I love Paris in the springtime

This past week, we went to Paris!  Since I've taken French for 5 years, I was really excited to go, use the language I've learned, see the culture in action, etc. But, I was a bit apprehensive because I'd heard mixed reviews of the city.  However, my fears turned out to be for nothing because I had a fantastic time!  It was a whirlwind 2.5 day trip jam packed with as much of the city as possible.  Here's some of my impressions of the city/stuff I did/stuff I liked/didn't like:

Museums: While I was in Paris, I went to a lot of museums, especially art museums.  They were really cool!

Musée d'Orsay: This museum was wonderful!  The building itself is an old train station that they converted into an art museum, so there were some really cool remnants of the train station around like this huge clock:

Besides the cool building, I absolutely loved the art in it.  The impressionists are my favorites.  Since it's a museum basically devoted to impressionism, you can imagine my response to it.  I was a kid in a candy store.  A very tired kid, but in a candy store nevertheless.  I love impressionism because when you're close to the painting, it just seems random, but the further back you go, the more and more the picture comes together.  For me, it's a good analogy for life.  Sometimes events happen and in the middle of them, it doesn't seem to make sense.  But, as you take a step back, you can begin to see the big picture that the painter (God) has designed.


The Louvre: I have to admit, this museum was quite overwhelming.  I swear, you could be there for a week and still not see everything.  It has some amazing pieces of art in it.  It's definitely worth the trip, but I definitely recommend just sticking to one or two parts of it so you can enjoy it and not be too overwhelmed.

The Orangerie: This museum is also full of impressionist work.  I loved seeing Monet's waterlilies.  They're set up in a really cool way.  It's a circular room with Monet's work all around it.  It almost made you feel like you were in the lake that he was painting.  However, some of the workers were not the nicest at this museum, so it detracted from the displays themselves.  Overall, it was a good museum though.


The Musée Rodin:  This was probably my favorite of the museums I went to.  It was just such a refreshing change of pace from the other museums.  It was small enough to really enjoy it, but large enough to feel like you were enjoying a lot of art.  I especially loved how they displayed Rodin's pieces.  About half of his sculptures were outside in a garden and half were inside an old mansion house.  It was unique, beautiful, and refreshing.  Plus, sculpture is lots of fun because it's fun to try to imitate it.

Other fun, non-museum things I did/saw:
The Arc du Triomphe: I knew that this monument was large, but I did not fully understand it's magnitude until I was standing right next to it.  It's huge!  It's very beautiful and a wonderful commemoration of French military history.

The Eiffel Tower: This was absolutely beautiful!  It's always been nice in pictures, but you can't really appreciate it until you see it.  The delicate curve of the tower was so impressive to me.  I honestly just sat there, stared at the tower, and talked to my friends for an hour.  I'm still wonderstruck by it.  Besides just staring at it, I also climbed it with Jessica and Katie!  It was about 600+ stairs to the 2nd platform.  I can tell I've been doing a lot of stairs recently because it really wasn't that bad.  It was actually a lot of fun!  Then, we took a lift up to the very top (you can't take the stairs up to the very top, otherwise I totally would have climbed them).  There were gorgeous views of the city from there!  I definitely loved the Eiffel Tower and it just might be my favorite part of Paris.

Climbing the 600+ stairs

It was quite windy up on the tower

Absolutely gorgeous!

River Cruise on the Seine: Our entire group took a sunset/beginning of night cruise on the river Seine.  It was breathtaking.  Sometimes it felt like we were floating on a Van Gogh painting.  I especially had fun because I was sitting by Rachel, one of the professor's daughters.  We had fun pulling crazy faces and seeing the "sparklies".  Or, in other words, see the Eiffel tower light up.  You see, after it's dark, on the hour, they light up the Tower like Disneyland with blue-ish sparkling lights.  It's Rachel's favorite and we had a lot of fun watching it together.

The "Sparklies" on the tower

Sainte Chapelle: This gorgeous chapel/church has the most amazing stained glass!  60% of the walls were full of stained glass.  I don't know if pictures can do it justice.  It was especially beautiful when the sun started to stream in and the windows colored the inside of the room.

La Conciergerie: This is where they held prisoners during the Revolution, including Marie Antoinette. I had just come from Sainte Chapelle, and I have to say, it was quite a contrast.  The place just had such a heavy feeling there.  It was one of those occasions when I wished that walls could talk.  I can't even imagine all the things that those walls have seen.

Notre Dame: When I went here, I definitely had "The Bells of Notre Dame" stuck in my head.  It was great!  When I was there, the church choir was singing and that was spectacular!  It transported me to other time periods and I could imagine what it must have been like to attend church there.  That was really cool.

Napoleon's Tomb: I actually surprisingly loved this place.  It might have partially been because it was really hot outside and the tomb was blessedly cool.  I also liked it so much because it was interesting to see how the French view Napoleon.  Most of the rest of the world does not have a very high opinion of him, and honestly, the French didn't always have a high opinion of him (hence his exile).  But, the tomb commemorated him as someone who helped end the confusion and chaos of the revolution.  It was overall a really positive representation and quite interesting to see that viewpoint of him shown.

Père Lachaise Cemetery: This cemetery was really cool and quite different than any other type of cemetery I've ever seen.  It had lots of buildings and memorials more than just the headstone that I'm used to seeing.  This cemetery also has the most famous people all in one place I've ever seen.  However, since it was pouring rain, we didn't look for all of our favorites.  We did find Chopin though!

What the cemetery generally looks like.  Really different than what I'm used to, but really cool.

Chopin's grave

Food: Of course, the food in Paris was delicious.  Unfortunately, it was frustrating to find it.  It just took a lot of time to find affordable food.  However, once we did, it was always delicious!  Here's some of my favorite foods I had in France:

Panini, Orangina, and an Apple Tart.  Delicious!

Croque monsieur! It's kind of like a ham and cheese sandwich.  It's absolutely delicious!

Our hotel had an amazing continental breakfast full of bread, cheese, juice, and hot chocolate.  

The best crêpe I had in Paris

The delicious and huge religieuse I had  The top part is a cream puff and the bottom part is full of chocolate.  Not one calorie in it (perhaps just a few more than that)! 

The best french onion soup I've ever had in my life

A yummy dessert I don't remember the name of

Okay, this isn't quite food, but it is a baguette pen that I thought was quite clever and fun.

Speaking the language: It was exciting to actually be able to use the French I've studied for so long.  Overall, it went pretty well.  I was usually able to communicate without a problem.  I could tell I haven't had a French class for a year because I have definitely forgotten some things, but it still worked out.  It was interesting.  Of course, I'd be speaking in English to my friends before I went and ordered food or something like that. Even if I started talking to the waiter/French person in French after that, the waiter/French person would usually address me in English.  I guess it was their way of being helpful.

Some not so favorites: I loved my trip to Paris, but there were a couple of things that were not so fantastic.

Easier access to stairs than water:  In other words, there were stairs absolutely everywhere, but it was almost impossible to find water.  Unlike the United States, they don't just have water fountains everywhere and their bottled water was really expensive.  Luckily, I had my own water bottle, but even then, it was hard to find a place to fill it up.

Paying for basic human functions: I've also run into this in London, but I was very frustrated that some of the bathrooms require to you pay to use them.  Even one at a train station did.  If you look around and walk enough, you can find free bathrooms, but it was definitely frustrating.

A Smoky Atmosphere: When I first came to London, I thought that was smoky.  That was nothing compared to Paris.  I felt like I was almost always walking through someone's cigarette smoke.  It was gross.


Overall impression?  Well reader, if you've made it through this very long blog post/travel log, you deserve applause. Way to be!  Now, just to shortly sum it up for you: Paris was great and I'm so glad I had the chance to visit!