I can't believe it is
already November 5th. I don't understand where October went and what I did. I
can't believe I've been in Spain for two whole months, and that I only have 7
months left here. Time is just flying, and I'm excited and terrified by it at the
same time.
Last week, we had mid
terms and our fall break. Emily and I had planned a trip to Paris for the long
weekend, so after moving houses in Sevilla (another story) and the stress of
tests and papers from Midterms, Thursday morning we jumped on a plane and less
than 2 hours later we were in France.
The weekend is a blur
now of subway rides, wine, French bread, museums, churches, art, coffee and
walking around Paris and rain. But it was all so wonderful and such a dream, I had
such a wonderful experience in France.
Thursday we got to the
airport and took a bus to a metro station and rode the metro to the apartment
we rented for the weekend. We were staying just outside of Montmartre, in an
area I can only describe as Little Africa. We were literally the only white
girls. Usually this isn't something I notice for the most part, but in Sevilla,
its only Spaniards and tourists. There is zero permanent immigration to Seville
from outside Spain, so I’ve become accustomed to it for the most part in Spain.
Paris is so much more international and diverse that I expected. Nonetheless, We
eventually found the place, but our Spanish phones didn't work in France so we
couldn’t call the couple, so we had to wait for someone to go into the
building, then we had to knock on doors to find the apartment because the
apartment number wasn’t listed in our information, and it was just one thing
after another. But eventually we did find it, and they were a super laid back,
interesting couple. 
Thursday afternoon we ate a late lunch from a supermarket,
and went on foot to Montmartre, which was maybe 4 blocks from the house. We
went to the Sacré Coeur and gazed at it for a while before we decided to go
ahead inside and see it. The inside was even more gorgeous that I ever expected.
There was a mass or something going on, so song and chatting filled the entire
room. After stealing a couple pictures of the inside (not allowed), we walked
around Montmartre to find some crêpes and a little wine. We made out way back,
without getting lost, to the apartment to collapse of fatigue and figure out
our lives for Friday’s Parisian adventures. 
Friday morning, it was raining. So
we went to the Louvre and accidently spent 3 hours inside. I enjoyed it, but it
is a ridiculously huge museum and it was hard to navigate, it was super crowded
and we got lost and we were tired and hungry. But we did see the Venus statue
and Mona Lisa so it wasn’t a complete loss. But it definitely was not my
favorite museum I’ve ever been to, by any means. So when we finally got out, we
headed to find lunch.
We found a pizza place a little ways a way and I got a
salmon and cream cheese pizza (YUM) and after lunch we stopped by the Opera
house for pictures. We headed to the other side of the river and walked along
it for a while. 
There was a cute place with crêpes and coffee we stopped at
before trying to go into D’Orsay, but the line was ridiculous, so we backed out
and headed for Notre Dame instead.
Notre Dame was one of my absolute favorites.
The front architecture and the inside were both so gorgeous. The clergy had a
service or concert or something, so as we walked around the church, the smoke
and incense filled your lungs, and the songs of God filled your ears. I lit a
candle for everyone and no one at the same time.
I’ve never experienced god
like I have in Europe, but Notre Dame was an experience on another level.
After we had done our rounds inside Notre Dame, we attempted Sainte Chappelle, but it was closed and the front was under construction. It had started to rain again, so we went on a wild goose chase for a Starbucks for wifi to look up a cinema. But chance and dumb luck, we ran into one not even a block from Notre Dame.
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| Our little Cinema |
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| Onion soup! |
Without much hesitancy, we bough tickets to the next movie playing and ran
inside from the rain. The movie was called Alabama
Monroe. It is a movie made in Belgium, it was in Dutch, with French
subtitles. Naturally, I didn’t understand everything. But thankfully, there are
quite a few words in Dutch that are the same in English. And I can read French
to a certain extent. Either way, it was a terribly moving, depressing and
absolutely wonderfully done movie. After balling our eyes out, we jumped across
the street to a small French restaurant. We had beer and onion soup to warm up
while chatting about the movie.
Saturday we got up early so I could
go the D'Orsay Museum. Emily didn't want to go, so she walked around for an
hour while I went in. Their Impressionist and Post Impressionist galleries are
both extensive, and really amazing. I think it’s so cool how I studied these
works just a year ago in McMinnville, Oregon. And now I’m in Europe and I can
catch a 2-hour plane and see them. My favorites, and the ones I was most
excited about were Courbet’s The Origin
of the World, Manet’s Olympia,
Degas’ Little Dancer, Renior’s Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette,
Cezanne’s Apples and Oranges, McNeill
Whistler’s Portrait of the Artist Mother,
De Toulouse-Lautrec La Toilette, Seurat’s Circus, Van Gogh’s Self Portrait, and
Monet’s Haystacks, Portrait of a Woman,
Cathedral of Rouen, and Water Lilies.
Pretty much it was like the best thing ever. After the art history high
wore off, we tried to go to an outdoor food and flea market that we had read about the day before online. But directions the weren't great and we couldn't find in, and instead of getting lost, we stopped close enough to the metro and found a little supermarket with a good to go / ready to eat section and bought lunch. All the cheese and bread I tried in Paris was wonderful, and as someone who never forgoes a chance to try new bread and cheese, we got some for lunch with our sandwiches. It was just our luck too because a rain shower had just started, so we adverted it, and ate before venturing on through Paris.
We stopped on the way back into the heart of Paris at Bastille, where the Bastille Prison use to stand until the Storming of Bastille and it's destruction between July 14, 1789 and July 14 1790 during the French Revolution. The July Column commemorates the July Revolution. And while I would like to say I knew all of this when visiting, all I knew was that it commemorated the French Revolution and it happened to fall one Zeke and Olivia's birthday. No matter that, it was still interesting and just another interesting monument I got to see!
While looking at Bastille, we found a sign that said that Victor Hugo's house was near by. We followed the signs, which lead us to a lovely little pastry shop along the way. We stopped and got a couple macaroons for a decent price.
The
French are super touchy about taking pictures inside their stores and of their pastries, but I got one
good one before she yelled at me.
We took our macaroons to the park and looked
at Hugo’s house, then headed back towards the complete other side of Paris to Champs
Élysées and Arc de Triomphe.
Champs Élysées could have been any major street in any international city. It had the typical European shops, and the typical ones you can find in the states, such as Nike, Sephora, Gucci, you name it. But it did have the Arc de Triomphe at the very end. We walked down Champs towards the Arc, taking our time and snagging pictures whenever we could. When we got close enough, we grabbed quick photos in front, in the middle of a cross walk. Then found a tunnel to get to the Arc itself. You could try and cross, but the roundabout is huge, and there is no walk way and the cars don’t really stop, they just honk. It was literally extreme frogger, but I'm not a frog, and I'm not sure I would have made it. So we decided not to take our chances, and walked through the tunnel right there on Champs to get up close and personal. We had decided before the trip, that the view from the Arc and from the Eiffel Tower are very similar, and you had to pay for both, so if we were going to pay for one, it would be the one we were a little more excited about, aka the Eiffel Tower. 
The weather was decent on Saturday, very cold
and windy, but not raining and when the sun was out, it felt super warm on our backs. We made a quick decision
to go to the Eiffel Tower because of how clear it was. We thought we were the
only ones with this brilliant idea. It was like 3 pm on a Saturday, who else
would be in line? Evidently all of France, because it took us an hour to buy
our tickets. And then the wind had picked up so they closed the very very top.
It was one of those things were you just had to do it though, I mean how many
time do you get to go to Paris? We waited the line out, and went to the second
floor. Which was high enough for me. I was pretty sure I was going to faint or throw up in the elevator on the way up, it was quite the sensation. It was a gorgeous view but sooo cold and
windy. We did photos real quick, and then went back down for one more picture
session in front of the Tower.
By this time, it was 6 pm and we were super hungry and
tired, so we headed back into the center of the city, around Notre Dame and got
dinner. There are specials all over the center of Paris for tourists, at a
reasonable price. And since everything is expensive in Paris, we couldn’t help
but go for the tourist places and their semi decent prices. It wasn’t terrible, I had mussels and fish and rice and chocolate mouse all for 14 euros. And a free glass of wine - so I can’t complain. After dinner, we trekked back to the
apartment for more wine, more planning and the always needed sleep!
Sunday we went to Versailles, and
after getting lost and turned around on the metro, which is a pain in the ass
in Paris, we made it. Unknown to us, Sunday it is free to get into most
monuments in Paris. So we got into the palace at Versailles for free. (YAY) And we saw the
Hall of Mirrors, and the royal bedrooms, and the dinning rooms and the Hall of Battles and only part of the gardens, because they were huge. It was
just so extravagant, and overly decorated. It was an odd feeling, like you were so impressed with how gorgeous it was, but at the same time, France was going through a famine when Marie Antoinette was living there, and you get why the French people were so upset at Louis and
Marie Antoinette. It was definitely a bit of a fan girl moment though. I mean I've read books about Marie and I even dressed up as here one year for Halloween, thats how serious it was. And to see where and how she lived for the most part was spectacular. It was gorgeous and so
pretty and so decorated. We really wanted to stay more inside the palace and gardens just to see more, but we really didn't have the
time because it was our last full day and we had a list of things that we needed to see and get done before we left the next day. So we
grabbed lunch at a little sandwich place in Versailles. I had a delicious panini with mozzarella, tomato and jam - it was super yummy! After lunch we headed back into Paris to finish off the day.
After a quick nap on the metro, we went to Sainte Chapelle, for free again. It
was gorgeous and the ceilings and stained glass was so elegant. They are in the
middle of reconstruction right now, but they're doing a good job of making sure
you know what it looks like while repairing a lot of the glass work that has been damaged over the years. I loved the way the light streamed in, and it wasn't super bright out when we went in, so I can only imagine how it looks when the sun is shinning bright.
When doing research about Paris, I found their Holocaust museum website and added it to the list. While it wasn't one of the most uplifting or exciting things we did in Paris, it was a different perspective and an overall well done museum. Obviously any Holocaust museum isn't the best, or most fun thing in the world, but it was entirely from the French point of view rather than the US point of view in which I
learned about the Holocaust. While the body of the information wasn't different, they presented the Holocaust as how it affected France particularly, which I had never honestly thought about before. Overall, a good experience.
From the museum we headed to the Pantheon, and we just missed
the last entrance time for the day, but we got pictures outside. This as well is under construction at this moment in time, but fortunately you can't see it too bad in the photo!
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| the Seine |
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| Around the Latin Quarter |
We headed back into Montmartre for dinner and one last look at the Sacré Coeur. We
had enough time before it got really dark to make it to Moulin Rouge. It was
cool to see the building, but a little uncomfortable. French men don't entirely
understand what sexual harassment is, and yelling and gesturing at you is very
common. The men
were especially aggressive in the area around Moulin Rouge. Probably because it
was like Aurora in Seattle, but even skankier. There were sex shops and weird
people and not my favorite thing but it was cool to see at night with all the
lights on. On the way home, we grabbed our last crêpe, jumped on the metro and
headed back to the place for an early ish night as it began to rain again.
Monday we got up early and headed
back to the airport. We had bought jars of Speculoos, a Belgium cookie
butter. And we tried to get them through security, because they were sealed and
they aren't liquids. But the French, being French, took them. And they weren't
nice about it. It’s not the end of the world, but now I've begun a mission to find the
cookie butter in Spain.
We caught our flight
and got home around 1 pm. We unpacked, and around 3 pm our new, wonderful señora
got home and we had lunch all together. We spent the rest of Monday not walking
in the rain, but lying in bed watching Game of Thrones. It's funny how coming to Sevilla feels more and more like my home every time I return from not being here. I'm in an odd place right now where my home isn't one place, it's Sevilla, it is McMinnville, it is Seattle, it is Spain and the United States. I'm all spread out, but not in a bad way, rather in a connected way.
I had a marvelous time
in Paris, and I'm already planning on going back for a little in December/
January for my winter break to see the few places I want to return, and maybe
to see some of the not so touristic parts of it.
In regards to the new señora and the
house change, it came about after a series of incidents in the old house. The
old parents didn't have jobs; their income was the money we paid to stay with
them. We had differences in personalities and there were four international
students in the house so it was more like a hostel than a home. For those and a
couple other reasons, Emily and I decided to move. And we were eager to stay
central in the center of Seville. Our program directors were wonderful in finding us a new
home. They were hesitant to move us because they had never worked with this new
woman before. But we insisted in the location. Our new señora Amparo, is a
doll. She works as an interior designer and wedding designer. So she makes good
money, and we aren't her sole source of income. She is divorced, with four
sons, all of who are married and out of the house. She has only had 2
international students before us, so its not like we're just randos for the
semester who she will never talk to again. She wants us there for her company
and so she's not alone. I absolute adore her, and I feel so much more
comfortable in her flat than I did in the other house even just a couple nights
in. I look forward to getting to know her more, and to living with her for the
rest of the semester, and possibly the year.
We only have six weeks left in this semester, and fewer days of class because we don't have classes Fridays. It's unusual that a lot of people here are getting ready to leave, and I'm getting ready to stay for the long haul. But there isn't much I can do about it besides try and figure out what I'm doing with my life for two months in between semesters.
I promise not to wait too long in between posts again! It was a crazy two weeks!
All my love
XOXOXOXO
You are such an Art Geek! It's so cool. Love this stuff. Keep it coming! Love you.
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