Je ne regrette rien

18 mai


Today is the halfway point of our study abroad which makes me extremely sad, but also makes me excited for all the traveling coming up.  In the past 3 weeks in Paris, I have seen so much and come to love the city for its history, character, and beauty.  The best part has been being able to see the famous monuments and buildings in Paris but also being able to see the lesser known sites that are just as beautiful and magical.  It makes me wish that I could spend this much time in every city that I travel to because it is such a great experience.  Even with 3 weeks in Paris, there is so much I want to see in this last week that I am here.  The only difficult thing now is if someone asked me to show them Paris in 2 or 3 days, it would be so difficult to tell them what to see because there is so many awesome must see things!


I have finished the assigned Paris walks that we were assigned to do as part of our courses here.  So now I have a list of things that I have heard about and still want to see or things that I want to go back and visit.  Today I didn't feel like carrying around my camera, so all of these pictures are from my iPhone...not as good of quality, but you get the main ideas.

I walk by Notre Dame most days just because it is so close to where school is and to metro stations.  Right now they are having a bakery/bread festival.  There is this big tent in the square in front of Notre Dame where there are lots of ovens and tables with bakers making bread and other goodies and selling them.  The smell of that tent is heavenly.

So the metro station Chatelet is the most hated metro station by me and my roommate because we have to transfer through there every day.  The transfer there consists of long hallways and endless stairs.  But today I decided to go and explore the area a bit to quell some of my hatred for the place.  It worked as I found a big underground mall at Chatelet.  I found a cinema library!  I took a French and Italian cinema class at BYU last fall and so enjoyed snooping around this library and recognizing a lot of the names and films.  I also found a music library where they had lots of cds, sheet music, scores, and books to check out.  

I walked around the Marais area of Paris and stumbled upon the Molière theatre called Maison de la Poesie.

I also stumbled upon this doll museum...very random.  I might have gone if it didn't cost so much.  I was guessing it was kind of creepy.

I also found another beautiful park like many others in Paris.  It was a park dedicated to Anne Frank because it was right behind the Jewish art and history museum that I will go to next week sometime.

After my jaunt around the Marais, I went to the Cluny medieval history museum.  They had lots of neat ancient artifacts.  I'm talking about like stuff starting from the 3rd or 4th century! The picture above is original stones from the outside of Notre Dame.  I was impressed that they were able to place the rocks with this original picture...I would not want to have to figure out that puzzle.  

These are statues of Mary and Jesus from different centuries.  My favorite exhibit in the museum were these huge beautiful tapestries.  Each tapestry featured a woman and a unicorn and other animals.  There were 5 tapestries and each one explored a different sense (touch, taste, etc.)

This was the chapel in the museum.  I might be slightly obsessed with Gothic cathedral ceilings because I have to take one in every church I go to so I have quite the collection now.

This street entertainer made me smile because he had this piano just sitting on the street corner and was going to town playing an awesome song on it.  He had drawn quite a crowd.

Lastly, I went to the eastern side of Paris by the Mitterand national library.  This area had more modern architecture and was void of tourists.  I liked this bumper sticker on a motorcycle.  It says I <heart> nothing; I'm Parisian.

I have conflicted feelings about this ad.  Yes it draws attention..but it's just creepy and doesn't make me really want to go to Printemps.

I came over to this area of Paris because I wanted to see Parc Bercy.  This park was free of tourists which is always my favorite.  I love just experiencing real Parisian life and people watching.  Parks have everything I love: birds, cute children, flowers, french people, carousels, places to read...what could be better.  The picture above are of some little duck houses that were on the water that I thought were cute.

beauty.

future home? 

That middle part of the staircase is water flowing down..pretty neat.  There was also this cool skate park that I found.  There were kids and teenagers on scooters, bikes, and skateboards doing crazy cool stuff and halfpipes and ramps and such.  I felt like I would stand out too much as a tourist if I took a picture, so I didn't.

I always have the great idea in my mind to walk along the river to my next destination because that sounds so beautiful.  But I don't think I will do that anymore because I'm realizing that along the river really is the sketchiest part of town with people that I am probably not safe around walking by myself..ha so I'll be smarter next time.  Plus the Seine is kind of a gross ugly color.  The best part about walking along the river is all the pretty bridges.

Next I went to Jardin des Plantes (plant garden) which was gorgeous.  There were lots of different kinds of trees, plants, and flowers.  All the plants were labeled with their name and latin name.  There was an incredibly beautiful rose garden too that made my heart melt.  I also found a cool labyrinth made out of hedges.  It was a big spiral maze that led up to a small gazebo in the center.  This park also has a small zoo, and the natural history museum.  

I had a great and very memorable Friday night!  We had a study abroad group dinner since it is the changing of directors/professors time.  Dr. Erickson has been with us for these first 3 weeks and now Dr. LeBras is with us.  We went to this really neat restaurant where I had raclette!  I had heard RMs in my French classes talk about it and how great it was so I was excited to try it.  The middle of our table had a small coal stove.  They gave us potatoes, and slices of ham, and lots and lots of Emmental cheese.  They gave us little frying pans that we used on the stove to melt the cheese and then pour over our potato and such.  I put pieces of all three ingredients in the pan to get all warm and then had a delicious cheesy meal.  We also had bread that we dipped in the melted cheese.  Other people in our group got cheese fondue where they had huge pots of melted cheese that sat on the stove to stay melted.  They had small pieces of bread and skewers.  I would definitely recommend this restaurant experience to anyone that comes to France!  With 27 Americans though, we took over the small restaurant and were extremely loud! Probably annoying all of the French people that were there to enjoy a quiet and relaxing meal. Oh well! We are who we are.  I still try to blend in with the French people on a day to day basis just so I don't stand out as an American or a tourist, but it's good to recognize that I don't want to change who I am because I am proud of my heritage and country.

This picture makes me laugh!  No I didn't really eat that cheese all at once, but probably ate a total of that much by the end of the night.

After dinner, I fulfilled a life long dream of a night cruise on the Seine river!!!  It was an hour long boat ride where we saw all of the major sights lit up at night.  We saw les Invalides, Musee d'orsay, the louvre, place de la concorde, notre dame, and of course the Eiffel Tower!  It was fun going under all the bridges and then also seeing teenagers and couples hanging out on the bridges and on the riversides enjoying a saturday night.