On to Day 2 of Paris-- Sunday. The plan for the morning was to go to Mass at Notre Dame (Tom wanted to go to Mass, and I wanted to hear the singing and stuff). The reality? Tom went to Mass, and Vanessa did not, as she woke up feeling like she had gotten hit by a truck. Turns out, running around in the snow and hail and rain and cold all day is not so conducive to one's health, and I wound up waking up the next day with a horrible cold. Just my luck. But I was in Paris, so I dragged myself out of bed about an hour after Tom and took the metro ALL BY MYSELF WITHOUT GETTING LOST (really!) to meet him at Notre Dame.
Oh hello, Notre Dame.
I wanted to go in and see the inside, but there was a queue about eighty years long, so I decided that it was something I could do when I return to Paris (note the use of "when" instead of "if"). So instead, we walked around the outside for a while:
And then, one of my favorite things ever-- Shakespeare and Co.!
So this is a teeny little bookshop which is simply crammed full of books in every cranny of this twisting little house, which also contains a few cots and a piano and typewriter upstairs--relics from when this was a refuge and hangout for writers of the Lost Generation, some unknown writers like Hemingway, Eliot, Joyce, etc. Best of all, this little shop was also responsible for the publication of Ulysses, when no one else would publish it, which alone makes it very near and dear to my heart.
After tearing myself away from Shakespeare and Co., we took a (very) long walk to the Louvre.
Here it is again! And this time you can see more of it.
On the first Sunday of the month, all museums in Paris are free, so we decided to take advantage. The lines, of course, were absolutely ridiculously insane, but we found a somewhat hidden entrance, so it was a bit quicker for us to get through. We didn't have an incredible amount of time, so we did the highlights:
Venus de Milo. You may have heard of her.
Nike of Samothrace. An Art History 101 favorite.
Napoleon III's Apartments in the wing of the Louvre that he had built.
My favorite sculpture, Canova's Cupid and Psyche.
We also saw, of course, the Mona Lisa, but it is rather difficult to get close to her, so no picture. Sorry.
So after breezing through the Louvre (again, need to go back to Paris-- I could have spent my entire trip there), we took a walk all the way from Napoleon's first arch:
To the second-- the Arc de Triomphe:
It was a nice walk, sure... but do you know how long the Champs d'Elysses (that's the street that runs between them-- you know, the one that used to have all of the classy shops and now is home to McDonalds and H&M) is? It's long. And once we got to the Arc de Triomphe, we turned around and walked to the Tour d'Eiffel. Another very, very long walk. Oy.
And just as the Eiffel Tower came into sight across the river from us, it lit up. It was beautiful. And then it started to sparkle. And then it was magical.
Yep. Pretty much speaks for itself.
We walked all the way up to it then:
But we didn't go up. One, because the queue was absurdly long, and two, because I'm terribly afraid of elevators. And heights. Maybe next time.
So with the Eiffel Tower accomplished (mostly), we headed to the Paris Opera House to try to get rush tickets for a performance. Sadly, there was no show that evening. (Next time?) But we at least got to see the Opera at night, which is really rather fantastic:
We had dinner at a cafe near the Opera, which turned out to be fantastic (the nice thing about eating in Paris is that even when you are eating cheaply, it is still possible to find amazing food. And I seem to have a knack for finding the amazing cheap places), and then we headed back to our neighborhood and went to see a movie! Now, this posed a few problems-- the movies were all in French, so we could either see: a movie that we had already seen so that we would know what was going on, or a movie that we hadn't seen and wouldn't get all of it. Or much at all, really. We decided to see a new movie, but chose "Unstoppable" (the one with Chris Pine and Denzel Washington and an out-of-control train) because I wanted to see Chris Pine and there really couldn't be much need for the dialogue in this sort of movie. Luckily, this turned out to be totally true. We didn't understand a word, but we knew exactly what was going on. However, I was a bit disappointed-- while I got to enjoy looking at Chris Pine, I did not get to enjoy hearing his voice, as he was dubbed by a French voice actor. Oh well.
After the movie, we had a quick drink in the bar that Tom liked again, and then headed back to the hotel to go to sleep. As I still felt like I had been hit by a train because I had something resembling the flu, I was rather grateful for this.
We slept late the next day, because we weren't in much hurry and I still felt awful. Once we got up, we headed back to the Opera to take a look around the inside. It was incredibly beautiful-- unbelievably opulent (almost gaudy), but fantastic, and nearly overwhelming.
The Grand Staircase.
Um, hello giant reception hall thingy. Good lord.
This may not be the famous chandelier (that one's in the main auditorium, which was technically closed, but we saw it in the dark by sneaking into an unlocked Box), but I still couldn't help getting nervous whilst walking underneath it... I kept expecting the Phantom of the Opera to jump out from somewhere or drop a chandelier on me unexpectedly. Also couldn't get "Masquerade" out of my head.
So yes. Opera House= fantastic.
After that, we took another meandering walk to the Musee d'Orsay, which of course was closed. But we got some lunch (quiche, baguette, orangina... mmm), and walked around some more-- Paris is such a beautiful city that even walking aimlessly is fantastic.
The National Assembly building.
At this point, we were fairly close to the Louvre again, and I wanted to shop, so we went back to the Carousel shops beneath the Louvre. My purchases: a purple beret and a few macaroons from Maison du Chocolat. Fabulous.
We hopped on the metro and headed out to our last destination: the Pantheon. This is kind of like a memorial/church thing for the French Revolutionaries, and serves as the burial place for national heroes, writers, thinkers, etc.
The outside, which looks suspiciously like the Pantheon of, you know, the Romans. Hmmm...
And the inside. Similarly suspiciously similar. (whoa. that's a lot of similarity)
It had wonderful frescoes of scenes important to French history, as well as a lot to do with St. Genevieve, Paris's patron saint.
Then we headed down into the crypt, where we saw the tombs of Rosseau and Voltaire, who hated each other, right across from each other, as well as Alexander Dumas, Victor Hugo, Marie and Pierre Currie, lots of famous French people that I've never heard of, etc. But the air was so dry, and I was so sick, that I couldn't stop coughing, so Tom took me out of there out of fear that I would need a box of my own.
Afterwards, we headed back to our hotel to pick up our bags, then had an early dinner of crepes before taking the long metro + bus journey to the airport. The trip took so long that I was petrified that we would miss our plane, which we might have, had it not been delayed for two hours.
I'll spare you the stories of angry dealings with airline people, and the actually hilarious account of Tom and I running through the airport with our shoes and coats in those security scanning boxes when we found out that we were in the wrong security line for our plane. Suffice it to say, it was annoying. On the positive side, I had enough spare time to check out the tax-free designer store, and finally bought the purple Longchamp bag that I have been coveting for months at about 2/3rds of the price that I would pay in the US, so in the long run, not so bad.
Once we finally got on the plane and landed in Bristol an hour later, we discovered that all of the fuss was because there was an inch of snow on the ground. I'm telling you-- the Brits simply don't know how to deal with snow. Simultaneously hilarious and frustrating. Unfortunately, we got in just too late to catch the last train out of Bristol, and had to take a long taxi ride home. But in the end, it was fine-- we got home at about 12:30 am.
Trouble was... I had a dissertation due at 2:00 pm that day. And I had about 2,000 words left to write. Uh oh.
To be continued....
(I know, I'm mean-- sorry. I need to go to bed! I'll tell you tomorrow, I promise.)
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