Week Five: Wonderful skies, yummy snacks and antibiotics

This week was largely spent in a druggy/fatiguey haze, although I am now happily drug-free and the weather is beautiful, and I'm very content. We went to the Gustave Moreau museum, the Musee d'Orsay (for our impressionism visite, which was incredible!) and a few others...

This is where I had the most incredible, heavenly lemon tartlet... ever.

Starting to look wintery a weensy bit

This is one of the many delectable lunchtime treats I've had from the bon marché. I'm still managing to eat something different every day.

Had some incredible sunrises this week. They abruptly stopped a few days ago. :(

Kaelyn and I attended a cooking class last night. Asides from two little old ladies, we were the only students that weren't newly weds. :)

We made:

Briouate de boeuf minute
Gambas croustillantes à la mangue
Crème de lentilles et châtaignes, piccata de foie gras

Afterwards we had a picnic on the champs de mars and watched the new light show on the eiffel tower.

Fun week!

Week Four: sick :(

This week was spent under the weather, as were the previous 3 weeks, so I finally gave in and saw a doctor. It was surprisingly un-scary minus all the drugs I have to take for a week (probably more than I've taken combined in my life). The doctor was interesting and told us a funny story of how he went to see a client in the 7th arrond. where there are a lot of hotel particulaires, which is where the house is set back from the street, usually behind a courtyard or a garden. This one was set behind a garden with a large wall in front of it. He told us how he went through the little door only to find a garden... full of sheep! In the middle of Paris! Anyways, maybe it's just the drugs but I find that delightful.

We had two birthdays this week, which was nice. Both of which involved way too many bon marché pasteries and orangina...

Now, on to the pictures!

Here's my medicine. Three times a day!

We had some beautiful sunrises this week. This one, a little bit later, cast an amazingly intense rose colored light all over the salon. It was beautiful.

This week we went to the Musée de Rodin and the Musée d'Orsay and I think the Louvre once.

Week Three: Louvre, Louvre and Louvre!

This week started out with an afternoon at the races for me and Kaelyn. We chose to conform and purchased little feathery flowery hair pieces. While ours were nice, they do not begin to compare to some of the fantastic works of hattery displayed by some of the distinguished visitors there.

"And they're off"!

This week was rather busy with three visits to the Louvre, a long art history test and a visite to "Carnavalet" which is a museum of Parisian history.

We saw several famous works including the Venus de Milo and la Joconde (Mona Lisa). It's sad how the tourists crowd around and don't even learn the history or look at them, they just take grinning, badly posed pictures in front of Venus and Mona. With the Mona Lisa, it's sort of amusing because she is a tiny little piece with a huge fence around her, and facing her on the opposite wall, usually with like 3 or 4 people looking at it, is this incredible, massive, colorful painting depicting lots of groovy religious scenes, the center of which is a flawless last supper. Sad how art becomes monuments, monuments become photo ops.

Poupard teachin'.

I got kinda distracted while wearing my Lolita glasses the other night... and there was lightning, which never helps me.

Right during a huge lightning strike

During the hourly 10 minute light show

Last night, taken by some fellow US expat students who asked us to take their picture. Shortly after this we got a banana split on a little cafe right over the seine. lovely!

Week Two: Antibes, Nice and Cannes

After a 5/6 hour, literally whirlwind 300 mph trip on the TGV we arrived in Antibes and made the pleasant 10 minute trek to our Hostel. CREPS, as it was called, is a sort of hostel/YMCA/sports boarding school. There are a group of kids there about our age who specialize in usually soccer or sailing and they do their sports during the day and there are a number of class rooms (the ones we also used) where they have classes at night.

The Second day, before we visited the Picasso museum, we got to stroll around the small, friendly town of Old Antibes. It's kind of a fort, with big old walls around most of the town and a little castle on the hill which you can see behind our hostel. The markets had everything you could ever want to buy. And a thousand types of salts, peppers and other spices. Really incredible.

Kaelyn and I started most of our mornings with a job/walk around the edge of the peninsula to walk the sunrise. It was so beautiful, this picture barely does it justice.

One day we were joined by Sarah who joined us in some picturesque yoga poses.

This is a shot of the little beach where I was attacked and wounded by a seagull when we went swimming at around 6:45 in the morning to catch the sunrise. We were surprised to find the water to be perfectly comfortable and the air when we got out warm.

This is the last shot I got before my camera died, of a view of Cannes from a little lookout place on top of a fort on the hill.

First Week: Orientation, Sunshine and First Louvre Visite

This was the week Nora and I moved. As you can see, we have a very satisfactory location now. This was taken on our first walk to school. We don't walk across the bridge every day because we live right next to the metro but some days we both agree that the light over the seine is beautiful enough for it.

This is taken from where I am right now, at our favorite booth up the spiral staircase in McDonalds.

One more daily life shot, of where we eat our lunch. And feed the birds if we so choose.

One afternoon Kaelyn and I, on a particularly monumental whim decided to climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower:

We had our first Louvre visit on the 25th. The Pyramids designed by I.M. Pei reminded me much of being at Choate under the PMAC. Similar style. Our first trip was spent looking at Roman and Gothic sculptures. We discovered this ice cream stand in the Tuileries (the gardens in front of the Louvre) that has the best ice cream ever. Even the cone was fantastic (you can see me enjoying it farther down). Strawberry and apricot are our traditional flavors of choice. To complete our picturesque afternoon we sailed the mini-boats in the park. Lovely!

The following are from our visites at Saint Chapelle and Notre Dame. Pretty groovy places.

First Few Days: exploration, exhaustion and lots of gellatto

We arrived in Paris at around 10 in the morning on the 17th, a thursday. After a strange otherworldly feeling stroll through CDG airport we met Mr. Jannot, our mumbly old guy teacher-type. They stuck us all in taxis to our respective homes. Despite our overwhelming exhaustion, culture shock and swine flu symptoms, we had to find our ways to our school at the centre sevres in the 6th just a few hours later.

After a long day of wandering, exploring and getting lost we tried to sleep, waking up every few hours. The next day, after a scary history class that made pretty much everybody (not including myself) doubt themselves and a pleasant language class from Mr. Jannot we were instructed to take a walking tour of the Latin quarter and its surroundings. We saw a number of cool cathedrals including St. Germain des pres, Notre dame and st. sulpice.

Notre Dame On the Seine

The organ at st. sulpice

The crane over st. sulpice

We OOHED and AHed at a neverending wonderful selection of bakeries and patiserries and creperies and gelatto shops

Bread from "Paul", a chain bakery in Paris

The last part of our little walking tour was to visit the Pompidou and to go in. Unfortunately, my less cultured friends did not want to bumble around the exhibits and appreciate the art like I did.

Although I did get to see some groovy famous pieces...

Every day we purchase food from the Bon Marche and eat at the park across the street, named for the woman who basically invented day care. You can, and as I have, find something different yet delicious to eat every day for under 10 euros (about 14 dollars). Recently I discovered the delectable combination of vanilla yogurt and raspberries. The yogurt here is really good because it's generally eaten as desert rather than breakfast.

One of the, like, 18 meat counters

Beverages. everything you could ever want in a bottle, with or without 'gaz'.

One of the fruit stands