les journées du patrimoine

last weekend were les journées du patrimoine (rough translation: heritage days) during which many historical and government buildings, which are not usually open, are open to the public.  we tried to go to the palais de l'élysée - the french version of the white house - but by the time we got there the line was waaay too long.  instead we walked to the place de la concorde which features a large obelisk which our seine boat cruise guide told us was a gift from egypt to france but the story i'd heard goes something like: napoleon just wanted one so he took it...hmmm...

the place de la concorde is also where marie antoinette was guillotined as well as louis xvi and robespierre.

after that we walked to the lourve and from there to les jardins de luxembourg where the palais de luxembourg is located.

the palais de luxembourg was built by marie de medici (yes of the florence medicis, she married a french king, henri iv, who died and then she basically dominated/mismanaged france until her son louis xiii, became old enough to rule, all the while launching a massive propaganda campaign in the form of a series of rubens paintings, see below)

anyway, it is now the house of the french senate and has a magnificent library over which i freaked out due to its resemblance to the library in the disney version of beauty and the beast, aka the room of my dreams.

also home to a throne of napoleon.  c'est très petit, n'est-ce pas?

boat cruise on the seine

last friday nyu organized a trip boat cruise on the seine which was a lovely way to see the city and learn about some of its architecture.

my favorite building by far is notre dame which i haven't even been inside yet! i've taken lots of pictures of it but it's different to get a good one. the last two were taken when i went on a paris du moyen âge tour which which was très interesant.  it turns out notre dame was built on the ruins of a roman temple and in the square in front of notre dame you can see (marked off in cobblestones) where some of the old streets and shops of the middle ages used to be. 

le cimetière père lachaise

for my preliminary french class (we had a two-week intensive french class before our real classes started) i had to go to père lachaise and then do a short presentation about my experience.  i went by myself on a monday morning so there weren't very many people there. at first i thought it was odd and a bit irreverent that père lachaise is such a big tourist spot since it is a cemetery after all but once i got there i understood the draw:  not only is it the resting place of famous painters, composers, musicians and literary and political figures but it is also a very beautiful and serene place to explore by yourself.  before i left i had made a list of all the famous people who were buried there who i wanted to see but when i got there and saw how huge the cemetery was, i realized that it would take forever to find them all so i ended up just wandering around.  what struck me was the mix of styles of tombs: some were old as the 18th century, others were more recent, some were elaborately ornamented while others were quite simple.  i also loved the scope of the place.  you could certainly get lost in the forest of stone.

i did end up going to the crematorium to see isadora duncan's ashes.  i also happened upon the tombs of eugene delacroix and georges bizet. consequently i can't stop listening to carmen and bolero on my walks to school in the morning :)

le louvre

so i'm way behind on this but a week ago sunday i went to the louvre for the first time with my amie alicia. i had always heard that you could spend weeks and weeks in the louvre because it is so big but when i first stepped into the plaza with the pyramids i was still overwhelmed by the immensity: wowowowowowowow!!! i just stood there wide-eyed unable to move for about a minute. then i proceeded to try to photograph everything in sight which simply resulted in a bunch of frantic, crooked photos with lost tourists in them.  by the time we got inside i had stopped freaking out enough to realize that the louvre is quite simply the most beautiful museum ever.  literally a palace of art (former home of french kings until louis xiv [see man on horse below] decided it was insufficient and built versailles...ok louis xiv!).  we only had about an hour and a  half before the museum closed so we decided to start with greek and roman art (and proceed chronologically in subsequent visits).  since the museum is free to students i'll probably be going on a weekly basis :)

what alicia and i kept saying was that studying a reproduction of a piece of art, especially a sculpture is so different from seeing it in real life but it makes it all the more exciting when you do see it in person because you finally understand what your professors were saying all along!

les jardins de monet

on saturday i went to giverny, a small town about an hour northwest of paris, where monet used to live.  it was a perfect day. the town is absolutely idyllic.  monet's house is filled with pastel colored rooms with lots of japanese art and his gardens are just sublime. probably the most beautiful and peaceful place i've ever been.  unfortunately photography wasn't allowed inside the house but i took about a million pictures of the gardens:

i think everyone would be an artist if they could live in a place like this :)

bonjour paris!

first impressions:

TREES! when i sleepily peered out the plane window, the first thing i saw were cypress trees just like a van gogh painting. and the sidewalks here are lined with trees! like legitimate 20-30 ft ones not the wimpy ones on side streets in new york.

this may seem obvious, but people here speak FRENCH! all the time! they bark it into their cell phones. children playing scream it to each other. the streets signs are in french and there are whole bookstores with books in french! it will probably be a while before i can pass people speaking in the street without a delighted grin. 

here's the thing of it: Paris in real life is exactly how it looks in the movies.  last night we walked along the seine and there were groups of picnickers and musicians playing and of course notre dame. walking through the streets of paris, past the cafés and the jardin du luxembourg, is exactly how i imagined it to be, which actually makes it more dreamlike. i still can't believe i'm finally here!

(view from the window of our hostel. you can see sacre coeur way in the background)