On with it:
Justin got into Barcelona at 6 a.m. on Saturday, March 15th. I brought him back to my apartment and fed him baguette and ham&cheese pizza. He napped while I packed and ... updated my blog. That afternoon we took an hour-/hour.5-long bus ride to Girona (on the Costa Brava) to get to the baby-sized airport that we were flying out of. Flight to Paris was uneventful until we had a super-rocky landing and I gasped so loudly that everyone around me started laughing. Took another hour-long bus into Paris because we had landed at an even more baby-sized airport. The Tour Eiffel was doing the sparkly thing as we drove into the city and even though I didn't think Tour Eiffel was going to be very exciting, it was a pretty great sight after a long day of traveling. We got to our ho(s)tel at 11 p.m.ish and passed out because Justin was jetlagged and I was tired.
Sunday morning we went to the grocery store for champagne, oranges, lunch meat, and butter and then to a bakery for baguette. (This quickly became a daily pilgrimage.) After a breakfast of croissant and pan chocolat, we packed sandwiches and headed towards Musée D'Orsay. On the way to the museum we stopped by Notre Dame (such long lines!) and walked along the Seine. Looked at the mammoth that is the Louvre and decided not to go.
The Musée D'Orsay (on which I had to do an oral report during my one semester of French) is built in an old train station. It's pretty and not unmanageably large. Really big collection of Impressionists & Post-Impressionists and has a cool exhibit of art nouveau furniture. There was one room in D'Orsay that was ridiculously beautiful -- crazy gold-leaf moldings and giant chandeliers. My PIECE camera couldn't really capture the intensity of it, but it was great.
On the way home from D'Orsay, we walked by the Pompidou Centre (a modern art museum that looks CRAZY, see pictures) and through Le Marais, which is a really cute neighborhood that Luke's friend Vaune told me is one of the few Parisian arrondissements that hasn't been ruined by tourists. There were a ton of restaurants and cafés and specialty stores in Le Marais. All the outdoor seating at cafés was arranged so that customers fully faced the street -- as though the cafe-goers were an audience. Back at the hotel, we took a nap before going out to a pizza dinner and having a few drinks at the restaurant bar next to our hotel.
Toast to our first morning in Paris. Can't remember if these were mimosas or just Sunny Delight.
So many carousels and no one to ride them with me. Where are Marjorie and Aisling when you need them?
Rainy, but pretty.
The Seine.
Petit.
Notre Dame.
Notre Dame again. There /is/ a picture of Justin and I in front of it, but it looks pretty re-re. Fellow tourists often have pretty weak photo skillz.
Moi et petit. Le Seine.
Musée D'Orsay, aerial view.
I liked this one.
A lot.
Justin atop and underground city.
The room too beautiful for my camera to capture.
A statue too beautiful for my camera to capture. The point was that it's made of two different colors of marble. Que preciosa.
Really very obsessed with this room. Am going to move in immediately.
Part of the big, giant Louvre.
Art Nouveau metro station designed by Hector Guimard. My art history teacher is going to be /SO PLEASED/ that I saw it.
French version of Barcelona's "Bicing" system, except that you don't have to be a resident to use it. Barcelona should really get with the Frenchies on this one. Also, I was only impressed by these bikes until we went to Amsterdam.
Pompidou Center. Modern art. Don't you wish that was a slide? It's just stairs, I think.
On Monday morning we ate breakfast and packed a lunch before taking the Metro to the Coulaigncourt flea market (another recommendation by Vaune), where I got a sweet teal purse for 5 euro. It was a really giant flea market -- the biggest I've ever seen -- so there was a lot of different kinds of merchandise on sale. A lot of really poor-quality knitwear and heinous knockoff D&G belts, but also a lot of really great thrifted boots and fifties-era sundresses. Couliagncourt was originally an antique flea market, but we only saw a few really neat antique stands. Before leaving Coulaigncourt, Justin and I got street crepes. The crepe man really put on a show for us. He used all sorts of finesse to put the batter on the crepe maker, etc., etc., and was wearing a silly hat that was some weird chef hat/beret combo. Too funny.
After lunch we walked to the top of Montmartre to the Sacré-Cœur, a Catholic basilica that alleges to be dedicated to the sacred heart of Jesus Christ while charging TEN EUROS to light a candle. Catholics. Honestly. Anyway, it is white and beautiful and the dome at the top is preciosa, as the Spaniards would say. I tried to get a picture of the dome despite the no-photography rule, but it turned out substandard. The view from the top of the hill on which the Sacré-Cœur is built has a great view of the city.
Afterwards we walked down the hill into Montmartre to a pretty park and then into the Red Light District, which was far skeezier than Amsterdam's Red Light District. Saw the Moulin Rouge. My main complaint about the RLD is that the prostitution is euphemized, so that 'sex shops' are not really sex shops, etc., which I didn't realize until a man-woman prossie was all up in my face. Guh.
Long walk back from Montmartre to the hostel where we took another nap before dinner in Le Marais at a Chinese restaurant (there are some things Justin and I cannot escape, and our love for Chinese food is certainly one of them).
Coulaigncourt flea market>
One of the antique places at the flea market. The colored containers were filled with such random knick-knacks.
Lamps in the same antique stand>
Pup on a car>
Stairs to the Sacré-Cœur.
Sacré-Cœur from halfway up the stairs.
Climbing.
View from the top of the hill.
Tour Eiffel from the Sacré-Cœur.
Dome inside the Sacré-Cœur.
Roof-ish thing.
From the hill of the Sacré-Cœur.
I don't know which is more beautiful! (But I'm leaning towards the double-decker carousel.
Montmartre!
Handstands in a park. Montmartre.
Park.
Smelling the fleurs.
Moulin Rouge.
My guidebook promised me a view of a windmill from one of the streets in Montmartre and all I got was THIS. A poor substitute for the real thing, but I suppose it will suffice.
Moulin Rouge again.
Can-Can.
Cans.
Red Light District.
Sexodrome?
Tuesday morning we ran into a huge open-air food and clothing market on our way to the train station. It was a little cooler than La Boquería in Barcelona because it had really sweet sweaters on sale in addition to all the produce. Plus a lot more cheese was being sold. I bought a basket of kumquats for 2 euro and couldn't stop eating it until my tongue hurt. After the market, we took a double-decker train to Versailles, where we waited in one line for 40 minutes to get our entrance tickets before waiting in a second line for over an hour to actually get into the palace, AND THEN WAITING IN A THIRD LINE FOR TWENTY MINUTES TO USE THE BATHROOM. (Big, fat side note: Why did we have to wait in two separate lines to enter? It took HOURS to get into Versailles on a bitterly cold day. Paris was honestly the least efficiently-run city I've visited so far, which is saying a lot because I'm studying in the European capital of laziness/siesta-taking. Sure, the Parisian metro system is really extensive, but in several metro stations you have to go to a real live person to buy your ticket instead of using a machine and some of the stations had no place at all where you could buy tickets! You had to ALREADY HAVE A TICKET before getting to the metro station! Nonsense.)
Anyway, I suppose Versailles was worth the wait. It was giant and beautiful and just like Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette made me believe it would be. Pastel colors and gold. Just perfect. The beds were tiny and hilarious. The Hall of Mirrors was my favorite room inside the main palace. The gardens outside were just as beautiful as the palace, although it's a shame we didn't see them in spring or summer when things were in bloom. Still, everything was very green and there was something lovely about the grey sky and the bare gardens. La la, I love palaces. We took a long walk down a straight, tree-lined road to Marie Antoinette's chateau (or whatever it's called), which was kind of pink and pretty. They wouldn't let us into the building for some reason (probably that the Frenchies are kind of silly), but we got to look at the outsides of the buildings and the gardens.
After our long, cold day at Versailles we had a chicken and beer dinner back at the hotel in Paris. We bought a small rotisserie chicken, a baguette, and some (stinky) French cheese from the shops down the street and ate them with our hands and some Biere Blond. After dinner we took a few more Biere Blonds with us to the Tour Eiffel to see it sparkle, but it was so cold that after the 10-minute shimmer and pounding our beers, we metroed back home.
We refrigerated things by keeping them outside the window. This is our fine selection of beverages: Sunny D and Biere Blonde.
Morning ritual of baguette and butter and jam and honey for breakfast and then packing a lunch of a sandwich baguette and an orange. Our life was unbelievably cute.
Brekky.
Flowers at the open-air market.
Produce.
Our double-decker train to Versailles.
Versailles from far away.
Inside Versailles.
I want this.
Funny tiny bed.
Bonjour.
Hall of Mirrors.
Mirrors!
Lovely.
Pretty.
I like this room, too. It makes studying seem beautiful.
Yum.
Awk. Versailles pic. I am always on my tiptoes next to Justin to make myself seem comparable in height.
Gardens.
Nice.
My camera sewed this one together. Can you tell?
Yessss.
!
Road to Marie Antoinette's chateau.
@ Marie Antoinette's. Get ready for a sweet animated gif 3-picture thingy.
END!
Marie Antoinette's.
Je t'aime le chateau de Marie Antoinette.
Another part of Marie Antoinette's chateau.
The Tour Eiffel sparkling.
Oberkampf: <3 Our metro station.
Wednesday we went back to the Tour Eiffel to see it during the day and to take the lift to the top. It was freezing again and there were long lines, but I /do/ love seeing cities from high up, so it was worth it. It was interesting to see how white Paris is! So many of the buildings are white! Justin didn't bring a coat on his EuroVacation, and I don't know how he didn't shrivel up and die because it was unbelieveably cold at the top. We were going to go to have a look at the Champs-Elysée and the Louvre despite how many times I had read that they were both somewhat- to incredibly overrated, but going to the top of the Tower made us cold down to our bones so we decided to pack it up and head back to the hotel for a lazy day watching some crazy German show subtitled in French.
At night we had Chinese again (OMG WHO ARE WE?) from a place on our street and then had champs and Biere Blonde until we ran out of it. Went to the restaurant bar next to our hotel for a beer before they kicked us out and then found another restaurant bar down the street. It looked like it was about to close, but we went in anyway and got big glasses of beer. A man named Jerome who worked at the bar was doing all of this ridiculous slap-stick comedy for a big table of Spaniards -- the only other customers in the bar -- and then for Justin and I. He also did some neat (?) magic tricks. This man was a total mess. Sloppy drunk. At one point, the woman behind the bar re-filled our beer glasses for free and told us that she just really wanted to get home. I guess she was giving us free beer in exchange for us leaving as soon as possible? At any rate, her hopes were quickly dashed when Jerome and his other barmate friend started popping champagne bottles and pouring glasses for Justin and I and themselves. And the free champagne and beer went on for another hour or so. Just bottle after bottle. After every glass Justin and I had, the woman bartender would briskly remove our champagne flutes, wash them, and put them away, but Jerome or his fat fellow barman would give us a new glass of champagne just as quickly. Eventually we left and stumbled back to our hotel. We WOULD find this magic champagne palace only on our last night in Paris.
Tour Eiffel during the day.
View from the second level of the Tour.
View from the tippy-top.
Hilarious/awk pic on the top of the Tour Eiffel in which I look like an angry boy who likes to do relevées.
So, so cold at the top.
Far from Spain.
Very far from our respective homes.
Another animated gif series of 3.
lolz
Thursday morning was rough because of all the previous night's champagne, but somehow we managed to eat breakfast, make lunch sandwiches and buttered baguettes for the train, and get packed before check out. Although it was a struggle, we managed to get in one last sight that I'd been dying to see ever since I saw Paris, Je T'Aime this summer -- Cimetière du Père Lachaise. It was beautiful and crowded and although Justin wanted to go look at the famous graves, I was having a hard enough time trying not to disrespect the dead by throwing up all over the place to go in search of Jim Morrison's resting place. I would've gone to Oscar Wilde's if it wasn't so far away from where we were in the cemetary. It's so, so gigantic. The graves are so neat looking and packed so close together. I was surprised to see that there had been a lot of recent burials -- I would've thought they would've run out of space a long time ago. Families from old money still have spaces reserved, I guess. Anyway, the pictures can speak for themselves.
That afternoon we took a train to Amsterdam that went through Belgium. The train experience was fun, especially because of our delicious baguettes and mandarin oranges. It was so much more comfortable than flying, especially for two long-limbed people. The Belgian and Dutch countryside was beautiful, and not even Conrad, my 2-year-old archenemy on the train, spoiled it.
Cemetary.
This grave collapsed in on itself.
It was really hard to walk through the graves. Such steep, narrow, broken sidewalks.
Creepy to put a picture on a headstone.
Far creepier to put a picture of the deceased playing the harp on a headstone.
Train station in Brussels.
Overall, Paris was pretty and there were lots of fun things to do all the time, but the weather was awful and it was so heartbreakingly expensive that I don't think I'll ever go back unless I have tons of cash to blow. It's also the polar opposite of Lisbon in that it is just so completely saturated with tourists that it kind of makes you want to cry. Still, it seems to me to be the European city that seems to have integrated its past most seamlessly into its present. And another great thing about Paris was that there were more baguettes and bakeries than I knew what to do with. And GOD was there butter. There was even one store in Le Marais called "Tout Au Buerre," or "Everything Butter."
Words Justin and I are now obsessed with using: poulet, poisson, and merde. Which translate to: chicken, fish, and shit. Also petite (small) and avec (with). My one semester of French didn't do me too well, except for really, really basic stuff. I remembered something of the numbers, which was probably the most helpful thing.
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