwhelmed by how sweet it was.

We also moved from my apartment at the Citadines in the 13th to a hotel right down the street from the Opera. I was sad to say goodbye to my home for the last few weeks, but knowing I would be so close to so many awesome things in the center of the city made it a little easier. You could just see the top of the Opera from our hotel room! And later, on July 14, we could see the edge of the fireworks at the eiffel tower.

So on the 14th we underestimated the extent of the Bastille Day celebrations and tried to go to the Musee de l'Orangerie which turned out to be not only closed, but also completely unreachable because of closed streets. While that was quite a frustrating way to start the day, we ended up at the Musee d'Orsay instead where we conveniently watched the parade from the rooftop terrace. In case you ever need to know, watching a parade from the top of a tall building across a river is DEFINITELY the best way to watch a parade. Plus, since all the tourists were over at the edge of all the Bastille Day action, the museum was nearly empty.

Monday was by far one of my favorite days of the entire trip. We took a train out to Chantilly, a typical quaint village in the French countryside with a big, beautiful chateau. No offense to Louis XIV, but I liked Domaine de Chantilly way more than Versailles. For one thing, it wasn't swarming with tourists stopping and starting to take pictures in every room and for another, it had a full on forest that was both beautiful and good at keeping people cool in the shade. The best part about Chantilly? THEY HAD WALLABYS. A WHOLE FIELD OF WALLABYS. We're still not sure why, but I don't even want to know why. All I know is I got to see some wallabys and I didn't have to fly for 30 hours to Australia.

The lion and the platypus, nature's most fearful predators.

Our last day was spent fitting in last minute tourist stops (Notre Dame) and souvenir shopping (not to worry, we didn't buy a single beret or anything shaped like an eiffel tower). Our most exciting discovery was a boutique/cafe called Merci near the Bastille. Out front is a big cafe lined with bookshelves (I died a little when I saw it) but if you walk through to the courtyard there's an entrance to a massive boutique filled with travel books, drawing supplies, collected clothes from all over the city, housewares, and beautiful jewelry. We spet the entire afternoon exploring the place. It was perfect.

After a tasty vegetarian dinner by Les Halles, we walked down to the Ile Saint-Louis for ice cream at Berthillion. We ate our ice cream on a bridge overlooking the sunset over Paris, the perfect end to the perfect trip.

Coming to an End

Once again I'm writing a long, delayed post, but this time it's to sum up my time in Paris (sort of). I finished my last busy week with my study abroad class and I'm now spending a few extra days playing tourist with my mom before heading home to the US. When we talked about it this morning she pointed out that it's as if I'm being a tourist where I live because I've spent so much time here at this point that it really does feel like I've lived here.

Our last week with Abigail was filled with long days and trips to exciting places. Despite the heat and constant walking we managed to keep up and stay conscious for class time, in addition to spending as much of our afternoons and evenings together as possible. On Monday we spent the day trekking between the many covered passages, or arcades, near the Opera area (think Nichols Arcade in Ann Arbor). It was nice to get out of the sun and even better to experience the shopping culture of the 19th century.

Tuesday we spent the day in Giverny, aka Claude Monet's country home. Obviously we were all thrilled to see where Monet lived, worked, and hosted other cool important people. Once again it was VERY warm, which despite the discomfort was preferable to rain because so much of the good stuff at Giverny is outside. Inside his house the walls were filled with Japanese prints, a few small paintings, and collections of things like porcelaine plates or vases. We hurried out of the house however, so that we could get another look at the garden out front and, more importantly, locate the lily pond. Everything was beautiful and I kept having those "Monet PAINTED HERE" moments.

The next day we made our last trip through the Musee d'Orsay (though not my last) and then quickly hopped in another bus to make our way out to the Barbizon School. The first thing we did was head into the Barbizon forest where realist painters like Millet and Courbet would go to paint landscapes and physically be out in nature. You could see why these artists would choose to work there, the light, the trees, the rocks, it all fell together naturally to form such beautiful scenes.

After that we visited Millet's studio which now exhibits some of the work, primarily Millet's, created in and around the Barbizon forest.

 Thursday we began with a guest lecturer at the Musee des Annees 30 (Museum of the 1930s) where we got to see some really cool 20th century art, appliances, and furniture.

After that we met Abigail at the Petit Palais to jump back and view their collection of 18th and 19th century French art. The juxtaposition between the art nuveau of the morning and the work at the Petit Palais was fantastic.

Friday was our final day with each other, our professor, and our lovely in country organizer, Judith. We started the day at the Musee d'Art Moderne which was essentially just a wandering exploration of the museum since Abigail knew very little about the art. We did however begin with the Dahn Vo show as a group and got to see some really interesting pieces relating to Vietnam, America, and McNamara.

Afterwards, we headed next door to the Palais de Tokyo for the best meal I've had since getting to paris. I started with a mango lassi to drink and a massive ball of burrata mozzarella on top of zucchini marinated in mint and garlic.

Next was a heaping plate of curried vegetables with a bowl of couscous and peas.

And finally a citron cheesecake with strawberry sorbet. Needless to say I've never felt more full nor more happy. I think Abigail was secretly trying to stuff us to the point of euphoria so that we wouldn't all start crying when we had to say goodbye (tears were shed anyway).

We finished up our time together with a relatively spontaneous trip to the pompidou center. Even if we barely covered contemporary art in our program, we all still wanted to go to spend a little extra time together and have a chance to listen to one last lecture.

I'm so thankful for the time I got to spend here and especially for the people I got to spend that time with. I've been given so many amazing, mind blowing opportunities while I've been here and I wouldn't want to have spent my summer any other way.

All the Things

This has been a long and busy week, so as a result this is going to be a long and busy post... My apologies.

On Friday I had to say goodbye to two of my friends who've been in Paris for the last few weeks. I was sad to see them go, but spending the night eating Nutella crepes under the Eiffel tower was a pretty great way to send them off. Plus, it was the night of the Fete de Musique which meant two things; one, there were twice the amount of people out and about late at night, and two, there was a marching band dancing down the steps leading to the tower. It all made for a pretty eventful night.

Saturday, we explored the Latin Quarter and visited a few of the open air markets and busy shopping streets. I had to physically hold myself back from buying all the peonies in sight. Somehow all the flowers here are more beautiful than any I've seen in America.

Because of the never-ending rain, Sunday was devoted to catching up on work and lounging around the apartment. However, I did make it out of the house at the end of the day to play trivia at The Thistle with my friend Moira and my friend Ingrid's older brother Berent who lives in Paris. We came in complete last place and didn't even win any points for our creative name, The Loch Ness Trains Harry Potters (an attempt to win the favor of the Scottish/Irish/British bartender). Despite the loss, we all still had a fantastic time.

Monday, we started off at the Louvre for one of the girls' oral presentations, but we found ourselves frustratedly looking for the room containing Louis XIV's portrait only to realize it was closed off in a construction area. Since we couldn't see the portrait in person, we did the next best thing and headed to a cafe where we could pass around Maile's iPad and "gaze lovingly" at Louis XIV while enjoying a cafe au lait. 

Next, we began walking around the city to look at the development of bourgeois and royal homes throughout Paris. We stopped at Saint-Gervais to admire it's contradictory classic front facade and gothic sides. It also had really interesting modern stained glass windows inside.

Continuing on, we saw a handful of fancy houses called "hotels" which are kind of a mix between an estate and a small castle set in an urban area. The architecture was beautiful and one even had a semi-well manicured garden behind it that we got to listen to our lecture in.

Between houses we made the executive decision to take a much needed eclair break at L'eclair de Genie in the Marais. Words cannot express how simultaneously beautiful and delicious these eclairs were. I shared a raspberry chocolate eclair with my friend Dorie, which we marveled over for a few minutes before sacrificing it's beauty for the sake of our cravings.

Tuesday we met in front of the Fountain of the Innocents for one of the girls' presentations. Afterwards we headed a few blocks down to Saint Eustache, which from far away can be seen poking out over the construction around Les Halles. The church was big and beautiful, as have been all the cathedrals we've visited so far. The best part, however, was that in one of the chapels we discovered a minor modern art exhibition with tall canvases covered in drippy glitter paint.

Then, we made our way over to the Gobelins, which was and still is a tapestry factory in which workers create tapestries and rugs on massive looms. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of the people actively working on the tapestries as we walked through, but photography was allowed inside the exhibition so you can see the end product.

Watching the artists work meticulously at the creation of one knot of string completely put into perspective the time and effort that went into the finished works we got to see in the exhibit.

Wednesday was the day we've all been waiting for. That's right. VERSAILLES DAY! My friends Max and Kelsey have been in town since Tuesday night, so they tagged along for the day as well. Walking up to it from the train station I was half thrilled to finally get to see this amazing place in person and half terrified of the amount of people that would be inside of it. The interior was beautiful, all mirrors, velvet, and painted ceilings. No stone was left un-decorated.

But it was the gardens that really got me excited. I'm fairly certain the gardens just go on forever and all that other urbanized land around Versailles is just an illusion. All you can see when you're standing up by the house is green and I LOVED IT.

Unfortunately, Versailles was our last day with our professor, Maile, which made us all very sad when class ended. But after hugging Maile and trying to follow her as she walked away... We've developed a bit of a mother duck problem in that the second she walks somewhere we automatically follow, so it was even harder to say goodbye. But! Now we're all excited to get to know our new professor, Abigail, and learn about impressionism in the next half of the course.

Before moving on, we explored the grounds a bit more and found out where Marie Antoinette's house was. The second class was over I just kept repeating, "I want to find Marie Antoinette's peasant village. I want to find the peasant village.", and y'know what, we did. And it was awesome.

On Thursday, we had a brief informational orientation in the morning, and then were set free to do whatever we wanted with the rest of the day. I met up with Max and Kelsey in the Tuileries so that we could walk through the garden, grab some lunch, and head over to the Musee d'Orsay. 

Unfortunately you aren't allowed to take pictures in the Musee d'Orsay, but just imagine all the awesome paintings from the pre-impressionist, impressionist, and post-impressionist era all in one place.

We'd been on a mission to find ice cream all day and after walking back into the Tuileries we found an Amorino gelato cart right away! Needless to say, the gelato blew my mind.

Keeping on the sugar binge, we then sought out Laduree, the famous macaron brand.

On Friday we didn't have class, so I spent the day exploring with Max and Kelsey. We spent most of our time at Les Invalides where we saw loads of interesting war memorabilia and Napoleons ridiculously giant tomb. There's also a really cool museum  about Charles de Gaulle in one of the areas of the building with interactive screens and audio tours that aren't finished being translated into English.