I am fully aware that this post is long overdue, but ever since I got back to Cambridge on Monday afternoon, I have been so exhausted!!! For a while, I wasn't sure why, but after going through my photos from the weekend, I've figured it out- we did so much! Prepare to be amazed by our travelling stamina...
So this weekend was Paris, and it was wonderful! I've been to Paris twice before, the first time being in 2003, so I've seen most of the big, famous sights, but it's been a while. However, I travelled this weekend with my friend Blake who has never been before, so I got a chance to revisit some of the really cool places that I haven't seen in almost ten years (I can't believe it's been that long...).
We left Cambridge on Friday afternoon, and took the train from St. Pancras to Gare du Nord. By the way, the Chunnel (the tunnel that goes under the English Channel) is an amazing thing- it only takes about two hours to get from London to Paris!! After arriving in Paris, we took the bus to my aunt and uncle's place, where we had been graciously invited to stay for the weekend. They live in Beaubourg, very close to the Georges Pompidou Center:
The Pompidou Center was famously built "inside-out," with tons of colorful pipes and tubes running along the outside of the building, and houses a huge modern art gallery. We never ended up actually going in, but I hear it's pretty cool.
After saying a super-quick hello to my Aunt Kate and Uncle Noah (they were on their way to a picnic along the River Seine), Blake and I headed to the Musee du Louvre. We had heard that it was free for under-26s on Friday evenings, and so it seemed like the perfect activity for our first night.
The Louvre is absolutely huge, and we knew there was no way we'd get through the whole thing (you could easily spend a full week in there), but we hashed out a list of things we wanted to see and made a start.
The entrance to the museum is down through the giant glass pyramid that stands in the courtyard. The architect, I.M. Pei, is the same one who designed the Ronald Reagan Medical Center at UCLA!
Even though we only made it through the French and Italian paintings wings, we saw quite a bit in our short, two-hour trip, including a few of my personal favorites, such as the Victory of Samothrace and the Coronation of Napoleon, and, of course, the Mona Lisa, or as it is called in French, La Joconde. I have mixed feelings about the Mona Lisa; while it is undeniably a beautiful painting, the experience of viewing it at the Louvre is quite unsatisfactory. It's not very big, and it's always surrounded by a dense crowd of people, making it very hard to see. Blake managed to snap one quick picture while being shoved aside by the hoard of culture-hungry tourists:
The Louvre is also quite wonderful simply because of the building itself: the long hallways, the ornately decorated ceilings, and the big windows in every gallery that look out into the gorgeous courtyard. I think we looked out as many windows as we did works of art! I didn't take too many pictures while in the galleries (I got so caught up in the art that I just completely forgot), so I apologize for the lack of photographs here.
By the time we left the Louvre around 10:00, the sun had set and everything had been lit up, including the pyramid, the ferris wheel in the gardens, and all of the buildings in the courtyard- it was just gorgeous!
We had planned on going to the Eiffel Tower that night as well, but Blake wasn't feeling too good (he ad decided to come on the trip despite having come down with some mysterious illness and a sore throat a few days before we left), so we decided to just get a quick bite to eat at a cafe near the museum, and then headed back to Beaubourg.
Luckily, he was feeling a bit better by the next morning, because we had quite a busy day planned!! After having breakfast with my aunt and uncle (and Blake drinking about seven or eight cups of tea), we started walking towards Ile-de-la-Cite, the larger island in the middle of the Seine and home of the Cathedrale de Notre-Dame.
The line was horribly long to get in, but it moved pretty quickly, and we were able to get in in about ten to fifteen minutes. It was just as incredible as I remembered:
The insanely high ceiling, the stained glass windows, the organ music playing- it was just beautiful. We walked all the way along the perimeter of the cathedral, looking at all the windows and the statues of the angels and saints where people had left devotional candles (the candlelight just makes it that much more amazing). Blake had also just finished taking a class on Gothic architecture, and gave me a quick rundown of a bunch of features of the building- pretty cool!
Afterwards, we walked around the outside to see the exterior architecture, including the hundreds of stone gargoyles and (of course) the flying buttresses:
There is just something so wonderful about the term "flying buttresses," and the first time I visited Paris with my Aunt Karen, we had many a laugh about it. So naturally, Blake and I had to take turns having a picture taken in front of them. Here's my lovely Buttress portrait:
After Notre-Dame, we headed to Saint-Chapelle, which is a much smaller church also on the Ile-de
On the way there, we passed by Hotel Dieu, and I just had to have my picture taken with it. Hotel Dieu is considered to be the birthplace of Paris medicine (basically modern hospital medicine); we talked about it at length in my history of medicine class first term, and I was so pumped when we just happened to pass by:
We finally found Saint-Chapelle (it's kind of hidden inside another building), but we had to wait in line for at least thirty minutes to get in. At first, we were a bit confused; the chapel we found ourselves in was very pretty, but it was a little disappointing.
It was beautifully painted, but it was also quite small and dark, and I was just thinking, this is what that giant line was for?! Then I saw some people going through a small passage in one corner of the chapel, so Blake and I followed suit. We climbed a long, tight spiral staircase, and finally figured out what all the fuss was about:
I wish I could have gotten a better picture, but the shape of the chapel made it pretty impossible. Nonetheless, the stained glass was incredible- according to a pamphlet I has picked up, the windows feature over 1,110 scene from the Bible, starting with Genesis on the left and wrapping around to finish with the Passion of Christ and the Ascension on the right. They were so beautiful- and so incredibly tall!
There's also a big rose window depicting the Apocalypse of St. John facing the altar:
After being on the upper chapel, I realized I had been there before. I mean, that's not something you forget in a hurry; I suppose I had just forgotten it's name.
By this time, it was right around noon, so we decided to get sandwiches at this little street booth- it was insanity! Everyone was yelling over each others heads, and there were a few tourists having quite a bit of trouble- either the people running the booth spoke absolutely no English, or they were pretending not to, but there was a lot of sandwich-related mime going on. It had a very local feel to it, which I liked a lot, and my French is still good enough that we had no issues getting our food. Plus, the sandwiches turned out to be amazing!
After sitting along the Seine and having our lunch, we continued walking down the river to the Musee d'Orsay, a museum built in an old train station. It houses a lot of more contemporary art, including an incredible Impressionist collection. We spent a good two hours there, looking at Monet, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin, and many others. My personal favorite is Degas- I love his paintings of the ballerinas and his dancer sculptures, especially the Little Dancer. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the galleries, but I managed to snap this one of the general atmosphere of the museum on my way out:
From there, we walked to the Place de la Concorde, where thousands of people (including Marie Antoinette and several other members of royalty) were guillotined during the French Revolution. It is also home to the Obelisk, a gift from the Egyptians to the French in the 19th century. It used to mark the entrance to the Luxor Temple in Egypt, but now stands where the guillotine once stood:
From Concorde, we walked up Rue de Rivoli, looking for a tea room I had visited back in 2003: Angelina. The place is famous for it's North African style hot chocolate and it's amazing pastries, and has become so famous that they just put one in at Versailles! Luckily, once we got there, the wait was only about ten minutes for two people, and we had a lovely afternoon tea on the upper floor:
I had the hot chocolate (which is absolutely incredible, but very, very rich) and a vanilla macaroon. Blake, who was still feeling a bit sick, opted for tea instead, but also ordered the Mont-Blanc, Angelina's specialty pastry- its a concoction of whipped cream, meringue, and chestnut cream about the size of a baseball. Even with the few bites I had, it was still only half finished when we left... delicious, but very sweet and rich.
At this point, we needed to walk some of that sugar off, so we headed back to Place de la Concorde and started down the Champs-Elysees:
We walked the entire length of the street, starting with the very lush, green, tree-lined section, almost like a park...
...and then the more-famous shopping district. The Champs-Elysees is also home to the Louis Vuitton flagship store; look at the size of this thing!!
We finally ended up in the west end of the road, where the Arc de Triomphe stands.
Just so you know, I'm not actually standing in the middle of the road, per se- the street is quite wide, and you have to cross to the center island first and then wait for the second crossing signal, so that's where I'm standing. Quite safe, I assure you...
We had planned to go to the top of the Arc de Triomphe for a nice panoramic view of Paris, but as soon as we got onto the roundabout, a large group of police officer started herding people behind a barricade; there was evidently some kind of military service going on. By this point, it was starting to get late, and our feet were pretty tired (we had walked about 8 kilometers that day), so we just decided to head back to Beaubourg.
My aunt and uncle had made dinner reservations somewhere special, but wouldn't tell us where it was. As we were walking there, my Aunt Kate told me that it was arguably the oldest house in Paris and had once belonged to a famous alchemist. She asked me how many alchemists I could name, and the only one I could think of was Nicolas Flamel from the first Harry Potter book, so not wanting to sound like a total dork, I just kept my mouth shut. Well, surprise, surprise, Nicolas Flamel was a real person!!
She had picked the restaurant so that even if I never got to meet Dumbledore, atleast I got to eat at Nicolas Flamel's house.... needless to say, I was incredibly appreciative of this restaurant choice. Plus, it was just so cute!
The four of us shared a really wonderful dinner; the food was amazing (I had salmon, duck, and creme brulee.... I die!) and I just had a really nice time talking and catching up. Aunt Kate and Uncle Noah- thanks again for dinner and planning such a great outing!
We finished dinner around 10:30, and though Blake and I were both quite tired, we decided the time was right for a visit to the Eiffel Tower. We took the metro to Trocadero, and we caught it just in time to see the sparkling lights (the Tower is always lit up at night with the famous gold lights, but to usher in the new millenium, it was decorated with 20,000 flashbulbs that now "twinkle" for five minutes every hour, on the hour). Unfortunately, the sparkling lights can't really be captured in a photo (I've tried several times), but the Tower at night is a stunning sight nonetheless:
We walked all the way from Trocadero to Ecole Militaire, which is basically from one end of the plaza to the other. It's a fairly short walk, only about 2.5 kilometers, and it took us right under the tower. We had thought about going up to the top, but the top deck had already closed, so we decided to skip it. Instead, completely exhausted, we took the metro back to Beaubourg and collapsed into bed.
The next morning, we woke up fairly early and had a quick breakfast before heading out to catch the RER to the Chateau de Versailles. It's an incredible sight, with the giant gold gates and the huge statue of Louis XIV:
It was packed!! There was a huge line to buy tickets and another one to get into the chateau, but we had come all this way and we were not to to be discouraged! Unfortunately, we made the mistake of waiting in the ticket line, only to be told an hour and a half later that we didn't need tickets to get into the palace- students of the EU are free!! I mean, I'm not complaining about the getting-in-free part, but someone could have told us!! (And for the record, Blake did ask someone who worked there before we got in line, and she said we needed tickets.) After the desire to cry a little bit passed, we headed into the Chateau.
What a incredible palace! To steal Aunt Kate's word, it's very "frou"- gold everywhere, velvet on the walls, marble fireplaces and staircases- but also very beautiful. I don't know if you can read it, but two of the buildings in the courtyard both read "A toutes les gloires de la France" ("To all the glories of France")- and boy, do they mean it!
We took a tour through the palace, which is absolutely huge, but I had a few favorite parts. Here is the main courtyard- look at all that gold!
Once inside, we saw the Chapel of Versailles, which is incredibly gorgeous, but we weren't allowed to enter:
The man behind the magic- Louis XIV himself. Quite a frou hairstyle, no?
We had made plans to go walk in the gardens after the tour of the palace, and looking out the windows of the Chateau, we got a good taste of the beautiful greenery and flowers yet to come:
There were so many incredible ballrooms and salons (and far too many to list here), but the Hercules room, used for holding parties and grand balls, was particularly impressive:
The Chateau also houses a lot or artwork and royal portraits, all hung in these amazing gold-ceilinged rooms, each with a different color of embossed velvet on the walls in place of wallpaper:
One thing I was particularly excited to see was the Hall of Mirrors, because the first time I visited Versailles, it was closed for renovation. It was really beautiful, but unfortunately impossible to capture in a photo:
We also saw the bedrooms of the King and Queen, which were both lavish beyond all reason. This is the King's bedroom, positioned in the exact center of the palace:
And this is the Queen's bedroom, which at one point belonged to the infamous Marie Antoinette. Look at that bed!!
Also, in the corner of the room, there is a door hidden in the wall, which they now leave open so that visitors can see it. Evidently, when the people of France stormed Versailles during the Revolution, Marie Antoinette used this particular door to try to escape from the angry mobs:
We also saw the royal dining room, where the King and Queen would dine. Weirdly enough, their subjects were often invited to come and watch them eat... not invited to eat with them, just to watch. Blake and I got a kick out of that... it's just such a strange idea!
There is also a replica of one of my all-time favorite paintings in Versailles, "The Coronation of Napoleon." We had seen the original at the Louvre just a few days earlier, but it always takes my breath away. By the way, this photo only shows a very small portion of the painting because I couldn't stand back far enough to get the whole thing in the frame; the entire work measures ten metres wide by six metres tall... that's about 33'x20'!!)
After the palace, we headed into the gardens. I had only been to the gardens briefly on my first trip, so I was excited to spend some time walking around and also seeing the fountains; in the summer, they run different fountains at different times of the day, and they are incredible. We grabbed a map and a fountain schedule and set off into that vast expanse they call a garden. I mean, look at that thing!! It's enormous!
We walked around for a short while, admiring the beautiful flowers and the grandiose fountains, stopping to take a few photos along the way:
How gorgeous is that?!
By this point, it was almost 4:00 and we still hadn't eaten lunch, so we sat down next to this fountain to eat our picnic lunch that Aunt Kate had packed: duck and onion sandwiches on fresh baguette and a container of some truly amazing plums. Between the food and the atmosphere, it was a really awesome meal!
After lunch, we decided to go find a few more of the fountains on the map, and the walk afforded us some really great views of the palace...
... as well as of the Grand Canal. The picture doesn't do it justice, but the scenery was so perfect and beautiful that it almost looked fake.
We had read on the schedule that the Fountain of Neptune, the largest fountain at Versailles, would run at 5:20, so we made our way over and got seat right on the edge of the fountain- our feet were almost touching the water!
The fountain was huge, and once the water started running, it really was incredible. Plus, they have classical music playing all over the gardens, and the whole experience is simultaneously relaxing and awe-inspiring.
At this point, we got back on the RER and headed back towards central Paris. We stopped again at the Eiffel Tower, hoping to go up to the top, but scrapped the idea when the wait turned out to be about four hours. We had had enough waiting for one day!
From the Tower, we made our way back to Beaubourg, stopping on the Ile-de-la-Cite to split a Nutella crepe- delicious!! We returned to the house around 8:30, and had a wonderful home-cooked meal with my aunt and uncle. It was a very nice, leisurely way to spend our last night in Paris, and though we had planned to go out again after dinner to try to climb the Arc de Triomphe, our fatigue got the better of us!
We woke up early the next morning to catch our train back to Cambridge. Blake was absolutely bent on finding a pastry shop before we left, and though we couldn't find any open so early in the morning, we were lucky to find one open just past security in the train station- mission accomplished! The journey back would have been uneventful had we not gotten stuck in the Chunnel... what an odyssey. About 90% of the way through the tunnel, the train stops and the conductor announces that the train in front of us has broken down; we ended up sitting underwater for over an hour!! It wasn't too bad, though; as I say, something must always go wrong while travelling, and you just have to roll with the punches.
It really was a wonderful weekend, and ever since we got back, I've been bragging to everyone about what a wonderful time we had! We did so much in such a short amount of time, but we also managed to enjoy it- a balance that doesn't always quite work out while vacationing!
Unfortunately, I must admit that I am coming up on my final days here in Cambridge- I don't want it to end. However, this is good news for all of my faithful blog readers: less time left = trying to squeeze in lots of fun stuff = more blog posts! Stay tuned.... until then, cheers!
