It’s so strange how fast the days go by here. The sun stays up longer, yet it seems that there was never enough hours in the day to do everything I wanted to do. On paper it appears that our group didn’t do THAT much, but in reality the amount of things we saw are uncountable. Through this short time in Paris, I’ve learned how to be content with not trying to see every single painting, or read every description and just be. Since we were never in the same place for more than 2 hours (besides Versailles), I discovered how to merely soak in the culture and surroundings – people watch, eavesdrop, ect. It’s definitely a lot less tiring than trudging out of breath through the various sights. I now know this from experience. It’s not the best feeling to be semi-out of breath from running around and then to try and interpret or read something. I definitely don’t recommend it.
On Wednesday we didn’t have to meet in the lobby until 3pm and so that was the day we (Megan, Lauren, Kim and I) decided to go shopping at Châtalet. We found this really cute store called Promod, and of course we made our way to H&M and Zara. I did go a little crazy, but who wouldn’t in the fashion capital of the world? I seriously found a thousand things I was obsessed with at H&M, but of course I had to weed out and pick my favorites. I got a really cute gray tulip skirt – it will be perfect for when I have a real job.
(Not all my clothes mom, most of them are Megan's new finds)
After that we found a really inexpensive café on one of the side streets where I had a delicious croque monsieur (grilled cheese and ham with more cheese melted on the top) and a small green salad. Once again I navigated us back to le Quartier Latin by the metro. I’ll have to post a map of the metro soon – it is so overwhelming with all the lines, directions, lines and lines. We met up with everyone else and made our way to le Louvre, one of the largest museums in the world. With over 35,000 works and artifacts it would probably take eight years to see and read everything. The cool thing about le Musée du Louvre is that it actually used to be a palace, so it is absolutely enormous. We had another tour guide (who also only spoke French to us – Dr. Picone isists that this is imperative). The museum was especially crowed this day, so we had to wait forever for our tour guide to come pick us up in the group waiting room. The tour guides name was Catherine and she was a tiny woman with croppy gray hair. The tour we went on was mainly just the highlights – La Jaconnde (Mona Lisa) and the Vénus de Milo and some other important pieces. I wasn’t upset that we were only going to be able to spend more than an hour and a half in the museum because no matter how many hours I had to give, it would never be enough.
Since there wasn’t any time to spare, we weren’t able to go back to the hotel to change into nicer clothes for l’Opéra. I was luckily wearing a dress, but I happened to be wearing these little gray tennis shoes also… so I felt completely underdressed. But it’s okay - life is too short to be too concerned with outfits.
I’ve always loved operas so I was really exicted to see Les Cotes d’Hofftman by Jaques Offenbach. It was about this poet named Hoffman and his three loves – a lifesize doll, an ill singer and finally a very posh singer. I had never been to a live opera so I didn’t exactly know what to expect. The ‘lyrics’ to the opera appear on a skinny rectangular screen above the stage. Without that I would have probably been clueless to what was going on. The opera was hilarious, depressing and entertaining. There were times throughout the performance when I was reminded of my lack of fluency when I found myself not laughing with the rest of the spectateurs… I definitely didn’t get all of the jokes. A little awkward.
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