Paris dissection
Apr. 13th, 2005 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieWhitney and I started our Gallic odyssey at the ungodly hour of 4:30-ish in the morning on Wednesday, because our flight was slightly at 6:30. Oof. Good thing the Exeter airport is miniscule, so we didn't have to be there very early. (Yes, there's been a theme of getting up at horrible o'clock to travel this month. I'm tired of pulling mandatory all-nighters.) Not that it helped me, as I was up late having issues with my schedule for next semester and generally stressing about stuff, so I didn't really bother going to bed. Ick.
But anyway, we made it on the plane and into Charles de Gaulle and onto the RER into Paris itself. The first thing we saw as we emerged from the subterranean gloom of St. Michel station was the gleaming white of Notre Dame. It was so gleaming that it was almost weird; less of a twelfth-century monument to religion than "Hey, look at our brand new Gothic cathedral!"
But anyway. It was still very lovely, and we vowed to come back when Chandra was with us. After dropping off our stuff at the hotel and having lunch while watching the never-ending rain pour down, we met up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fiara, who very kindly provided tour guide and translation services throughout the following six days. Wheee! We went to the museum of the middle ages at Cluny, which was fascinating, although I'm shocked I managed to stay awake for it. They have the Lady and Unicorn tapestries housed there, and they really are amazing.
After walking all the way to the Tuillieries (ow) and taking the Metro back when it started to rain, we were introduced to the first of many French foods on this trip with a dinner of tarts (well, quiche and pie, basically, but don't tell the French I called them that). Then it was bed at 9:30 (8:30 for my jet-lagged body), because oh wait, I pulled an all-nighter the night before. Yeah.
Next morning, we had the first of three breakfasts from a nearby bakery. I got the same thing each morning: a Frenchified apple fritter (chausson aux pommes). Or perhaps it could better be described as an apple pasty with really, really good pastry. Either way, it was better than I ever thought it could be. Mmmm. After breakfast, it was off to the Musee Carnavalet, which is basically a museum of the history of Paris. We only stayed about two hours, and I wish it had been open yesterday so I could have gone again, because we only saw probably a third or so of it. I think we managed to go from the Revolution through the Paris Commune, although they have the rooms all out of order. They had all kinds of historical objects, mostly art, with some furniture, a couple documents, and some other objects of everyday life; the best I can describe it is to say it was a visual history book. I amused Whitney by providing running commentary on what stage of history each artifact came from, mixing up the order of my July Monarchies and my Second Empires and such, unfortunately, because it's been a year since my French History class, and let's face it, the French? Had so many freaking revolutions in a 100-year period that I defy anyone who hasn't studied it for several years to be able to spout it all off in order, with details of who, what, and where. But I managed to decipher most of the French captions, which made me feel vaguely victorious. Hooray for Romance languages! One less-thrilling part of the museum was the creepy guide/interpreter we ran into somewhere around Napoleon I, who seemed intent on telling us in the nicest possible manner that America sucks, and all intelligent Americans ought to move to Europe. He followed us around for a bit, until we finally lost him somewhere around the revolution of 1848.
Chandra got in during the afternoon, and in the two brief hours of clear weather during the day, we went up the Eiffel Tower. I can see why people say it's tacky, but it's always been one of my favorite structures, so I was pleased to gallivant about in it, although the elevators were a wee bit terrifying. Lots of stuff to see from the top, too. Afterwards. we went to dinner (this was, like, seven o'clock, by the way; it doesn't get dark until 8:30 or so anymore), and then came back to view the tower all lit up and watch the hourly sparkly light show they implemented for the millennium celebrations. Very pretty. I took many pictures.
We came back via Metro and for some reason I can't remember ended up on the Ile-de-la-Cite. Notre Dame at night may be the thing I end up remembering best about the whole trip. We saw it was open at ten o'clock, and decided to duck in. It looked like there might be a service going on--there were a lot of them this week because of the pope--but there wasn't a member of the clergy present, only recorded Gregorian chant, so who knows. Anyway, it was so neat--there were just enough lights on to make it all shadowy and mysterious, with the high Gothic arches going on forever down the long nave. The chant recording helped with the atmosphere, too, and it was much less crowded than during the day. You could almost hear monks' sandals slapping along the stone floor.
The third day dawned rainy, again. We decided to do something indoors and went to the Opera Garnier to poke around. Ooooh, pretty. I'm not sure if my eyes will ever recover from all the gilt and glitter. Box 5, alas, was not open, nor did we find the underground lake. Luckily, the chandelier stayed in one place (attached to a hideous ceiling mural by Chagall that did not fit the rest of the decor AT ALL), and I didn't hear any singing coming from the many mirrors all around.
Jessica and I went to St. Denis (burial place of French kings) that afternoon. Still raining, but the stained glass was pretty nonetheless. The French did stained glass better than the English, I must say. We wandered through the crypt, gawking at the statues covering the bodies of everyone from Clovis to Louis XVI. Louis XVII's heart was in a jar on display. You could buy postcards of it, too. (I'm sorry--the French are bizarre.) Clovis' statue looked a bit like ROTK-era Aragorn. The whole thing seemed very Numenorean, to be honest, which was way cool.
Because I surely hadn't had enough of churches by then, we took the clearing in the weather (around 5 PM again) to go up the towers of Notre Dame. Wheee, gargoyles! I thought it had a prettier view of the city than the Eiffel Tower, possibly because said tower was in the view instead of being the origin of the view.
We had salty crepes for dinner--and when I say "salty," I mean SALTY. Whoa. They aren't kidding when they call them "crepes salees." Again with ham and cheese, though; I think had ham for practically every meal in France. Same in Switzerland. The Europeans like their pig. At any rate, I think those things prove that the French have perfected the omelette.
Friday nights, the Louvre is free for 18-25-year-olds (usually it's 7 Euro or something like that). Less crowded, too. Nice. I made a beeline for the 17th-century Flemish painters, but while I was expecting hyperrealism, I got fat angel babies instead. Damn you, Ruebens! I think there was at least one each of Van Eyck and Vermeer, but I never found them. Perhaps those rooms were closed off. Because there was no crowd, I walked past the Mona Lisa, then sat for a while. Another possession became a victim of a museum, this time my umbrella. Sigh.
We went to the best crepe stand ever for a late-night desert. Cinnamon and sugar crepes are the best thing ever, along with Nutella crepes. OMG, yes. We've decided we're going to set up a crepe stand at Kenyon when we go back, because they look like fun to make, as well as eat, and we could haul in the money if we could figure out how to make them as good as this guy did.
Saturday we rose bright and early to go to Versailles. To say it was magpie heaven would be understating the case quite a bit. Shiny, shiny, shiny. Enough gilt to cover the world a couple times, I think. I probably took a picture of every chandelier in the places we were allowed to go. When I went back through after the gardens, I danced a solo waltz in some of the ballrooms. All I needed was a partner.
I stayed out in the gardens during the entire fountain show. Probably got a photo of every single fountain, too. I wanted to get down to the "Queen's hamlet," where Marie-Antoinette played at being a peasant, but my feet protested at the idea of walking a further half hour and back too much, so I got some hot chocolate instead. (I might add that I saw snowflakes early that afternoon. Yeah. At least it didn't precipitate the rest of the day.)
Sunday early afternoon was the Musee d'Orsay. Half the reason I went was for the architecture (it's in a renovated Victorian train station), which didn't disappoint. The only thing that did was these four tourists who WOULD NOT MOVE from where they were blocking a really cool picture of the back of the outside clock face. Grrr. I must have stood there for five minutes, waiting for them to get out of the way, but no. Anyway. The art was nice, too; the Orsay has art from European pre- through post-impressionists, mostly French, including such as Degas, Monet, and Renoir. I discovered new appreciation for Renoir; his use of light and shadow doesn't come through in prints as well as it does on canvas.
I met up with the others and we went to Sainte-Chapelle afterwards. Sainte-Chapelle was built by one of the Louis (I think the seventh--the one who got made a saint) to house what he thought was a remnant of the Crown of Thorns, purchased for £135,000, or some huge figure like that, especially horrendous for the twelfth century. It has probably the biggest assembly of stained glass in one room outside of a stained glass factory. It was dazzling.
Um...what else did we do? I think we went back to the Tuillieries, 'cause Chandra hadn't seen the kids pushing their sailboats around the big fountain with sticks. Then dinner, then bed.
Monday, Chandra left, Whitney shopped for a dress all afternoon (no, really), and I wandered. We saw the inside of Notre Dame during the morning, which was very pretty, but not half as neat as Notre Dame at night. I went to the Ile St. Louis because I'd heard it was picturesque, but found it looked pretty much like the rest of Paris I'd seen. Had a good ice cream cone, though. It actually got warm and sunny, about 70 degrees, maybe, which made it pleasant to just walk about (well, except for the throbbing in my feet).
So, that was Paris. Tomorrow, it's on to Ireland, wheee! Back a week from Saturday, but late, so probably I won't be on here until Sunday.
But anyway, we made it on the plane and into Charles de Gaulle and onto the RER into Paris itself. The first thing we saw as we emerged from the subterranean gloom of St. Michel station was the gleaming white of Notre Dame. It was so gleaming that it was almost weird; less of a twelfth-century monument to religion than "Hey, look at our brand new Gothic cathedral!"
But anyway. It was still very lovely, and we vowed to come back when Chandra was with us. After dropping off our stuff at the hotel and having lunch while watching the never-ending rain pour down, we met up with
fiara, who very kindly provided tour guide and translation services throughout the following six days. Wheee! We went to the museum of the middle ages at Cluny, which was fascinating, although I'm shocked I managed to stay awake for it. They have the Lady and Unicorn tapestries housed there, and they really are amazing.After walking all the way to the Tuillieries (ow) and taking the Metro back when it started to rain, we were introduced to the first of many French foods on this trip with a dinner of tarts (well, quiche and pie, basically, but don't tell the French I called them that). Then it was bed at 9:30 (8:30 for my jet-lagged body), because oh wait, I pulled an all-nighter the night before. Yeah.
Next morning, we had the first of three breakfasts from a nearby bakery. I got the same thing each morning: a Frenchified apple fritter (chausson aux pommes). Or perhaps it could better be described as an apple pasty with really, really good pastry. Either way, it was better than I ever thought it could be. Mmmm. After breakfast, it was off to the Musee Carnavalet, which is basically a museum of the history of Paris. We only stayed about two hours, and I wish it had been open yesterday so I could have gone again, because we only saw probably a third or so of it. I think we managed to go from the Revolution through the Paris Commune, although they have the rooms all out of order. They had all kinds of historical objects, mostly art, with some furniture, a couple documents, and some other objects of everyday life; the best I can describe it is to say it was a visual history book. I amused Whitney by providing running commentary on what stage of history each artifact came from, mixing up the order of my July Monarchies and my Second Empires and such, unfortunately, because it's been a year since my French History class, and let's face it, the French? Had so many freaking revolutions in a 100-year period that I defy anyone who hasn't studied it for several years to be able to spout it all off in order, with details of who, what, and where. But I managed to decipher most of the French captions, which made me feel vaguely victorious. Hooray for Romance languages! One less-thrilling part of the museum was the creepy guide/interpreter we ran into somewhere around Napoleon I, who seemed intent on telling us in the nicest possible manner that America sucks, and all intelligent Americans ought to move to Europe. He followed us around for a bit, until we finally lost him somewhere around the revolution of 1848.
Chandra got in during the afternoon, and in the two brief hours of clear weather during the day, we went up the Eiffel Tower. I can see why people say it's tacky, but it's always been one of my favorite structures, so I was pleased to gallivant about in it, although the elevators were a wee bit terrifying. Lots of stuff to see from the top, too. Afterwards. we went to dinner (this was, like, seven o'clock, by the way; it doesn't get dark until 8:30 or so anymore), and then came back to view the tower all lit up and watch the hourly sparkly light show they implemented for the millennium celebrations. Very pretty. I took many pictures.
We came back via Metro and for some reason I can't remember ended up on the Ile-de-la-Cite. Notre Dame at night may be the thing I end up remembering best about the whole trip. We saw it was open at ten o'clock, and decided to duck in. It looked like there might be a service going on--there were a lot of them this week because of the pope--but there wasn't a member of the clergy present, only recorded Gregorian chant, so who knows. Anyway, it was so neat--there were just enough lights on to make it all shadowy and mysterious, with the high Gothic arches going on forever down the long nave. The chant recording helped with the atmosphere, too, and it was much less crowded than during the day. You could almost hear monks' sandals slapping along the stone floor.
The third day dawned rainy, again. We decided to do something indoors and went to the Opera Garnier to poke around. Ooooh, pretty. I'm not sure if my eyes will ever recover from all the gilt and glitter. Box 5, alas, was not open, nor did we find the underground lake. Luckily, the chandelier stayed in one place (attached to a hideous ceiling mural by Chagall that did not fit the rest of the decor AT ALL), and I didn't hear any singing coming from the many mirrors all around.
Jessica and I went to St. Denis (burial place of French kings) that afternoon. Still raining, but the stained glass was pretty nonetheless. The French did stained glass better than the English, I must say. We wandered through the crypt, gawking at the statues covering the bodies of everyone from Clovis to Louis XVI. Louis XVII's heart was in a jar on display. You could buy postcards of it, too. (I'm sorry--the French are bizarre.) Clovis' statue looked a bit like ROTK-era Aragorn. The whole thing seemed very Numenorean, to be honest, which was way cool.
Because I surely hadn't had enough of churches by then, we took the clearing in the weather (around 5 PM again) to go up the towers of Notre Dame. Wheee, gargoyles! I thought it had a prettier view of the city than the Eiffel Tower, possibly because said tower was in the view instead of being the origin of the view.
We had salty crepes for dinner--and when I say "salty," I mean SALTY. Whoa. They aren't kidding when they call them "crepes salees." Again with ham and cheese, though; I think had ham for practically every meal in France. Same in Switzerland. The Europeans like their pig. At any rate, I think those things prove that the French have perfected the omelette.
Friday nights, the Louvre is free for 18-25-year-olds (usually it's 7 Euro or something like that). Less crowded, too. Nice. I made a beeline for the 17th-century Flemish painters, but while I was expecting hyperrealism, I got fat angel babies instead. Damn you, Ruebens! I think there was at least one each of Van Eyck and Vermeer, but I never found them. Perhaps those rooms were closed off. Because there was no crowd, I walked past the Mona Lisa, then sat for a while. Another possession became a victim of a museum, this time my umbrella. Sigh.
We went to the best crepe stand ever for a late-night desert. Cinnamon and sugar crepes are the best thing ever, along with Nutella crepes. OMG, yes. We've decided we're going to set up a crepe stand at Kenyon when we go back, because they look like fun to make, as well as eat, and we could haul in the money if we could figure out how to make them as good as this guy did.
Saturday we rose bright and early to go to Versailles. To say it was magpie heaven would be understating the case quite a bit. Shiny, shiny, shiny. Enough gilt to cover the world a couple times, I think. I probably took a picture of every chandelier in the places we were allowed to go. When I went back through after the gardens, I danced a solo waltz in some of the ballrooms. All I needed was a partner.
I stayed out in the gardens during the entire fountain show. Probably got a photo of every single fountain, too. I wanted to get down to the "Queen's hamlet," where Marie-Antoinette played at being a peasant, but my feet protested at the idea of walking a further half hour and back too much, so I got some hot chocolate instead. (I might add that I saw snowflakes early that afternoon. Yeah. At least it didn't precipitate the rest of the day.)
Sunday early afternoon was the Musee d'Orsay. Half the reason I went was for the architecture (it's in a renovated Victorian train station), which didn't disappoint. The only thing that did was these four tourists who WOULD NOT MOVE from where they were blocking a really cool picture of the back of the outside clock face. Grrr. I must have stood there for five minutes, waiting for them to get out of the way, but no. Anyway. The art was nice, too; the Orsay has art from European pre- through post-impressionists, mostly French, including such as Degas, Monet, and Renoir. I discovered new appreciation for Renoir; his use of light and shadow doesn't come through in prints as well as it does on canvas.
I met up with the others and we went to Sainte-Chapelle afterwards. Sainte-Chapelle was built by one of the Louis (I think the seventh--the one who got made a saint) to house what he thought was a remnant of the Crown of Thorns, purchased for £135,000, or some huge figure like that, especially horrendous for the twelfth century. It has probably the biggest assembly of stained glass in one room outside of a stained glass factory. It was dazzling.
Um...what else did we do? I think we went back to the Tuillieries, 'cause Chandra hadn't seen the kids pushing their sailboats around the big fountain with sticks. Then dinner, then bed.
Monday, Chandra left, Whitney shopped for a dress all afternoon (no, really), and I wandered. We saw the inside of Notre Dame during the morning, which was very pretty, but not half as neat as Notre Dame at night. I went to the Ile St. Louis because I'd heard it was picturesque, but found it looked pretty much like the rest of Paris I'd seen. Had a good ice cream cone, though. It actually got warm and sunny, about 70 degrees, maybe, which made it pleasant to just walk about (well, except for the throbbing in my feet).
So, that was Paris. Tomorrow, it's on to Ireland, wheee! Back a week from Saturday, but late, so probably I won't be on here until Sunday.
