Travels - Paris

A link to pictures from Paris is now available on the updated Travels page. It wasn't the trip I was hoping for, unfortunately, but we did get to see lots of cool stuff at a relaxed pace and interacted with lots of really nice people. Who ever said the French were mean? (more on that later...)

Sunday: Musee Marmottan - a small Monet/Impressionist museum, most of whose collection was donated by Monet's son, Michel. Well displayed, nice selection and very manageable (we got through the whole thing in about an hour and a half, I think)

Monday: Sacre Coeur - sightseeing disappointment of the week: the dome was closed. I had been most looking forward to taking Ethan up in the Dome and the automatic ticket machine was broken with no one around to help, so we didn't get to go up. It was still beautiful down below though. Saw Cold Mountain in the evening - Great movie!!

Tuesday: Versailles - Awesome... many of the ceilings and pieces of artwork have been restored in the past five years and it was a beautiful sunny day. We visited the main palace as well as the smaller Trianon palaces where royalty went "to get away". I hadn't seen the smaller palaces or the grounds before so that was great! Discovered a great Indian restaurant in the Latin Quarter for dinner.

Wednesday: Musee D'Orsay in the morning - amazing as usual - still my favorite museum for the top floor alone. Renoir, Rembrandt, Monet, Cezanne, Seurat and so many others I hadn't heard of but loved just as much - what more could you ask for! Louvre in the afternoon - hit the Mona Lisa since Ethan hadn't seen it, saw the Medieval ruins and lots of Renaissance art as well as The Code of Hammurabi which I had missed before. Went back to the Indian restaurant!

Thursday: Notre Dame, Saint-Chappelle, Conciergerie - rainy and cold all day, but the sites were great to see, nonetheless. Also went to the Centre Pompidou an hour before closing where they had a giant map of the world on the floor (Texas was taller than my foot) that was a lot of fun to check out. The gift shop was almost as amusing too with lots of thousand euro chairs that would easily be broken and patches to help you stop caring about things like love and TV. Now that's art...

Friday: Souvenir Shopping and Dinner at Le Marais (vegetarian restaurant - tofu lasagna - my first tofu in France!).

Saturday: Ice Cream at Le Berthillon, souvenir shopping at Galeries Lafayette and the Champs-Elysees, the best fondue in the world at Haagen-Dazs, went to the top of the Eiffel Tower and back to the Indian place for a late dinner.

Sunday: Well, we were supposed to leave Paris on Sunday, but Ethan brought the wrong passport (a temporary that expired in '96) and they wouldn't let him leave so we spent...

Monday and Tuesday: running between a hotel near the airport and the American Embassy and looking in vain for a currency exchange that would take colones I still have from a family trip to Costa Rica in December...

Finally got back to Aix late Tuesday night and am now busy studying for midterms and writing a History paper...