Friday (5/20)
We took a high speed train, getting into Paris at about 2:30 in the afternoon. With only 1 out of the 6 of us knowing even a little French, we knew it was going to be difficult, although I was able to get by with only knowing "Hello", "Thank you", "Can you help me?", "I don't speak French", and "Do you speak English?" We first bought a Metro pass for the weekend which is about the equivalent of the NYC subways, but even easier. Once we found our hotel which happened to be about 100 yards from the Place de Republique we got onto the metro to the center of town and found the Notre Dame. It was absolutely gorgeous! We went inside and spent about an hour wandering around in complete awe. Catholic Churches, particularly those built 800 years ago, were meant to make people feel small, and thus closure to God, Notre Dame did its job. We were able to stay for mass and between sitting in a Cathedral that has been there for over 8 centuries and the choir brought tears to everyone's eyes. I absolutely loved it.
Notre Dame
Balcony of our hotel room
Saturday (5/21)
Today we made our way to the Palace of Versailles. Ken told us it would be really easy to get there- it was on a train stop, right outside the city. However, we had many mishaps with the trains and it took us 3 hours to get there. So unfortunately we did not have as much time as I would have liked and we unable to see the gardens which extend for miles around the palace. Emily and I took a tour of the palace and it was the most incredible thing I have ever seen. If we saw nothing else but the ceilings there I would have walked out in awe. The palace was built by Louis XVI during the time when ancient Roman and Greek art was rediscovered, and was covered, both inside and outside, in beautiful guilded, romanesque architecture. Every ceiling boasted the most amazing paintings of Greek gods, marble statues, etc. in brilliant colors. We walked through King Louis's chapel, his work rooms, entry ways, his and the Queen's bedrooms- which were indescribably beautiful, to finally the Hall of Mirrors. This is what I had been looking forward to because it was in this long, spectacularly ornate room that they signed the Treaty of Versailles ending WWI! To stand there where such a historical moment took place made me emotional! Once we finished our tour of the palace we walked outside to the gardens yet only made it to the closest sections, we could have spent hours just wandering the gardens and still not seen everything. There were beautiful statues, fountains, flowers, etc. When we originally planned to go to Paris I was not planning on getting to Versailles, so I was beyond happy to see it.
View of the Palace from the Courtyard
Ceiling of the Chapel
Hall of Mirrors
Sunday (5/22)
Today Emily and I went to the Louvre for the first half of the day. It was amazing- of course. It is absolutely gigantic and there was no way we could fit everything in, in one day so we chose to visit the Egyptian exhibit, some of the Ancient Greek, Italian Renaissance Paintings (Da Vinci of course), and French 18th century Paintings (David). The Egyptian artifacts were amazing, they had huge Sphinx, hyrogliphs, sarcophaguses, a mummy, and an amazing room called the Temple room with amazing stone statues of pharohs and wall carvings and paintings. I was blown away by the amount of artifacts they had. We then went into the Italian paintings because we had to see the Mona Lisa. We stopped to see many other famous paintings both by Da Vinci and other amazing Renaissance painters. Everyone says the Mona Lisa is built up so much that when you actually see it, it is disappointing, so going in I knew not to expect much. It was hard to get to it because there were huge crowds so when we finally got close enough to take a picture, we got pushed back out and couldn't stop and just look at it. But it was beautiful and Im glad I was able to see it. Even more beautiful I think is his Madonna of the Rocks, which everyone simply rushed past so I was able to stand a foot away and just take it in. We then went to the French paintings exhibit so I could see work by David, the painter of the Revolution. I found the Death of Marat which was stunning and was particularly effective because I learned about it in my French Revolution history class. All the paintings and artifacts we saw were so amazing because I learned about them and saw pictures of them in my history and art history classes, so to see them in person was unbelievable, I think my jaw was dragging on the floor the entire time.
We then make our way over to the Tour Eiffel or Eiffel Tower. Im not sure what I expected, but it was a lot bigger than I thought. Emily really wanted to go to the top and although I cant get 5 feet above the ground without an anxiety attack, I said why not! We took the first elevator to the second floor, I was already shaking and had to hold Emily's hand. It was so far up that I thought it was the top! Emily then tells me not to look up- so of course I do, and wish I hadn't. The clouds going by made the top look like it was moving (there are rumors that it does move, and was built for some movement but does not actually sway and you can't feel it when you are up there) and it even higher that we still had to go- at this point I thought I was going to faint. However, we got into the all glass elevator to take us to the top and we made it up there with me picturing the elevator breaking and us falling to our deaths the entire way. It was not scary at all once we got up there. I was picturing a rickety, unstable ledge at the top with a little fence that wouldn't stop anyone from going over with a strong gust of wind. However, it was all fenced in with a very stable platform all the way around. The views were amazing. We could see for miles and miles and still couldn't see the end of Paris. It felt like we were on the top of the world.
The Louvre
\Egyptian Sphinx
Mona Lisa
Tour Eiffel
Monday (5/23)
Lets start off with a fun fact - 1 Month until my 21st b-day!
Anyways, today Emily and I visited the Arc de Triomphe. This was built during the reign on Napoleon in celebration of his armies conquering much of Europe. It was so much bigger and more spectacular than I thought it was going to be. On each side of the Arc were huge, beautiful statues depicting and romanticizing war and its heroes. It was gorgeous! After successfully spending an hour staring up at it in awe for over an hour, we walked down the Champs Elysees - the Paris equivalent of Rodeo Drive. It was great- we window shopped and marveled at the expense of the European designers and even wandered into the actual Louis Vuitton to stand in awe of 2,000 Euro purses. After than we made our way back to the streets near our hotel, stopped at a small French cafe to have delicious, authentic French food and wine, one last time, and visited a beautiful church down the road that I had been looking at from the balcony of our hotel room for the past few days. Everything was so amazing a beautiful.
Arc de Triomphe
Angel of War -statue on the Arc
Church by our Hotel
All in all I had a great weekend. Everyone warned us that the French are rude, that they don't like Americans, but I didn't find that was the case. I think it was like any country or city with a language barrier, we are in their country so we should try our best to fit in and speak the language. If you walk up to someone and just start speaking English, expecting them to know it then they will probably ignore you, as anyone in America would do, seeing as its rude. I tried my best and if my few sentences in French didn't work, we spoke with our hands and pointed and signed. Everyone was nice to me and smiled when I butchered their pretty language, laughing that at least I was trying. The sights were gorgeous and it was so amazing to be surrounded in such history, to stand in places that are older than our country by centuries!
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