in which i hit the Big Three of paris tourism.

I am on vacation, but vacation so far has mostly consisted of coughing and sniffling in my room. Sucks. Plus, one of my four classes isn't on vacation, so I had Translation yesterday. (Okay, it's kind of a poor excuse for a class, but still.) I have that class with Skye, who's in London, and Bin, who is here. So after it was over, Bin and I walked to Notre Dame.

Bin lept in front of my mounted-policemen picture. Lept, literally. He jumped off the curb into the middle of the street. Say hi to Bin.

Notre Dame from the back.
And the front.
I want to go to the Crypte Archeologique at Notre Dame, but we didn't have time before it closed, so I'll have to go back. Instead we went to Trocadero, which is a plaza flanked by the Musee de l'Homme on one side and the Musee de la Marine on the other. From the plaza, though, you have a fantastic view of the Eiffel Tower and Paris across the river. I ate a sugar crepe. It was delicious.
And today I went to the Louvre. Because I have that silly student ID card that says I'm studying art history, I get a Louvre pass for free; but the woman there sure didn't want to give it to me. She told me the stamp was insufficient. I found this amusing because everyone else in my program has the same stamp, and got their cards with no trouble. I told her this. Actually, I said, "Well, that's strange, because my friends--" and she said "Oh no. It is not strange. No."

Well. I just sat there and stared at her until she gave in and made me a card. In revenge, my picture looks intensely odd.

Anyway, this is the Louvre. I take that back. This is something outside the Louvre that looks like the Arc de Triomphe. Only small. I have no idea what it is, but every Japanese tourist within five miles had come to take pictures of it. I found this vaguely amusing, because inside the Louvre, it was entirely populated with Italians.

That is not the Louvre. It is across the river. I do not know what it is either.

This is the Winged Victory of Samothrace. I love this thing. I spent all my time in the Louvre on ancient Greece and about half of Egypt before I got exhausted. I don't know if you know this, but the Louvre is really freaking big.

I was putting my Greek Art and Archaeology class from last semester to good use. Unsurprisingly, lots of the pieces we studied in that class were in the Louvre. I set myself to finding them. I actually did find quite a few. The class was incredibly easy while I was in it, but turns out it was worthwhile, because things made a lot more sense after we studied them. And by things I mean "Greek art."

So I took lots of pictures of random Greek things because I was so excited that I knew something about them. Look! Black-figure vases!

White-ground lekythoi!

A sphinx! Oh wait.
Bye!

in which "englouti" is the most perfectly appropriate adjective for underwater things that i have ever come across.

In my continuing quest to avoid my Exotisme homework, I went to the Grand Palais, which is this gigantic glass conundrum that houses revolving exhibitions. You know, all museum-like. I approached it from the Champs-Elysees, which means I only have a terrible picture of it through the trees; you can get a better idea of what it looks like here.

So there's the Grand Palais, and there's also the Petit Palais (bet you could've guessed).

Grand Palais.

Neither the Grand Palais nor the Petit Palais; but don't ask me, I have no idea. It was a beautiful day, since it finally freaking stopped raining. I feel like I've been sloshing around in ankle-deep water for weeks.

And it was nice that it was such a beautiful day, since I had a long wait in front of this place. It has been thoroughly established that French people really like going to museums, France, so can we slack off a little bit? I mean, there were lines in front of the display cases. Plus, it was like twenty degrees in there. (Before I left, my host mother told me to wrap up for the Grand Palais. I sort of giggled. But inside, I never took my scarf off.)
Exhibition: Les Tresors engloutis d'Egypte, or, Egypt's Sunken Treasures. The story goes something like this: three big important Egyptian cities, Alexandria, Herakleion, and Eastern Canopus, sink below sea level as a result of various natural disasters. Marine archaeologist Frank Goddio expends a downright foolish amount of energy to bring them back up. (Our hero!) You can read all about it on the exhibition's website. They also have some super-cool photos floating around in there that I recommend.

The website says that there are 500 artifacts in the exhibition. I believe it. I read the notes on each and every one of them. It was a ridiculously large exhibition; they pretty much included everything they could think of. The best were three colossal statues -- a pharaoh, a queen, and oh gosh I forget the other one, some kind of fonctionnaire -- from the temple at Herakleion. They were, um, colossal. Wow.

I couldn't take any pictures of the exhibition -- and they were serious about this, there were uniformed policemen hanging around -- but I took pictures of the ceiling.

Chinese New Year is this weekend, so Skye and I are going to go to Chinatown and check it out. I'll let you know how it goes.

rouen.

Saturday was spent in Rouen (largely) and on a bus (not as incidentally as one might have hoped) with a big chunk of the students on my program. Rouen is the capital of Normandy, north of Paris on the Seine; it's France's sixth major port. Joan of Arc was burned there, and Richard the Lion-Hearted's heart was given to the Rouen cathedral after his death. The heart is buried in his tomb there, and his body is in England. The Rouen cathedral is the one Monet painted six hundred million bajillion pictures of, in changing light. I'm sure you will remember this, if you try real hard.

The day pretty much couldn't have been any colder -- next time I decide it would be a great idea to go to Normandy in the winter, please slap me in the face -- but at least it was sunny.

I have no idea what this first church is, but it's lovely. [Ed. note: I looked it up. It's the church of St. Maclou, Gothic, 15th century. Thanks.] I couldn't go inside, because it was locked; there was a sign on the door saying that, after the church was firebombed last October, they decided to close it except for services because they couldn't afford to pay a guard there all the time. Fair enough. (It's also worth noting that Rouen is the first place in France that I've seen swastika graffiti.) There was a man out front playing the accordion, but I couldn't get a good picture of him. Actually, there were a lot of people playing the accordion in Rouen. Who knows why.

Rouen is also famous for its surviving half-timbered houses, like this:

I really like them.

I also went to the Church of St.-Ouen (12th-15th century), which has the most beautiful stained glass rose window.

I thought I had a better close-up of it, but turns out it's blurry.

Inside the church of St.-Ouen, they had these hanging posters (maybe ten like this, and then there were long skinny ones running along each side of the church). They were, as far as I could gather, reproductions of an original map of Rouen. What I liked best about the map was that the buildings on one side of the Seine were drawn right-side up, but the other side were upside down.

More half-timbered buildings:

This is the Cathedral de Notre Dame, the Rouen cathedral.
You may recognize it from this:Monet. We also went to the Musee des Beaux-Arts, where I took a picture of the only Monet-doing-the-Rouen-cathedral painting they had. Which is kind of shame, I feel like they should have all of them, in the same room. That would be great.
Musee des Beaux-Arts:
Inside the cathedral, they had a ton of these statues; I'm thinking they were taken down from outside the church to preserve them, given how worn down they all looked.

Sorry again about how dark this is. This is the tomb of Richard the Lion-Hearted's heart. Just think, it's in there, all desiccated and shrively-looking. Yum.

Bride, on cell phone; with Percheron.
That woman must have been so cold.

in which i have a Modern Art Experience, and see my new lodgings.

Today’s excursions: Centre Georges Pompidou, famille d’acceuil (host family). I particularly like the Musee d’Art Moderne at Pompidou, but I made the mistake of following along on the tour. It was only one hour, I figured, it wouldn’t be bad, would it?

Yes. Yes, it would. I like museums. I like art. I like art museums. But I am never again going on a guided tour of an art museum. I’ll have to go back and shell out the eight Euros to see it myself. (Interesting side note, as yet unconfirmed: I hear a rumor that, if you can prove that you are a student of art history in France, you have free entrance to all the museums. Intriguingly enough, although I am not, in fact, a student of art history in France, I have a little stamp on my bootleg student ID [no, it’s real, but man, it’s a piece of laminated construction paper with my picture on it] that says “Histoire de l’Art, V.W.P.P., Paris.”)

Centre Pompidou:
View from the top:
Inside:


(This shoe is taller than I am.)


Afterwards, I wandered over to Le Marais with Kate, for unsuccessful shopping that deserves no more mention than this sentence. And then! To the 16th arrondissement, metro Passy, to meet the host family.

I feel like this deserves some description. I met up with Skye at the station, Skye being the other Wesleyan student who is going to live in the host family’s apartment with me. Skye is a sophomore and was in my French Ways class last semester. She plays guitar and is generally adorable. So. Skye had a leetle problem with the metro, namely that she’s scared of it, despite being from New York City; but she still emerged unscathed, I think somewhat to her surprise, and we walked to the apartment.

The apartment is on a street full of antiques shops and beautiful old buildings that are all about seven stories high. The street is full of antiques shops because the residents are loaded.

We could get into the ground floor of the building fine, but then we couldn’t figure out exactly how to get upstairs. It was really very confusing and we wandered around into the courtyard etc. for a few minutes before I gathered up the courage to call our host family (M et Mme de Lassagne, which, I’m sorry, I can barely pronounce without laughing) and say, I’m sorry, we’re your Americans. We’re downstairs and we can’t figure out how to get up.

Ah, first impressions.

Anyway, M de Lassagne came downstairs to show us up. He is 75, which makes him more of a host grandfather than a host father; Mme de Lassagne is 65. He took us upstairs in an oldschool elevator that involved both glass and a surprising amount of wicker, and into their apartment. Which, oh God, is amazing. (I was talking to other students about their housing today, and Bin happened to mention that he was being put in a 150 square meter apartment, which general agreement had was quite large. This one where I’m going to be living is 275.) The family that owned the apartment before them were from either the Middle East or North Africa, I forget which, and had decorated the kitchen accordingly. There is an incredibly involved wallpaper in the front hall with scenes from somebody’s 19th century America, and the sitting room involves a rather large amount of gold.

We sat and ate pastries and drank tea (and I liked it? it probably had something to do with the cube of sugar I let dissolve in it) and talked. They seem to like America a lot, and have traveled there extensively, which is nice when one is surrounded by a country that, let’s be honest, doesn’t like America all that much. When I said I lived in Memphis and they didn’t know where that was, M de Lassagne pulled out an atlas and proceeded to look up all the details. “Capital, Nashville? Memphees, Tennessee ... on the Mississippi. A very long river!”

They have three sons, two of whom live in the US (Miami and San Francisco) and a daughter in Provence. The other son lives in Shanghai and does not speak any Chinese. They were very interested to hear that I do, after a fashion. China, M de Lassagne assured me, is the future. The Americans should be afraid; but not as much as the French. No, Mme de Lassagne agreed, the French don’t work. They’re the ones who should be afraid.

They showed us around the apartment and gave us the details. Skye and I have two separate rooms at the back of the apartment, with big windows onto the courtyard, and the biggest closets in the history of the world. We share our own bathroom with a (stand-up!) shower. We get one meal a week with them (Sundays) and they will provide breakfast every day. They travel a lot to their country residences (two) and are very interested in farming (of cows). Which I believe they own. They gave us keys (these keys are incredibly weird looking) and we are to move in Saturday, but we can bring our suitcases over any time before that. They are some of the nicest people ever. M de Lassagne walked me and Skye to the metro when we left to make sure we made it all right.

After which, we took the metro back to the FIAP and push-button showers, stopping at a Chinese restaurant for lo mein and the recounting of boyfriend stories.