Paris, enchanté

Paris. I am glad that I decided before I left for Spain that I wanted to spend my longest vacation in Paris, because there is not a chance that I could have seen what I did of Paris in a weekend. We arrived in Paris Thursday night and struggled actually getting out of the airport, as their metro system was a bit overwhelming. Regardless, after a train, metro, and bus, we got to our hotel safe and sound, only to find out how much we really hated travelocity. When we received our boarding passes in the Bilbao airport, travelocity for some reason decided that it would be a gran idea to give Lindsey a child ticket. Being that she´s the oldest of everyone that went (4 of us on the plane) that didn´t work out so well, but luckily the lady at the desk was very understanding after I showed her my proof that yes indeed, I paid for four adult tickets. The hotel was a bit different. We booked a room for three double beds, as there were going to be five of us in the room. Travelocity thought that it would be a fun game to only book us in a room with two single beds. Not happy. Apparently travelocity does this frequently, and the hotel was very understanding, again after I showed them our proof, and gave us two rooms with two singles in each, and told us that they simply wouldn´t clean our room for our time there--perfect, I´d rather someone not go through my stuff anyways. If we had not dealt with such wonderful people, this would have been a big problem, speaking of which, I still need to send my remarks to travelocity.

Enough ripping into them. As it was late, and we were in the outskirts of the city, we decided to call it a night, and have an early morning. We woke up and first stop--Notre Dame. We decided that we wanted to see the city from the top of a building, and since Friday morning was the best weather forecast we had (meaning it was only blustering winds and freezing, no rain) we headed up the stairs to play with the gargoyles. They really are rather endearing creatures, I´ve come to quite enjoy them. I found a few that resembled people I know, so you may or may not be receiving pictures from my trip with you as a gargoyle.

After Notre Dame we decided to head over to the Luxembourg gardens, which were really quite nice. The statues that lined the sidewalks had quite animated expressions, I quite liked them. We finally found a grocery store so that we could buy the weekends breakfast. Our hunt for the grocery store was quite nice actually, minus the pouring rain, as we had to venture INTO Paris to find one. Realizing that we were going to have to bring all our food into the Louvre, which at the time we were debating would be allowed, we purchased only the essentials: granola bars and drinks.

Yet we managed to smuggle these treats into the Louvre without a problem. "It´s just like it looks in that movie about Da Vinci". Yes, there were American´s everyone, and yes, by chance, one of them did put the pieces together that this was indeed the glass prism that was in that movie, with those actors, about that code. We entered directly in through the glass doors, and were taken out of the long line, because guess what, Friday nights are free for students. Perfect, save money, and get more time in the museum. First stop, who else? Mona Lisa here we come. It wasn´t hard to find as any directional sign pointed towards her. After actually seeing her, I am now completely confused about art. What on earth makes this painting one of the worlds most famous pieces? And that painting itself is really quite small. Someone one day will probably give some factual reasoning to why she´s so grand, but I won´t believe them, as I left rather unimpressed. Don´t get me wrong, its a cool painting, but honestly, other pieces within that same room I fancied more. Which says a lot, because out of the literally blocks (as in neighborhood blocks) worth of paintings they could have put in that room, they did not put in ones that made the Mona Lisa stand out. My favorite piece in the whole place was Hammurabi's´s Code, though the inscriptions were rather worn, and my ancient language ability is fluent, I think it said something about an eye for an eye.

The Louvre exhausted me, as artwork normally does, paintings especially really baffle me. Oh well. We jumped on a few metro lines and a bus and return back to the hotel safe and sound.

If it hadn´t been absolutely pouring we would have headed to Versailles, but assumed that the grounds would be far more magnificent in better weather, and thus we remained in the city limits. Aux Champs-Elysées, aux Champs-Elysées, Au soleil, sous la pluie, à midi ou à minuit, Il y a tout ce que vous voulez aux Champs-Elysées. Thank you Madame Carr. I think that my friends officially hated me after signing that every five minutes, I had it in my head all weekend. However, our first stop was indeed the Champs-Elysées. We meet up with one of our friends, who showed us around the area, and as she was raving about this one particular pastry shop, we then decided it would be a shame if we didn´t have a delicious, apparently worldly know, pastry. Sadly however, the smell of pastry shops makes me quite queasy. As me how and I couldn´t tell you for the life of me, as I happened to quite enjoy sugar and sweets, but pastries are a bit much, so though everyone got their delactable treats, I opted to watch them enjoy.

As they were eating their treats we parked ourselves right outside L´Arc de Triomphe. I probably should have known this before, but I was unaware that the Arc houses France´s tomb of the unknown solider. The flame on the site is quite powerful, because neither the tree-toppling winds or the piercing rain could smother it. There wasn´t actually too much to see at the Arc, so we headed out to the Moulin Rouge, a place apparently better suited for college girls during the day. We strolled through the theatre district, and got quite lost looking for the Sacre Coeur, as every time we took out our maps it was a fight against the wind and attempting to block the rain from destroying them was near impossible as well, since the bloody weather broke EVERY SINGLE one of our umbrellas. I guess that means I´ll have less to pack on my way home. After I had a few people endearing laugh at my french, I suppose I can´t blame them as it now as a Spanish accent, we found the Sacre Coeur. A few staircases later we were finally inside. Shelter from the storms at last! This is supposed to be one of the best views in the city, but we literally could not even see the road below us through the rain and fog. Sacre Coeur itself is actually a dedication to the many soldiers lives given in wars beginning in the French Revolution and I believe ending with the Franco-Prussian War. Apparently there was quite the contest in designing the Basilica, as over 75 architects submitted designs. The Basilica is dedicated to the soldiers of WWI. A little fact, the organ that is now in there, one of the largest in the world, was taken from Biarritz, a place I hear is great if you want to pop in and have lunch.

Anyways as we quite enjoyed the warmth the church provided, we realized we ourselves were quite hungry and headed down the hill in search of food. It didn´t take long as we found a place within minutes. That's one of the wonderful things about Paris, is that you find great little places everywhere. I thoroughly enjoyed my dinner, but dessert was the best I have had since I have been in Europe. Homemade ice-cream, hot caramel, in a dessert crêpe, fantastic concoction. So good that I order another.

Our next stop on the agenda was seeing Paris lit up for Christmas, which I know you must be thinking cannot be that hard. However, there are some places more tastefully done than others, and thus that´s where the wind, literally blew us. We saw wonderful lights, and numerous Christmas performances in the window shops were mannequins generally stand guard. Between that and hearing Christmas songs, I have not been able to stop thinking about Christmas, very favorite time of the year. Another wonderful day in Paris.

Sunday´s in Bilbao are a joke: nothing is open. Nothing. Paris on the other hand, was full steam ahead. We headed out to the Bastille, and next to the monument we found a wonderful market. I tested a raspberry, was in heaven, and bought a box of them, which I consumed entirely before we even left the market--at least it was something healthy. We played in the market for quite some time, a bit of a different experience than my Moroccan adventure, but wonderful nonetheless.

We then realized we´d been in Paris for a few days, and everyone had a significant amount of Christmas shopping to do, so we spent a few hours wandering through the Christmas markets being tempted in by wonderful homemade crafts, that we discovered were "Made in China", honestly tell me that was a hand blown ornament one more time and I might believe you, only when you divulge that it was handcrafted by a seven year old. On our voyage through the city, we found a road that looks exactly like a road in Lexington, MA where the Balloon Shop (my grandmother´s toy store) once stood. It was a bit of a déjà vu.

We could not help but stop for crêpes again--it was our last day in Paris. Scrumptious little buggers they are. We enjoyed our crepes and headed for the Musée d'Orsay, my preference of the two art museums. This is the home to the French Impressionists, holding Monet, Renoir, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, pretty much this place is an easy way to drop artistic names. I raced upstairs to Van Gogh, unrealistically hoping that Starry Night would be there. Crushed I was faced with others in the series. Quite far from crushed actually, as I enjoy nearly all of this work, at least the selected pieces I´ve seen. Once we covered the impressionists we noticed that Gaudi was on the map as well. He is a Spanish architect who has quite a few famous constructions in Barcelona. We then meandered over to his room to find furniture. One of his mirrors made it into the Musée d'Orsay, how fitting.

Saving the most monumental for last, I´ll mention this hunk of steel that blinds you at night. We visited the most paid monument in the world, The Eiffle Tower. Apparently Barcelona was out of the loop in the 19th century, because the plan was to have it constructed there for the Universal Exposition of 1888. Maybe they didn´t think it went with Gaudi´s architecture, who knows, but they refused it, and so the plans were sent to Paris. The tower was the entrance arch for the Exposition Universelle, a World's Fair marking the centennial celebration of the French Revolution, in 1889 the year of it´s completion. All of this was news to me. Perhaps I didn´t remember as much about French History as I pretended to before our trip. The elevator ride up was a bit terrifying for me, as I don´t do well with heights or my stomach dropping. The ride was probably as smooth as can be, but my nerves still turned it around enough for me to feel its every movement. We made it up the north tower quite quickly and was at the top just in time for the hourly light show. It sparkles every hour for ten minutes at night. Quite pretty from afar, rather blinding when you´re on it. The bright lights and lack of view killed it for me, and I escaped down the elevator sooner than I probably should have. I´ll be back.

Our numerous metro changes and bus stops allowed us to have quite the recap of our Parisian adventure, one we all concurred was a fantastic way to end the semester. But like I said, I´ll be back.