I’m determined to get this written up and posted by the end of the day, because starting tomorrow, I will be entering novel-writing mode. I’m going to attempt to do NaNoWriMo again, and that means that these blog posts may become more sparse for the month of November. Don’t worry, I’ll be back by December with lots of new stories to tell.
Last Sunday, just before I was set to take off for my break, I got an e-mail from SNCF saying that I should check their website since they had lots of cancellations due to grèves. Sure enough, when I went and checked, my train was canceled, and this called for some last minute reshuffling of my schedule. The girl I was going to meet up with in Strasbourg had already told me that due to a last minute change in plans, she wouldn’t be making it to Strasbourg, either. So I did some quick decision making and ended up deciding to stay in Paris the entire time. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to Strasbourg, but I know I have plenty of breaks in the future, so I’ll definitely try to get there next spring. And there are worse things than a week in Paris.
Early Monday, despite the fact that my train was canceled, I headed to the train station to try and get another train into Paris, hopefully that day. It was far simpler than I had imagined, and I ended up getting a train that arrived only a little bit later than my original train was supposed to. To my surprise, I arrived without any other trouble and once again managed to navigate the Metro without any disasters. I like the Paris metro—I’ve never once gotten lost taking it, though I do occasionally get confused upon exiting.
In Paris I was staying with another Marquette alum, Amelia. She was one of the roughly three other people who studied French at Marquette (so that’s a slight underestimate…maybe there were seventeen other French students at MU. On a good day.), and she also happened to study abroad with me in Avignon a few years ago. Once again we’re back in the same country doing the same program, and lucky for me, she was nice enough to put me up for my trip.
As soon as I got in we went to a grocery store to procure food for a Avignon-style picnic at the Luxembourg Gardens right by Amelia’s apartment. We had some chèvre, basil, and tomato sandwiches on a fresh baguette with wine and chocolate, and it was simply lovely. Some of my favorite memories of Avignon are the many picnics we had on the Ile, and it was fun to relive that.
Tuesday morning, once I managed to pull myself out of bed, I set off for the Palais Garnier. I was feeling a little bit desperate to take in some culture while in the city, and I really wanted to see a ballet while in Paris (there are very few ballets performed in farmland). They still had tickets available for 8€, though they obviously weren’t the best seats in the house, so I grabbed two of those for that evening. I had no real destination for the rest of the day, but I was pretty desperate to wander around the city a little bit. I stopped by the Galleries LaFayette, which has a gorgeous dome, because they already had their Christmas decorations up. Under the dome they had a huge Christmas tree, and there were presents hanging from the ceiling. It was quite impressive. My wanderings then lead me down Rue des Italiens, which I selected for no real reason whatsoever. After continuing that way for a while, I turned left because I happened to notice a nice view of a church and Sacré Coeur in the background. I thought that it might’ve been Place de la Madeline, but once I got there I discovered that no, it was Notre Dame des Lorettes, and that apparently there is no limit on the number of impressive looking churches in Paris. I meandered my way through the streets, stopped in a few stores, bought a quiche for lunch, and managed to resist spending 4€ on a tall mocha from the first Starbucks I’d seen in over a month.
After my ambling morning, I got back on the metro and went out to Parc Monceau, which Amelia had recommended to me. I was lucky enough to have gorgeous weather pretty much the entire time I was in Paris, and that afternoon in particular was quite nice for wandering around the park. It’s a pretty whimsical place, with statues and monuments plopped down at random intervals. According to one of the signs on the outside, it was created as an attempt to make “a truly French park,” and it definitely had that feeling. I sat and scribbled for a while in the sun when I got tired of wandering, and then I made my way back to Amelia’s to chill for a bit before the ballet.
I knew nothing about Paquita going into it, but I didn’t particularly care—I just wanted to see a ballet. And I did indeed get to see it, or at least 60% or 70% of it. I was expecting to have seats in the back, but I wasn’t expecting to have seats that looked directly across at the other side of the audience rather than at the stage. We missed a chunk of the dancing that was taking place on the left side of the stage because of the odd angle, but I enjoyed the ballet nonetheless. I was a little confused story-wise about what was going down—all I got from the first act was that there were gypsies, and some evil guy among the gypsies was trying to kill a Prince Charming-esque character (who was fittingly blond), but Paquita had a thing for the prince, which we gathered from the fact that they did a pas de deux together. The bad guy hired some evil people (who we knew were evil because they were wearing black capes) to help him out, and then invited the noble dude over to dinner. Paquita found out about the plan, and after much hilarious gesticulating, she was able to save Sir Blondie. End Act I. In Act II, Sir Blondie brought Paquita back to the court, and there was a ball and lots of dancing. There was also some very confusing gesticulating towards a painting of the king, and upon checking with Wikipedia, we learned that due to a piece of jewelry Paquita wore, they realize that she was also a member of the nobility and had been kidnapped by the gypsies as a child, which meant that she and Sir Blondie (a far removed cousin) could get married. Hurray!
Aside: Paquita’s world premier was done by the Ballet de l’Opera National de Paris in 1846, the same company that we saw perform it. That was pretty awesome to find out.
Almost as exciting as the ballet (though without any bandits running around) was the building itself. For those of you who have seen the 2004 movie version of Phantom of the Opera, this is the building it takes place in (though they just built a set to make it look like that). There is an amazing main staircase, incredible arches everywhere, mosaics covering the ceiling, and one hell of a chandelier. You do not want that thing dropping in the middle of a performance. The building itself also has an interesting history—they had a lot of trouble building it because it was on top of an underground lake (the inspiration for the phantom’s lair) and the chandelier did in fact fall at one point, killing one person. The outside of the building is just as impressive. See photos from my last post for details, there’s no way I’ll be able to do it justice.
After the ballet let out, Amelia and I went out to dinner at a restaurant recommended to her by one of her private English students. I ordered duck, which was delicious, and Amelia was braver than me and got beef tartare. It was a great meal, but we had a rather annoying waiter who was being a punk and seemed to dislike us for speaking in French to him when he spoke to use in English (and yet he had befriended another group of annoying American girls doing shots). We had to ask twice for the check, and ended up getting it from someone else. That was the downside of the meal, but I’m going to choose to remember the food instead.
Wednesday was entertaining in that very little went right. Amelia and I headed to a café to enjoy some coffee, but we managed to randomly pick an outrageously priced café and I ended up paying almost 5€ for my café au lait. Oy. I spent the rest of the day reminding myself that it was really, really good coffee. From there, we went over to La Conciergerie, which is the prison where they kept Marie Antoinette. I had heard good things about it, and I really wanted to visit it. We got in the line, which was the same as the line for Sainte Chapelle, and decided to stop and see Sainte Chapelle as well. After a long line and a security check, we got in to discover that La Conciergerie was closed until the day I left. Excellent timing, France. We decided that we might as well see Sainte Chapelle (especially since it was free for Amelia). In theory, it should’ve been free for me as well, but apparently my lycée didn’t give me whatever card it was they should’ve, so I ended up paying to get in. THEN, because France really wanted to make a point, we got in to discover that a good chunk of the chapel was closed for reconstruction. At this point, I shrugged, laughed, and took pictures of what I could see.
We walked over to Pont des Arts afterwards, which is a bridge with chain link fences on the side. The fences have lots of locks hanging on them—apparently it’s a thing for couples to leave locks there with their initials and the date. I assume people come by to cut them off periodically, but there were a couple locks that were older, including some from before I was born. At this point we decided it was lunch time, and so we headed to a market to grab some cheese and fruit to bring back to the apartment for lunch. In the afternoon we met up with one of Amelia’s friends, Marina, who is also a teaching assistant in Paris, and we stopped at a costume store since they were looking for Halloween costumes. Halloween is definitely not popular with the older generations here (I asked about it and was told that a lot of people don’t like it since it’s so close to All Saints’ Day, which is a really big holiday here…I thought the whole point of it was that it’s the day before All Saints’ Day, but what do I know? I’m just a stupid American!), but some of the younger generation seems to get into it, and companies definitely use it in their advertisements. We walked back over to the Luxembourg Gardens afterwards and sat and chatted over there. I tried to stop by the Montparnasse Cemetery that evening, but it keeping with the rest of our Wednesday, it was closed. I ended up staying in since I was feeling rather exhausted. I forgot about the whole part of travel that makes you want to sleep for twelve hours at a time.
Thursday morning Amelia and I went back over to the Montparnasse Cemetery (after stopping for pain au chocolat, which we did pretty much every day I was there), which was open this time. Hurray! There are a lot of famous people buried there, but I was most interested in seeing the graves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. I like existentialism, so a trip to their graves was necessary. I probably should’ve searched out some other famous graves, but instead Amelia and I just wandered the cemetery (which really feels a lot more like a garden or a public park than a cemetery), taking pictures of things. We found a bench after an hour or so and sat down to people watch and talk. I spotted a guy who looked remarkably like Cyrano de Bergerac, complete with a heavy cloak, a mustache, and long curly hair. It was a low-key sight-seeing trip, but I enjoyed the chance to catch up with Amelia and just take everything in. Once our stomachs started making noises, we decided to set off for lunch, even though it was already after 3pm. Whoops. Later that afternoon we went over to Cité Université, which felt more like a college campus from the US than the middle of Paris. There were lots of people running and students wandering around. It’s a very international school, and each country has its own housing place for the students from that country. There’s a pretty park that we walked around for a bit, and then we headed off to meet Marina for dinner.
I had demanded pizza while I was in Paris, since I have been having a terrible time finding decent pizza in Rennes. They have pizza, but it tends to be covered with salmon or chèvre, and while I do love my chèvre, it does not belong on a pizza. Where’s the mozzarella? Anyway, one of Amelia’s friends had recommended a delicious pizza, and I was quite satisfied with it. I just had a plain cheese pizza, but it was very good. And then, because I hadn’t consumed nearly enough calories yet over the course of my trip, we all got profiteroles to share. Yayyyy profiteroles! And, best of all, we had a very nice waiter, so that just made the experience even more enjoyable. He totally got a tip.
From there we headed back to Amelia’s, where we drifted off to sleep while watching Amélie.
Friday I headed back into Rennes, and I arrived delighted to discover that fall had stopped by while I was gone. The trees are finally changing colors, and it’s gorgeous. I was starting to worry that they just didn’t have a fall here (or at least not one with pretty colors, which is the whole point of fall as far as I’m concerned), but thankfully that is not the case. I’ve spent the weekend running errands, doing laundry, and trying to get back on top of everything I can before I lose the next month of my life to writing a novel. Tonight I’m going to be hanging out with a bunch of people (largely Americans) who have no objections to celebrating Halloween, even if tomorrow is All Saints’ Day. Classes start up again on Wednesday, and hopefully (fingers crossed) there will be students. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?
I’m afraid this has not been one of the most interesting blog entries I’ve ever written, probably because I’m too busy trying to finish it to be exceptionally entertaining. Sorry about that! You could file a complaint, but I might not get around to reading it until December 1st.
Happy Halloween!
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