Paris part 3

Today I balanced my budget, took a walk, went to the store, and worked on homework.  It was a super nice day. Very windy!  I left my hair down and let the breeze run through it while I was walking by the Alster.  Mostly I've had my hair pulled back so it won't be in my way (sometimes long hair with a scarf can be annoying), but now that summer is coming and the weather is warm I've been leaving it loose more.  Still haven't had much opportunity to go in flip-flops though.  My poor feet never get to see the light of day!  Hopefully we will have some chances to jump in the Stadtparksee soon--the past week or two people have started swimming in it, and there are always a lot of kayaks and canoes paddling around too.  Indra, Petra, and Marni already have a head start on a tan (or at least on freckles) because Indra is on the sunny side of the building and likes to wear a tank top at her desk in the morning, and Petra and Marni got to catch plenty of rays when they were in Lebanon and Israel.  Hoping that soon it will be my turn to tan in the Stadtpark.  Bring on the sun, baby!

Bought peaches on sale at the store.  (Berries look delicious, but they're always so expensive . . .) Also bought some fresh whole milk (not the H-milk, but the refrigerated kind) to try, since I never got to try the cow's milk at Indra's.  I figured it was the next best thing.  Got the bright idea to try to make it into whipped cream so I could have peaches and cream for breakfast tomorrow, but I didn't have a whisk or a mixer to use and shaking it in a jar did absolutely nothing except make tiny lumps in it.  After an hour, I gave up on that.

Anyway, here's more about Paris. (Writing this as I listen to the Hugo soundtrack . . .)

Day 3: May 24, 2014
Happy 23 to meeee . . . in Paris!

Had my breakfast in the hostel, bought some lunch food, and took the Metro to Denfert-Rocherau, in the south part of the city, to visit the catacombs.  It is highly recommended on TripAdvisor, so the line was like two hours long.  And I'm pretty sure every person in line was a tourist.  I wanted to do it though because it sounded interesting, so I stuck out the line.  Two hours, and it kept sprinkling rain on and off.  American family in front of me, two German girls behind me.  Amazing how frustrated you can get listening to other people's conversations--in any language--when you're stuck with them for two hours.  Sometimes the whole TripAdvisor thing can be really annoying.

The upside to the long wait was that there were lots of beautiful buildings and other interesting things to draw, because the Place Denfert-Rochereau is pretty big.  Even with the on-and-off rain (every time it sprinkled I had to put away my sketchbook), I probably got more drawing done during those two hours than at any other one time while I was in Paris.

The catacombs were pretty cool, though I'm not sure they were worth all the hype and the long wait.  My favorite part was at the beginning, when I was walking through a long dark tunnel by myself with no other people in sight.  It was like Jean Valjean in the sewer--SUPER spooky!  And it's chilly down there too!  The actual catacombs were more full of tourists (some of whom were rather obnoxious), but still the place is pretty incredible.  Before he was imprisoned and had his head lopped in the French Revolution, one of the things King Louis XVI did was to organize an emptying of Paris's old cemeteries.  Many of the graveyards had been used since the Middle Ages, and they were so full that they were starting to pose health hazards.  So under Louis, they started a project to turn the old underground limestone quarries (which were first dug in Roman times) into an underground cemetery.  Over the next 75 years, they worked on the project, emptying dozens of Paris cemeteries and transferring the bones of around six million Parisians into these underground quarry tunnels.  The cemetery was opened to visitors starting in the early 1800s.  All the bones are now stacked in decorative arrangements, grouped by the cemetery they came from and the year in which they were transferred.  Some of the bones are literally crumbling apart because they are so old.  It's kind of mind-blowing after a while.  You just walk through room after room of these bones piled up.  Hard to imagine what it must have been like if that was your job.

"And tell me, Monsieur, what is your profession?"

"Oh, I am employed by the Quarries Inspectorate.  I take the bones exhumed from the old cemeteries and arrange them in decorative piles all day."

Somehow I think that job might have gotten to be a bit depressing and tedious after a while.

Anyway, after I finally finished with the catacombs, I had a quick apple and pain au lait on the go and then took the Metro to the Gare Montparnasse.  The old station where Georges Méliès had his toy booth and where the Hugo story takes place has been replaced by a modern station, but I wanted to go there anyway.  Thankfully the sun was peeking through the clouds, so I was able to warm up a bit after the chilly passages of the catacombs!

The Gare Montparnasse (and the whole area out in front of it) look completely different from how they would have looked in 1930.  The station itself is big, boxy, and very modern, with lots of glass panes.  In front of the station is the Tour Montparnasse, the tallest skyscraper in Paris.  It has more than 50 floors, and you can buy a ticket to go to the top floor and look out over the city (which I didn't do because you need a reservation and it's a tad pricey, though I've heard the view is spectacular).  The whole area is bustling and lively, but it's obviously changed a lot over the years.  I quickly went into the station itself, but it's boring--just lots of glass, escalators, and food & ticket booths, no different from any other modern station.  It was still cool to go there, though--the sun was out, big puffy clouds were blowing over, and there was a nice breeze like the kind you get on an on-and-off-rain-showers kind of day.

From there I walked to the Jardin du Luxembourg (Luxembourg Gardens).  The weather started getting sprinkly and more windy by then, but I still really enjoyed it there.  I sat down to draw, hoping the rain would hold off.  The gardens were originally designed by Marie de Medici.  There are lots of walking paths (symmetrical, of course--it's a very structured design) and a big fancy building which now houses the Senate.  I loved all the statues--the ones around the perimeter are of famous women in French history--and the flower beds had such pretty color combinations!  In the big pond in front of the Senate, kids were running back and forth with pushing poles, guiding their model sailboats.  It was so picturesque and so typically European, so Parisian.  (For any Victor Hugo geeks out there, in Les Misérables the Luxembourg is the place where Marius first sees Cosette walking with Jean Valjean and falls in love with her.)  While I was drawing, a guy came up and started talking to me.  He was from the south of France.  We talked for probably forty-five minutes while I was drawing the Senate building.  He asked if I wanted him to show me the Sorbonne and the university district, which is just east of the gardens, but I declined because I wanted to draw more (and because, like with the Italian guy, I'd rather not go tripping off with a random guy I just met, no matter how nice he might seem.  No Marius and Cosette moments with me!).  As it turned out, I didn't get to draw more, because it started raining.  I walked around in the rain for a bit and listened to a big-band concert in the gazebo under the trees (a bunch of elderly people playing tubas and saxophones and wearing matching red suits--it was classic!  These are the kinds of things you think only exist in movies!) and walked around the perimeter to look at all the famous French women statues.  Then it really started coming down, and I had to wait under the trees till the rain let up.  I passed the Medici Fountain on the way out of the gardens, which was really beautiful also.  It is like a long pond leading to a grotto with Classical-style sculptures.

From there I walked back to St-Germain-des-Prés (not far) and St. Michel.  I wanted to find a restaurant that Cindy had recommended to me called La Procope, which supposedly is the oldest restaurant in Paris.  But I couldn't find the street!  I knew it was in St. Michel somewhere, but I had no luck.  So after wandering for close to an hour (not that it was a bad way to spend an hour--that area was definitely one of my favorites),  I chose a café called Paul, which is a chain in Paris.  I ordered a vegetable quiche with a green salad.  Not the most spectacular food, and the poor waiters were having a tough time keeping up with all the customers (it was only the two of them serving everybody!), so the service was a tad slow.  But I didn't mind.  It was a great spot to draw and people-watch.  (To be honest, I picked that café for that exact reason.)

Around 9 I left the café and set off for Ladurée, which Cindy told me is the French macaron place.  I had passed it earlier while I was looking for the other restaurant.  I figured I could at least get a birthday macaron.  As I was walking, I passed St-Germain-des-Prés church on its north side, in one of the little streets, and there was the sound of jazz music coming out of the back courtyard.  I stopped for a second to listen.  There was a sign outside that said "Concert Jazz: David Costa Coelho and the Smoky Joe Combo."  And at the bottom, the two words that are beautiful in any language: "Entree libre." Free entry.

I immediately walked back into the courtyard to check it out.

There was a stage set up in one corner with a tent over top, and chairs and benches were arranged in rows under a huge spreading tree in the middle of the courtyard.  I sat on a bench in the back, figuring I would just stay a couple minutes.

There was a lead singer with a guitar and an old-school microphone (that was David Costa Coelho), accompanied by six guys on stand-up bass, trumpet, alto and baritone sax, trombone, drums, and piano.  They were grooving away at some swing tune, and when the trumpet player blasted out his solo, a group of guys and girls about my age, dressed nice and sitting in the middle row, whistled and cheered for him--they seemed really enthusiastic and excited.  Then the alto sax player started in.

I was like, I am so staying for this whole thing.  Forget the macarons.

That concert was the best part of my whole birthday.  It was great--the music under this big tree in a back courtyard of a church, the people of all ages clapping and even dancing to the tunes.  One college-age guy was trying to show his girlfriend how to swing, and then they and all their friends were swaying and bopping to the music.  I've never seen young people who were so into jazz--most kids my age don't seem to like it much.  And the band was INCREDIBLE!  They did it all: swing, blues, even some Latin, and it was so fun to watch them put all their energy into the music.  Every one of the musicians was super talented.  It was off the chart.  I didn't want it to end.  Like I said, the best part of my whole day!

I looked up Smoky Joe Combo later, because they were so amazing.  Here is a YouTube video of them.  The main singer, Coelho, is always there, but I think the ensemble changes depending on the show.  Some of the guys in this video played with him that night, but not all.

After that I walked over the Pont Neuf and admired the twilight lights on the Seine.  (It had to be at least 10 o'clock by then, but the summer light in Europe lasts an unbelievably long time!)  I started to go down into the Metro after that, but then I decided I wasn't ready to go back to the hostel yet and wandered around the Île de la Cité a while longer, admiring Notre Dame and walking on the quay until it got completely dark.  A beautiful ending to the day.

I went to the Metro stop at Rambuteau, near the Georges Pompidou building, to get back to my hostel.  Found out that the Les Halles/Rambuteau area is kind of the bar zone.  I didn't feel unsafe exactly, but I was definitely a bit more on guard.  Rambuteau is just north of the place where, on the old Paris street plan, the barricade is supposed to be in Les Misérables.  Still kind of a dodgy area even today, apparently.  I was glad to get down into the Metro where things felt safer.  Praise the Lord, I got back to my hostel fine.

So . . . lots of drawing, spooky tunnels and an underground cemetery, pretty weather (if a tad rainy), the Luxembourg Gardens, and an amazing jazz concert.  I'd say it was a good birthday.

Day 4: May 25, 2014

It was Sunday!  So I went to church at Calvary Chapel Paris!  It was actually fairly close to my hostel, just a few Metro stops away, but I accidentally went the wrong way down the street coming out of the Metro and had to double back.  So I was probably 20 minutes late for the service.  I felt bad coming in late, but it ended up being okay.  There were one or two other people who came in after I did.

The church is as small as City Light, even though they've been around longer.  They meet at a small place, just north of the Gare de Lyon, that belongs to the Jews for Jesus organization.  There were maybe fifteen people there.  Michael and Becky are the couple who head it up, and they have four kids--three girls and a boy.  (The oldest girl is in her mid-teens, and their son, the youngest, was turning six that day.  We had birthday brownie cupcakes afterwards.)  In addition to their family, there were between five and ten others.  It was a good service.  Michael and his oldest daughter led worship, and there was a black girl who was maybe thirteen or fourteen who played the cajon.  (Emily, she reminded me of you!)  The songs were both in English and French.  It was harder to follow along with French pronunciation than it is to follow the German at City Light!  But it was still so fun to sing worship songs in another language.  Michael taught after that, and Becky translated.  We read out of Romans 15.  It was a good Bible study, and we had communion at the end.

I enjoyed hanging out with everyone afterwards, too.  There was one girl there who was from Colombia, so I got to speak Spanish with her, which was great!  And then I also talked (or tried to talk) to a few other people in French.  My brain was tired.  But it was cool!  I ended up staying till almost 3 o' clock, and I helped a bit with the cleanup, since they had to put the room back in order and sweep up all the brownie crumbs.  It was so encouraging to meet everybody and hang out--when you're united under Christ, language barriers and different nationalities don't matter.  I always leave church services feeling blessed, even if I just met everyone that day.  It was funny too because it turns out that Michael and Becky know Joey, Rebecca, Janos, and Anja!  I told them I would pass along a hello next time I saw everyone at City Light.

After that, I moseyed through a sidewalk market nearby, had a quick late lunch of peaches and more pains au lait, and then walked to the Gare de Lyon.  This one has really cool old train-station architecture!  The clocks are beautiful--they have white faces with blue numbers and hands.  It reminded me of Chinese or Dutch porcelain.  I drew a bit and then walked from there to the Gare d'Austerlitz on the other side of the river.  This one was boring, so I left and went down the block to check out the Jardin des Plantes.  I wasn't sure whether it would be worth any time, but it turned out to be really cool and I spent probably an hour there!  It is basically a botanical garden.  They have all kinds of flowers, herbs, fruit trees, and other plants (all labeled so you know the different varieties), as well as atriums, shady walking paths like in the Luxembourg, and a woodsy area with huge evergreens and a hilltop gazebo.  Around the perimeter are the science museums and natural history museum.  (All you L.A. people, think Exposition Park.)  It was full of families, couples, and groups of friends enjoying the gardens, the sun, and the various activities (they had tents set up and there was some kind of a science-fair thing going on).  I tasted some small cherries from one fruit tree (they were sour) and smelled the roses in the rose garden.  Dad, did you go to the Jardin des Plantes when you were in Paris?  I wished you could have been there with me for that one!

After that I left and took the Metro to the Place de la Bastille because I wanted to go to Victor Hugo's apartment at the Place des Vosges.  (By the way, the Place de la Bastille is where the infamous Bastille was, but there is no trace of it now aside from a little historical marker at one side of the plaza.)  It was unfortunately too late to go into the museum of Victor Hugo's house because it was nearly 6 and they were getting ready to close, so I wandered around the Place des Vosges for a couple of minutes.  It is a building built in a square plan, with just a few passages at the corners that serve as entry and exit points.  There is a park-plaza thing in the middle (which was extremely crowded) and an arcade walkway around the perimeter of the building.  The ground floor has a lot of art galleries and ritzy cafés, so it's kind of a hipster place, I think.  I was going to leave, but then I heard music playing in one corner and it turned out to be a harpist who was busking (playing for money).  He was really good and the music was so beautiful that I sat on a doorstep of a vacant business space and drew for a few minutes while I listened to him.  After all, how often do you get to hear a live harpist?

Then I walked out onto the Rue Saint-Antoine.  I had a brief and amusing conversation about Parisian architecture with a few Brits while I was waiting in line for the toilettes.  For those of you who haven't been to Paris, the public toilets are nice because you can find them on all the busy streets and you don't have to pay for them, and they go through a "wash cycle" after each person uses them so that they stay pretty clean.  The downside to this is that you end up waiting a long time for the wash cycle to finish.  If three people are in line in front of you, you're looking at a good ten-minute wait, even if each person gets in and out pretty quickly.  So if you're in Paris, don't wait until you're at the critical point before seeking a bathroom!

Anyway, after I finally got in and out of the toilettes, I went into the St. Louis-St. Paul church.  This one is pretty amazing.  It is a Baroque church with a 170-foot-high cupola over the altar, and three levels with high windows.  Victor Hugo's daughter was married there, and in Les Misérables it is supposed to be the church where Marius and Cosette have their wedding.  Makes sense, considering that Victor Hugo lived just around the corner from it.  I listened to the beginning of the Vespers service and then left to find dinner.  (Perks of going into churches later in the day--you get to hear the Vespers music!)  Interesting that in Hamburg, you don't hear Vespers in the churches because they are Protestant churches, not Catholic like in France.

Went to a bakery and got a tomato & mozzarella panini for dinner.  Walked to the Seine and ate sitting on the edge of the quay.  It was super mellow and super nice.  After that I walked (guess where?) more in St. Michel and along the Seine.  Paris is just so beautiful at night!  I couldn't bring myself to go back to my hostel later than 10:30 any of the nights.  And you can stay out so late when the light lasts a long time.

More tomorrow!  Super sleepy!  It's very late . . . make that very early . . .

Photos:

Spooky long catacomb tunnel!

The underground cemetery, or "ossuary"

Some of these bones were SO OLD . . . 

The Gare Montparnasse

Jardin du Luxembourg!

. . . by this point it was getting rainy . . .

Medici Fountain

Sun and rain at the same time while walking one of the St. Michel streets

JAZZ BABY!

St. Michel in the evening

Palais du Justice and Seine at twilight, looking east from Pont Neuf

Seine from the Pont Neuf, looking west

Notre Dame at night!

The Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire (Street of the Women of Calvary), which was near my hostel and in Les Misérables is the street where Marius's grandfather lives

Gare de Lyon exterior

Gare de Lyon interior

Jardin des Plantes

Place des Vosges, where Victor Hugo's apartment is

St. Louis-St. Paul's church

Check out that cupola dome!!!

Vespers

St. Louis-St. Paul exterior

Another Seine night view

EPIC NIGHT + Paris part 2

I'll tell more about Paris in a minute, but first I just have six little words to describe tonight:

John Fogerty.  Live.  In the Stadtpark.

SO EPIC.

Marni, Petra, and I went.  We didn't have tickets of course, since they cost around 60 euros apiece.  Instead, we just joined the crowds camped out on the grass strip outside the music venue and listened to  the songs.  Even though we couldn't see inside, the sound was plenty clear.  Almost all the Creedence classics were played.  No "Susie Q," unfortunately, but all the others: "Green River," "Fortunate Son," "Born on the Bayou," "Down on the Corner," "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?", "Travelin' Band," and (one of my faves) "Up Around the Bend." We danced almost the whole time.  Pretty much everybody walking past stared at us.  Near the very end, we moved closer to the entrance of the venue where there were more people, and we were there for "Bad Moon Rising" and "Proud Mary."  People of all ages were dancing--elementary school kids jumping up and down with their parents, elderly couples bouncing all over the place, old men doing the jig.  (And no, I'm not exaggerating.)  It was ABSOLUTELY EPIC.

I think Marni and Petra (especially Petra) had even more fun than I did.  Petra is so wound up right now.  She probably won't be able to sleep for hours.  Actually, I probably won't either.  There's something so great about evening picnics in the park with warm weather and live music.  Especially when the music is something as classic as John Fogerty performing all the old Creedence songs.

Today was less exciting than tonight.  Did homework and went to school.  Petra just got back from a trip to Vienna and Prague this morning.  She was sooooo glad that she was back in time to hear the concert tonight!

Anyway, more about PARIS!!!!

Day 2: May 23, 2014

Breakfast in the hostel.  Every day the breakfast was the same, super simple: applesauce, fruit cocktail, orange juice, coffee, and plain white baguette-style rolls with butter, jam, and soft cheese.  I established a routine of fruit cocktail, a little applesauce, and two rolls sliced in half and spread with cheese, butter, jam, or butter and jam together.  This was my breakfast every morning, and I thought it was delicious, even if it was basic.  (I discovered, by the way, that butter and jam together on a roll is REALLY good.  I honestly looked forward to eating it every day when I woke up.)

Part two of my morning routine was to run down the street to Marché Franprix, the market down on the corner.  (It's a chain of mini-supermarkets--you see them all over Paris and they usually have a lot of products packed into a small space.)  I would buy a baguette or a pre-packaged bag of pains au lait (soft rolls made with milk--they taste like King's Hawaiian rolls) and some kind of fruit or veggies.  The peaches and nectarines there were really good.  Amazing how much fresher they are when they're only being imported from a short distance away (these were grown in Spain).  I would then zoom back to the hostel to wash my produce and fill my water bottle up, and then head off for the day.

On my first morning there, I decided to do the Musée d'Orsay. I took the Metro to St-Germain-des-Prés (on the south side of the Seine) and walked the few blocks to the museum.  Lots of the streets in this area have an older feel because they are narrower and smaller.  It was a sunny morning and I loved the walk.

The Musée d'Orsay was great!  I liked it a lot better than the Louvre--much smaller and more manageable, and definitely fewer crowds (though as the day goes on it can get fairly busy).   I was able to get through basically the whole thing in about four hours.  It is built in a remodeled train station on the south bank of the Seine.  The thing it is best known for is its Impressionist collection, but they also have a lot of Romanticism, Realism, and Post-Impressionism, as well as some Art Nouveau and a beautiful sculpture collection.  I couldn't believe the realism and drama of some of the sculptures, especially the marble ones.  Most of them I had never heard of before, but they were absolutely stunning.  I especially couldn't believe the ones depicting John the Baptist as a child--they were so lifelike that it seemed like they might suddenly start breathing and moving!  Visitors unfortunately weren't allowed to take photos, and the guards monitor this quite seriously, so I couldn't get any good pictures of all the beautiful pieces I saw.  I did take pictures of some of the plaques so I could look the works up later.  Found a couple of gorgeous paintings and drawings that I had never seen before either, and also some super powerful ones, especially in the Realist galleries.  The Impressionist gallery was packed, and I did it last so I was starving by then (it didn't help that all the Impressionists put food in their paintings!  Picnic lunches, people in cafés . . . it started to feel like torture near the end!).  But it was so cool to see so many of these beautiful works by Degas, Monet, Renoir, Manet, and all the others, just hanging one after the other on the walls.  I was especially excited to see Dance in the City and Dance in the Country by Renoir and Luncheon on the Grass and The Balcony by Manet.

The architecture of Orsay is spectacular in itself.  Part of the whole charm of it is the old train station elements.  It has been modernized and renovated, of course, but there is still a beautiful coffered ceiling with a flower motif similar to the one in the Arc de Triomphe, and a GORGEOUS clock at one end of the main hall.  I've been obsessed with train stations and clocks ever since I saw the Hugo film and read the original book by Brian Selznick (the story is about an orphan boy who lives in the Gare Montparnasse train station in the 1930s and fixes the clocks there, and who ends up meeting Georges Méliès, French pioneer of early filmmaking).  The clock in Orsay is actually one of the ones that Brian Selznick used as visual reference for his drawings in the book.  So of course I was absolutely in love with the architecture and the clock, and I took a bunch of pictures of both of them when the security guards weren't looking.  I also went down the hallway behind the clock (it had some random little display that wasn't very exciting) and peeked out through the girders at everyone below.  It was like being in Hugo's world in the story.  Super cool.  There are also two clocks on the side of the building that have windows looking out over the Seine.  One of them is in the smaller restaurant (the museum has a take-away café and two top-floor restaurants) and the other one is at the far end of the Impressionist gallery.  It was super neat to look out through the clock face to the river below.  Felt just a bit like the scenes where Hugo is in the clock tower looking out over Paris . . .

When I finally finished with the museum, I ate my baguette and carrots sitting on the quay outside, with my feet dangling over the edge, and watched the boats going up and down the Seine.  So many sightseeing and tourist boats--it was unbelievable.  There are also floating-restaurant boats where people can eat a nice meal while having a cruise, but tourist boats are the most common.  If only all the folks on board knew how silly they look when they yell and wave at random strangers on shore . . .

Next I walked to Notre Dame.  Free admission, but boy, are there a lot of people!  The nice thing is that you can move through at your own pace, though.  I just kind of pulled off to the side and let the crowds flow past me while I was looking at everything.  I was in there at least an hour.  It really is a spectacular and beautiful church.  The bell towers outside are tall, but even so, you don't realize how massive the building is until you actually go in.  It has not only the side aisles, but second-story galleries above the side aisles and then another level of windows above those (three stories total).  There are three huge rose windows--one between the two bell towers and one on each side of the transept--and the nave is really long.  I just stood and gawked at all of it for a long time, and took lots of pictures.  (Definitely cooler than the Eiffel Tower, in my opinion.)  They had the Vespers service in the center in front of the altar while I was there, and visitors to the cathedral were allowed to go in as long as they were going for the service and not to take photos.  So I went in!  It was cool--I got a handout paper so I could read along, and I got to sing these beautiful Gregorian-chant-style Psalms in French along with the rest of the attendees.  Not sure how well I did at following along, but it was a great experience.  If I'm going to do a Vespers service anywhere, it ought to be at Notre Dame, right?

The church closed at 6:45 and everyone was funneled out the side door, including me.  I went around the back side, drew the side view, and then set off to find dinner.  Wandered across the bridge into St. Michel and within about five minutes, I had found an Asian-food place with pretty good prices.  Thought about getting the sushi rolls, but ended up choosing some kind of chicken and mushroom in savory sauce and a spring roll.  It was yummy and only cost about 5 euros.  By the way, I found out that it's possible to eat cheap even in Paris.  There are so many different food options--from crêpes that only cost 2 or 3 euros all the way up to super-fancy restaurant seafood dishes that cost upwards of 60 euros a plate.  It all depends on what you want to pay.  Most of the days in Paris, I was able to get lunch and dinner for about 7 euros total.  Honestly, I could have my own TV show on how to eat on a budget while traveling in Europe--just call it "7 Euros a Day with Rachel A." (That's my middle initial, for anyone who was wondering.)

Anyway, the food was good and after that I walked through St. Michel and along the Boulevard St-Germain to the St-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood again.  I loved that area!  It definitely had the classic Parisian vibe I had imagined from photos--cafés and restaurants everywhere, and little narrow cobbled streets that were like a maze.  I found a confectionary shop and bought a vanilla macaron and a beurre salé (salted butter) caramel to try.  Boulevard St-Germain had lots of cafés too, and I found a really cool spot to sit and draw the buildings with their cool balconies.  It started to rain and my page was getting wet, so I sat on the steps of Louis Vuitton where there was an overhang and drew there.  (Probably would have been accused of bringing down the quality of the place if it had been open, but thankfully the hour was late enough that it was closed.)  Ate my caramel sitting there while I drew, and wow, it was probably the best caramel I've ever had.  I realized at some point that it was after 10:30 and I should go back to my hostel, so I (reluctantly) found the Metro and headed back to République.  Ate my macaron once I got back to the room, and DOUBLE WOW.  I'd never had macarons before then, and I couldn't believe how amazing the flavor and texture were.  A little piece of food heaven!

More tomorrow.  Here are some photos from Day 2 . . .

Main hall of Musée d'Orsay

The hallway behind the big clock

The clock . . . so ornate!!!

Looking across the Seine to the Louvre from the big clock on the side of the building

Super cool!

Lunch on the quay

The Pont des Arts (one of the bridges between the Louvre and Notre Dame) is literally covered with locks!  I haven't seen any "romance" bridges in Europe to rival this one.

3 levels of windows in Notre Dame

Rose window and nave windows . . . stained glass is rad!

The southern rose window

Southwest view 

South view

Place St-Germain-des-Prés at sunset . . .

and at night

The Metro at Place de la République, near my hostel

PARIS!!!! (part 1)

Back from the "City of Light" and . . . WOW.

It was SO AMAZING.  I couldn't have asked for a better birthday trip!

I did and saw so much, but here is a very, very brief outline of what I did (and it really is brief, I promise).  Details will be further down if you want to skip them.  :)

Day 1 (May 22)
Early flight to Charles de Gaulle.  Got to my hostel by 12.  Afternoon and evening did Louvre, Tuileries, Champs-Elysées, Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, and general exploring.
Day 2 (May 23)
Musée d'Orsay, Notre Dame, walked around St. Michel and St-Germain-des-Prés.
Day 3 (May 24, my birthday)
Waited in a looooong line before finally seeing the catacombs.  After that was Gare Montparnasse and Jardin du Luxembourg.  Dinner in St. Michel, wandered into a free jazz concert at the St-Germain-des-Prés church, then walked along the Seine and Île de la Cité.
Day 4 (May 25)
Sunday service at Calvary Chapel Paris!  Walked to Gare de Lyon, Gare d'Austerlitz, and Jardin des Plantes.  Also went to Place des Vosges to try visiting Victor Hugo's apartment, but it was closed for the day.  St. Louis-St. Paul church after that, then dinner and more walking in St. Michel and on the Seine.
Day 5 (May 26)
Tour of Les Égouts de Paris (the Paris sewers).  Hôtel des Invalides and Napoleon Bonaparte's tomb in Invalides church.  Gare St. Lazare, Opéra Garnier, Sacre Coeur, Gare du Nord, and Gare de l'Est.  Got back to hostel late!
Day 6 (May 27)
Pére-Lachaise cemetery, went back to Victor Hugo's apartment, Sainte-Chapelle, Sorbonne & Panthéon, dinner at La Procope restaurant!
Day 7 (May 28)
Chocolate torte at Place de la République, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, tour (in French!) of Notre Dame.  Left Gare du Nord at about 6:30 for the airport.  Got to Hamburg about 10 pm.

Okay, there you have it.

What can I say?  I did a ton of things--every day was pretty much 12 hours of seeing stuff and soaking in the atmosphere.  I splurged on food (Paris is the city of culinary delights, after all), wandered all over the city to see the places I'd read about, and just enjoyed being there.  I have dreamed for years of going to Paris, and it was hard to believe that I was really and truly there at last!  Everything went really smoothly, and it was an incredibly nice trip.  Like I said, I couldn't have asked for a better birthday!  I can't even express how amazing it was to actually be there!

Before I go into all the stories of what I did, here's something fun--

Interesting, cool, and weird stuff about Paris

• Tourists come from everywhere, but there are especially a lot of Asian tourists--at least at the main attractions like the Louvre and Notre Dame.
• The police force is awesome!  They are very active and you see them all over: patrolling on bicycles, driving past in cars or on motorcycles, standing guard in busy tourist spots.  They even have their own special motorboats made of black rubber that zoom up and down the Seine.
• In general, Parisians aren't rude to you as a tourist if you are polite to them and don't act obnoxious or do obvious tourist things like expecting food to be prepared the American way.  I tried to at least greet people in French before I used English and to just be polite and go with the flow, and I didn't have a problem at all.  Every Parisian I interacted with was at least civil, and usually very nice.
• People really do ride little motorcycles everywhere and kiss passionately in public, like you see in movies and pictures.
• There are literally thousands upon thousands of bistros, restaurants, cafés, bars, and salons de thé (tearooms) in the city.  They are on every major street and at every place (plaza) by the dozens.  Choosing where to eat can be tough!
• The classic balconied buildings with fancy tall roofs, as well as the city plan of streets branching off from the places like spokes on a wheel, were both part of the remodel by Baron Haussmann under Napoleon III in the later 1800s.
• Train stations and even airports have open pianos in them.  You can sit down and play if you want!
• There is a large black population, definitely more so than you would see in a city like Hamburg.
• Although Paris is much cleaner now than it was in the Middle Ages and French Revolution, it still has lots of rats!  You sometimes see them in rows of bushes along the street and quite often at night on the quays along the Seine.
• Parisians (and the French in general) are much more petite and tend to have darker coloration than Germans.  I didn't notice until I got back to Hamburg--almost everybody I saw on the U-Bahn going home was tall, sturdy, and blond!  This isn't true across the board, of course, but I thought it was funny.  
• Along those same lines, German bakeries are very different from French ones.  German bäckerei = thick brown bread, pretzels, danishes, and franzbrötchen (which are about as light as German pastries go).  French boulangerie = white-bread baguettes, croissants, éclairs, and tartelettes.  Both really delicious, but different, types of baking! 

So now, here's the beginning of the more detailed saga.  I could do highlights, but I think categorizing by day is easier.

Day 1: May 22, 2014

Got up very early, like 4 am, to catch my flight.  Boarded without trouble (except for, of course, the minor annoyance of airport security--it's a hassle every time!), and the flight was nice.  For a discount airline, Germanwings is pretty good: fairly spacious and clean.  The flight was short--just over an hour. I was on the aisle, so I couldn't see very well out the window, but I did get a brief glimpse of the Eiffel Tower and it was so surreal.  I couldn't believe I was actually going to BE IN PARIS.

I got through the airport, found my way onto the train, and took the airport line to the Gare du Nord.  When I got off there, it was chaos.  Multiple levels and stairways and it took a bit to find my way to the Metro line I needed, but once I finally got on the Metro it was only a few stops to the Place de la République, which was the closest stop to my hostel.

Hostel was called Auberge Jules Ferry.  As mentioned last week, I had read some really bad reviews of it and I was nervous it would be sketchy, but I was relieved to find that it was fine.  It is just shabby because it is in an old building (similar to the one I stayed at in Amsterdam, though bigger than that).  Could definitely use a facelift, and the bathrooms were super basic, but, it was pretty clean, the staff was polite, and--praise God--there were NO bedbugs!  There is only one key to each room, but they have a system that works well enough (last one out locks the door and takes the key to the front desk, first one back picks up the key and opens the door), and I just kept my valuables with me and locked my backpack shut.  Also, they had free breakfast.  So it was totally fine.  For what it was, I liked it.  (Compared to some places I've stayed on mission trips, this place was good!)

It was only about noon, so I had lots of time to see things.  Decided to get all the touristy stuff out of the way first.  Bought a croissant and then took the Metro to the city center, and inwardly was leaping and dancing with excitement when I got out onto the street and saw the Seine with Notre Dame sticking up from the Île de la Cité.  Walked along the Seine to the Louvre.  It was raining and dreary, but I didn't care because I WAS IN PARIS!!!!!  I wanted to scream, I was so excited!

Boy Strangling a Goose!  I think it's funny.

The Louvre was huger than I could have ever imagined!  I stood under an eave and ate my croissant and an apple from home, and then went in at the main entrance under the glass pyramid.  It was absolute chaos!  So many people milling around every which way.  I got in for free with my student ID and passport.  (One thing that is awesome about Paris is that if a place is educational--a museum, church, or historical site--they will very often let EU and exchange students in for free, or at least for a discount.  And if it's historical and not a major tourist attraction, any fee they do charge is pretty minimal, especially for students.  Most of the time if I had to pay, I only paid 2 to 4 euros.)

Some of the lesser-known Louvre statues are just as
beautiful as the famous ones!

Here's Mona! 

Spent about four hours in the Louvre.  It was exhausting!  So much to see, so much walking, so many people EVERYWHERE.  I saw the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo.  They were cool, but of course they are thronged by people.  Some of the other sculptures and paintings I saw were new to me, but super beautiful.  And I saw a ton of works I had studied in art history, more than I can list!  I was surprised and amused to see the sculpture called Boy Strangling a Goose from the Hellenistic period (I remembered it from Greek art class) because I had just been telling Marni about it the week before.  And I absolutely loved the rooms with all the Neoclassical and Romantic paintings--David's Coronation of Napoleon (it takes up the whole wall!), Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, and so many others.  It's absolutely surreal to see the actual real paintings in a single huge room, hanging side by side like it's no big deal.

Of course I probably saw only about one-sixth of the museum, if that, and what I saw was mostly at high speed.  The two bummers were that I didn't get to see Dürer or Vermeer because that wing of the museum is closed Thursdays (they rotate days of closure for each section to do maintenance and stuff), and though they have all of David's other famous Napoleon paintings, they don't have Napoleon Crossing the Alps (turns out that one is at the Château de Malmaison, about 7 miles outside Paris).  By the fourth hour I was ready to fall over from exhaustion (museums are tiring not only for your feet, but for your eyes and your brain!), so I headed for the exit.  I did do a quick spin through the exhibit of Napoleon III's apartments on the way out, though, and they were incredible!  (Though "apartments" is a severe understatement--most of the rooms had more square footage than any rented apartment, as we think of it, would have!)

The Louvre is HUGE.

Salon of Napoleon III's "apartment" . . . more like a palace!  #wow

Had some carrot sticks and sat down for a bit once I got outside.  Skies were clearing and there were lots of big puffy clouds.  I decided to continue my "get the touristy stuff done" mission and walked through the Tuileries and the Place de la Concorde, all the way down the Champs-Elysées (nothing more than a ridiculous ritzy shopping street!), and to the Arc de Triomphe.  The Arc was cool.  I spent a while there drawing.  A bunch of soldiers in fatigues and older men in military uniforms started showing up, and it looked like they were going to have some sort of ceremony at the commemorative WWI plaque under the Arc (it was all roped off and decorated with flowers).  But it was taking a while to start and I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, so I ended up leaving before the ceremony happened.

Arc de Triomphe is really cool!  Such neat sculpture!

Two words to describe the Eiffel Tower: TOURIST TRAP.  The tower itself is cool, but the whole atmosphere is so ridiculous.  They have a carousel and a bunch of fair food, the lines to go up in the tower are unbelievably long, and people are taking pictures left and right.  The Champ de Mars was all roped off too--looked like some kind of an ongoing event because there were tents and stuff--so I didn't stay long.  Turns out, I never did get my own photo of the tower, but I didn't really care.  After all, it's not like the world needs another photo of the Eiffel Tower to add to the millions that already exist.

Just for the record, the tower looks better from far away than close up.  And it tends to look prettier in pictures than in real life.

And . . . Notre Dame in the light of sunset!
(Can you blame me for getting choked up?)

Was getting hungry by then and wanted a street crêpe (recommended by Cindy, the international student from Virginia who went to Paris a couple weeks ago . . . I asked for her traveler's tips on what to see and do).  I remembered seeing some between the Champs-Elysées and Tuileries, so I walked all the way back there.  Most of them were closed by then, but I found one stand that was still open.  Jambon et fromage (ham and cheese) crêpe sitting on a bench by the Grand Palais and Petit Palais (super ornate--they were built for the expositions around the turn of the century).  It was late, but of course there was still plenty of daylight.  Ah, spring and summertime in the higher latitudes of the globe!

After that I walked along the Seine all the way back to Notre Dame.  It was farther than I thought it would be!  Met an Italian guy on the way who asked me for directions to Hôtel de Ville.  I had a map, so I helped him figure out which direction it was.  We were both going to the same bridge, so we walked that far together.  He asked if I wanted to get together to do anything tomorrow, but thankfully I had the excuse that my phone wouldn't work because I am on a German data plan.  He was nice enough, but I wasn't going to agree to go anywhere with a guy whom I had known for a grand total of five minutes!

Notre Dame was so beautiful from the outside.  I confess I kind of got teary looking at it . . . another "I can't believe I'm really in Paris!" moment.

Finally went back to the hostel.  Super tired--I had done a ton of walking, a couple of miles at least!  Crashed and slept like a rock.

Two funny moments of the day: I got stuck between the turnstile and the gate in the Metro and my ticket wouldn't unlock me, so another lady had to use hers to get me out!  Also, at the Eiffel Tower two guys asked if I would take a picture of them, and when I crouched down to get the whole tower in the photo, I leaned back against the temporary wire fence that was set up at the perimeter of the grass, and it wasn't stable.  And my backpack was a bit heavy.  So the gate just gave way and I did this sort of slow-mo fall onto my back, and five or six people were like, "Oh my gosh, are you okay?"  Backside was a tad sore, but it was more funny than embarrassing!

It's late so . . . Part 2 coming tomorrow!

(P.S. Please forgive the wacko photo arrangement.  I have a very strong dislike for Blogger's photo feature--not at all user friendly.  It's like trying to paste pictures into a Word doc!)