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