Bonjour, Paris!

OK, sorry for the lack of posts. Yes, I am home and not stuck in Luxembourg, as some readers may have believed, and were rightfully concerned. Anyway, I will be finishing up the travel section in the next few days and then illustrating this verbosity with pictures! But first, conquering the French...



You always hear about the rudeness or excessive pride, as I would like to call it, of the Parisians, and the frustration one encounters trying to speak to a Frenchman. If you don't speak French, he does not want to give you the time of day. If you try to speak French, he will be offended that you have just botched his language and will probably challenge you to a verbal duel parrying with flourishes of his beauteous sounds and tricking you with his oh so quiet killer, the silent suffix. But, of the places where French is the native language, Paris is probably the only one that is justified in its excessive pride. Not that other parts of the world are not fabulously French, but in order to match the level of reputation that proceeds it, Paris indeed knocked me off my feet. Every city can be described in a word, and Paris's word is "grandiose." When one searches the thesaurus, grandiose encompasses all other words one might use to describe Paris: grand, big, theatrical, ostentatious, imposing, extravagant, indulgent, ceremonious, impressive, monumental, majestic, overwhelming, and most certainly, glorious. So yes, grandiose it is, grandiose to the power of 10 really. I also must give a shout out and a huge thank you to my guide, Courtney, who ushered me around to the most fabulous places, "duelled" with fussy French waiters, impressed me with her knowledge of the history of painting, art conservation, museum curation, and Catherine de Medici, and, most importantly, reserved my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. (Character: Courtney, a rising junior at Harvard in the psychology department, a brilliant set designer and oil painter, a lover of rapid verbosity and good cheese, and an amazing friend who had never been out of the north east of the US before and has courageously expanded her horizons. I am very proud of you, grasshopper.)



I started by schleping to my hostel, which turned out to be literally next to the Louvre. I couldn't have asked for a better location, and I got it for 7 nights only 2 days before showing up. Remarkable. I started by Paris tour at sunset, meeting Courtney at the pyramids of the Louvre (which I actually really love) and walking along the Siene to the Eiffel Tower, watched it light up and blink for awhile, and then ate dinner at a lovely cafe. I had a great feeling about this city.



I decided to be like Napoleon and conquer Paris in a day...well, not exactly, but today was a day that would have broke an odometer. I started off going to a periphery monument way the end of the metro line at La Defense. Built on an axis with the Louvre, Concord, the Champs-Elysees, and the Arc d'Triomphe, La Defense is the "modern" business district of Paris. I guess it was a good thing that they banished all the ugly skyscrapers to one section on the outskirts of Paris proper so to prevent any of them from ruining the landscape, skyscape, and scale of the city. (Though the Eiffel Tower is pretty imposing and was considered, at its time, an eyesore...maybe give La Defense 50 years...or not.) To echo the Arc d'Triomphe, the Grand Arch, a gigantic white square, was built at the very end of the axis. After walking from the Grand Arch to the other end of La Defense, I decided that it was enough ugliness for a day and took the metro back to the Arc d'Triomphe, which I love. It is the epitome of grandiosity in Paris! Started a loop to the Parc Monceau, a lovely park in the middle of a nice neighborhood, and to St. Augustin church. (I decided that in order to see Paris correctly, I needed to see a park, a church, a monument, and a museum every day. 3 checks!) Walked to the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais (what original names!) which are these amazingly monumental structures by the Siene. While checking out the beautiful gates of the Petit P., a guard told me that there was a museum inside that was free. (4th check!) Anyone know if the Petit P. Museum is the Beaux-Art museum, or just another museum of Beaux-Art? Anyway, it was a great museum in a beautiful building. Finished the loop by going up the Champs-Elysees back to the Arc d'Triomphe. On my walk up this famous, touristy, and overpriced street of high end shops, I decided to walk into one of them just to see how ridiculous it really was. Decided on the Louis Vuitton store, because if I was ever going to walk into this store, it might as well be on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, and was immediately clung onto by my own personal shopper. Shocked and appalled by the price tags, I was horrified when the woman showed me a keychain ("just a small trinket to remind you of Paris") that was a plastic cube with a fake gold metal square that had "Louis Vuitton Paris" stamped into it. I'm thinking maybe $35...$50 even. No...170 euro...that's about $240! "It's plastic!" I screamed. "Yes, but it says Louis Vuitton..." remarked the woman. Au revoir! And the sad thing, people all around me were pulling out their credit cards to buy.
Continued my march from the Arc to the Trocadero, I think it's a complex of buildings celebrating some battle victory...as is everything here, and put my feet in the pool overlooking the Eiffel Tower for the second time. Still love the tower, but the lines are still way too long, so I walked under it to the Invalides to Napoleon's tomb. Why a guy! Insanely grand, with twelve larger than life sized angel around him, encased in six stacking coffins perhaps including one or two of lead, Napoleon rests in the center of the universe, it seems, under a gorgeous dome. It is so grand for such a little man. Quickly passed through the military museum to get to the Rodin Museum before it closed. Two thumbs up for the Rodin Museum! First of all, his stuff is fantastic. Second of the all, the way all of it presented is fantastic, including many pieces on rotating tables so you can see all the sides. Third of all, the garden is gorgeous. I am going to vote that The Thinker, the small one inside which was first presented in a salon, is my favorite. Though his Hand of G-d and the Gates of Hell are also amazing. Think I'm done? Heck no. I met up with Courtney to go to the late night hours of the Museum D'Orsay. The D'Orsay is the dumping ground for all the "rejects" of the Louvre for one reason or another. Rejects is really selling this place short...it's amazing. I should start to find synonyms for that, but truly the museum is fantastic. Ate dinner in the St. Severin area (great area for cheap entree, plat, dessert menus!) and called it a good day clocking in with 2 churches, 4 museums, 1.5 parks (if you count the green around Eiffel), and 4 or 5 monuments.

OK, that was a big block of text. I shall post for now and move on to a different post.