Sit down Asians!!

Ok so I suck at life and am way behind on my blog posts. In my defense though, I wrote my Paris blog the day I was supposed and then couldn't post it because the internet in our hotel stopped working for half our trip. And then the general unreliability of all the wireless internet connections in Nice further deterred me from posting any successive blog posts. So I'll try to post as much as I can today before we head off to Monaco(yay!) again this afternoon. Here is the Paris blog post from like 3 weeks ago. Sorry again about its tardiness. I'll try my best to post some pictures from that day later after class.

Day 2 of PARIS (5/24/10)! After being lied to by the boys AND Tammy—who knew she had it in her—in the morning about our leaving time in an attempt to combat our dispunctuality (didn’t they read French or Foe? It’s called quarkochronics), we metro-ed off to the freaking Louvre.

NBD, we're just at the Louvre

It was incredible, overwhelming, mind-blowing, and a million other adjectives that fall short of this entire Paris experience. I stuck with Jared, Sarah, Alec, and Beeker for the most part and let them attempt to navigate the Louvre’s many wings, floors, and exhibits to find the classics while I trotted behind, happy to take in whatever works we happened to be passing.

The Louvre’s brutal, man. Not only will the sheer quantity of artwork kick your ass, so will the other tourists. Sarah and Richard both got deliberately pushed out of the way by random strangers in front of Winged Victory and Venus de Milo, respectively.

I'm going to start a modern art series called "Asians and world class artwork," do you think I'll be able to make it into the Centre Pompidou?

Regardless of vicious swarms of Asians, we managed to see a decent quantity of the Louvre in the scanty two hours we had there, by taking a sort of jogging tour. I loved the neoclassical wing, and seeing Napoleon III’s chambres were a lot of fun for me too. One thing you don’t necessarily foresee in the Louvre is how beautiful the building itself is. The architecture is nothing to shake a stick at, and they’ve pretty much plastered all flat surfaces with artwork of some kind- namely the ceilings! They were breathtaking and epic, and for me they stole the show from the actual featured artwork in several rooms.

another stunning Louvre ceiling

After the Louvre, we split up for lunch, with about half of the group heading off for super gourmet 7 euro hot chocolate, and I and several others picnicked in le Jardin des Tuileries, kicking pigeons, enjoying our perfect weather, and discussing French swear words.

After lunch, we went to the Musee de l’Orangerie, which features lots of interesting Impressionist and post-Impressionist work. Monet designed the top floor to best showcase 8 of his gi-normous Nympheas paintings.

I felt like I was in a holy place and blessed to witness such genius, and that feeling continued on the bottom floor, where I got to see a ton of Cezannes, Renoirs, Picassos, Rousseaus, and many other gems.

After the musee, we lollygagged around la Place de la Concorde, originally constructed to show off an Equestrian statue of King Louis the somethingth (really! I just asked Sarah and that’s what she said), but is now just a stately square with some giant and beautiful fountains and statues, the Obelisque, and our first view down the Axe Historique vers l’Arc de Triomphe.

un joli statue a la place de la concorde

We crammed onto a sweaty metro and stopped at the Arc de Triomphe which OF EFFING COURSE was under construction and partially covered in scaffolding like almost every other major monument in Paris (Eiffel Tower, la Defense, Notre Dame, etc…)

counfounded scaffolding!!

I feel so gypped…gypsies!! Hey, now I know where that word comes from! After, we metro-ed over to l’Arche de la Defense in the skyscraper area of Paris, laid on the ground, looked for bathrooms, kicked pigeons, and then headed over to the Latin Quarter for dinner again. Sarah and I ran off to a veggie fast food stand with falafels (yay!) and then pear ice cream next to Notre Dame, while the others enjoyed real Parisien fondue.

waiting for hot off the griddle crepes in the Latin Quarter

Our last event of the evening was a boat cruise on the Seine at sunset. I was looking forward to it but then at the very last second before the boat took off (launched? De-docked? Sorry I don’t know nautical terminology), it was invaded by boisterous tourist groups.

one of the few asian-tourist-free photos I managed to take on the boat

It was still full of great photo ops though and a fun way to end the day, and I’m especially glad I went because we sailed by la Tour Eiffel literally right as the sparkly light show began.

Filthy feet and vicious tourist flocks aside, I’m feeling more and more every moment how much I adore this city- if I can ever find a way to come back and live here, I’m doing it!