J-0!

COUCOU!

I'm just popping in for a moment before going to bed. J-0 is "Jours: 0" in the countdown until vacation. That is to say, I AM ON VACATION! Again.

I'm going to Bordeaux and Toulouse-- leaving tomorrow at 10:20 from Saint Raphael for my connecting trains (stop in Marseilles) to Bordeaux, and returning late the 17th from Toulouse. I'm super-excited!

I packed in one bag (curious about how I managed that?) with room to spare. I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing, but I'm not bringing my computer-- it's heavy and in this way, I'm cutting myself off from wasting my exploration time on the computer, likely speaking in English. I'm fully immersing myself for two weeks; wish me luck!

Hope you all are having a week, because mine has turned out to be pretty great!
♥,
-Aly

Day Five: M’O

27 Dec. 2009

Bonjour!

This was after we got out of the Musée; as always, it was windy.

Sorry for the delay in posting! I think I’ve figured out a more efficient way to do this and add pictures (Windows Live Writer)! (Granted, it was my mom’s suggestion via Skype. And it does work, because my last post was written on Live Writer. It was much easier than putting in pictures and dragging them up and down the post on Blogger. IT EVEN LETS ME ADD ACCENTS! xD

[Sorry, I’m a bit overly enthusiastic about it. It’s making my life easier, so hopefully posts won’t take me hours to write anymore…]

Medusa!

Anyway, dad and I finally made it INSIDE Musée D’Orsay (vraiment this time!) [Vraiment = truly but I think they use it for “really”, too.] The line was already long, despite the fact that when we arrived it was only 10:30 (it opens at 9:30). To waste time (and since we hadn’t eaten yet), we had “brunch”" yet again. [More crepes and FINALLY some hot chocolate with WHIPPED CREAM. Except it’s more expensive that way, and it’s called something different. Chocolat vinneois, I think; I forgot to write down what it was.)

By the time we were finished with brunch, the lines had passed the boundaries and people were squished together as the line wrapped around lampposts and past people selling more hot chestnuts. (They’re everywhere! As are the people selling miniature Eiffel Towers.) We waited in line for thirty minutes (maybe more), but at last, we made it INSIDE the Musée!

We wandered through all the open exhibits—many are closed or moved because they’re renovating. We saw the Impressionists, Post-impressionists, and a few other styles that I couldn’t name but Dad probably could. HA, NEVERMIND. He just handed me the map/guide.

*Ahem* (I’m about to quote the map.)

“From November 2009 to Marche 2011, the museum will be carrying out major renovation work on its museographic areas, leading to the closure of level 5.
During this period, your visit will begin on level 0, where you will view the large realist paintings of Courbet and the first works of Manet, Monet, and Cézanne together with impressionists and postimpressionists, sculpture collections (Carpeaux, Daumier…), as well as paintings from the 180s and 60s (Ingres, Delacroix, Degas…).
This continues on to level 2 with the masterpieces of French and Belgian Art Nouveau, foreign schools of painting, symbolism (Homer, Burne-Jones…), and naturalism (Gervex, Lhermitte…).
Lastly, there are two temporary exhibitions showing: ‘James Ensor’ and ‘Art Nouveau Revival’. To keep informed of what’s happening in the museum during the renovation work, go to www.musee-orsay.fr.”

(*whew*. Good thing that was in English.)

I’m glad we gave ourselves time to look through everything! We were there from 11:30ish to 2:45. I discovered an artist I had never heard of but I liked—Armand Guillaumin.

Those are two of Guillaumin’s pieces behind me. Pretty, right?!

The Van Gogh, Monet, and Degas exhibits seemed to be the most popular (you should recognize those names. Well, maybe not Degas, but the first two… If you don’t recognize the first two, then we have a bit of a problem!). The temporary exhibit about James Ensor was quite popular—he was a Belgian painter, and he was really quite egotistical! He painted 112 self-portraits, if that gives you any idea… in one of them, he was Jesus! xD (oh, artists…)

The painting behind me is Van Gogh’s Portrait de l’artiste.

We don’t remember what this painting is called (Le Bal?), or the artist that painted it. But it was REALLY detailed.

Dad actually knows some of the famous paintings that I didn’t recognize, but he took pictures of me in front of them anyway.

Notice how awkward I look.

We thought this was cool. Don’t remember the artist or title, of course.

One of the statues. Some of the statues were really funny… naked boys frolicking. *is slightly immature* xD

I thought this statue was cool (artist: Degas); the skirt she’s wearing and the ribbon on her ponytail are real fabric.

I had to take a break after seeing everything on the ground floor; I was inspired and exhausted, so I sat down in the statue gallery to relax. I really liked the Impressionist/postimpressionism; I like the softness of the paintings. Some of the more “fantastic” pieces were particularly interesting (like the Medusa painting near the beginning of this post; the artist that painted that had these great colorful pieces!) I wrote some and people-watched, which I feel is a fine way to spend time in an art gallery.

(I also attempted to take a picture of the really awesome clock.)

I failed, but Dad succeeded. So that’s the awesome clock! :D

I think we both started getting really exhausted towards the end; we breezed through the 2nd level. We did stop to take a good look at a couple things.

Like this; it made us laugh. Actually, I still find it rather funny.

I’ll let you interpret this one for yourself. There are twelve naked men in this picture. (This was right next to the painting pictured above. )

The Art Nouveau Revival and Naturalism exhibits weren’t that exciting, but I did learn that Art Nouveau Revival has some elements of eroticism… which was not so subtle in some pieces like a table that hade a not-very-clothed mannequin as the base. [Note for the confused: Art Nouveau Revival is the style associated with the 1960s—the often psychedelic patterns and colors, I guess. The cover of the Beatles’ album Revolver is an example of the style.](You just learned something, didn’t you?)

This was in the Naturalism exhibition. That is, indeed, a toilet. Shaped like a fly. Gotta love art… xD

Having seen everything we wanted to see and glanced through the exhibits we weren’t so interested in, we finally left Musée d’Orsay and headed over to Père Lachaise Cemetary (of course getting there was far too complicated). Late lunch was from a Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant because we like Vietnamese food and Dad is on a perpetual search for the PERFECT spring rolls. (No, really; we had these great spring rolls at a Vietnamese restaurant in San Jose with family friends back when I was a sixth grader and he still hasn’t found spring rolls that are just right.) [And it was delicious, but the porc (pork) spring rolls > crevette (shrimp) spring rolls> poulet (chicken) spring rolls.]

The Père Lachaise Cemetary is the most-visted cemetary in Paris; Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Pissarro, Oscar Wilde, and lots of other famous people are buried there. The tombs are really intricate and pretty; it’s hilly there, so you see all these moss-covered tombs, some with flowers, but many looking forgotten, with cobblestone lanes surrounded by bare trees… it’s really beautiful.

We had just entered; I’m not very good at looking solemn.

This captures the atmosphere of it quite well. Isn’t it beautiful, though?

Dad in front of Jim Morrison’s grave, looking properly sad.

Oscar Wilde’s tomb. It’s covered in kisses. Lipstick apparently stains stone…

Chopin’s tomb is also quite popular to see.

Edith Piaf’s tomb; I’m not very good at looking sad so I’ll not put that picture of me trying-and-failing to look sad. So yeah. Happy at a tomb…

QUICK! Distraction!

We think this is Pissarro’s tomb; it’s so very gaudy, and Pissarro’s tomb was supposed to be around here but we forgot whose tomb we were looking for. xD

Okay, so that’s enough about the cemetery. That’s all we did then; dinner was McDonalds (fail, I know) because that was the ONLY THING open on our street that looked edible (surprisingly) and was cheap. On the bright side, we didn’t get food poisoning! :)

That is all. Hope you had an equally marvelous day!

-Aly

P.S. Today’s Day Six. Again with the late posting. But we haven’t done much today, since we’re currently on the train to Saint Raphaël.

(ACTUALLY, since I couldn’t get on the internet to post this last night, today is DAY SEVEN. We’re currently in Fréjus and we met my host family last night :D)

Day Four: English with French Subtitles

26 Dec. 2009

Hey!

…Right, so this is the post I should have written a day ago! :)

[I’ll write it as though today was still the 26th! Don’t get confused about the verb tenses, then. I HAVE WARNED YOU.]

As I mentioned previously, we were planning on going to the flea markets, Musée D’Orsay, and the Eiffel Tower today. {See? That’s where you act like I posted this on the 26th. ONWARDS.} You should have guessed by now, but Dad and I are not very good at planning, so we did not actually accomplish all of that.

However, we did make it to the flea markets! We went to “Les Puces de Paris: Saint Ouen” (“The Fleas of Paris: Saint Ouen”), which is supposedly the largest flea market in Paris. It includes a huge antiques and furniture marché (I keep typing marché instead of market, so I give up. Marché, marché, marché) and countless (really. 1, 2, 3…57…) clothing booths.

In this case, I’m grouping anything that isn’t furniture and/or antiques in with “clothing”, so interpret that loosely. There were booths with chaussures (shoes) and other accessories like wallets, purses, small trinkets, prints, small sculptures, post cards, typical tourist-y junk, and lots of booths with leather jackets.

Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about clothing and such to say if anything was authentic, or if it was stolen (not even kidding). The fakes (of which there were many) were fairly well-done—for example, we saw no less than four stalls selling “Converse” shoes in all sorts of designs and colors, and the tread and boxes and everything looked pretty real to me (and I have a pair).

They had boots for as little as 10€ (YAY EURO SYMBOL! Finally found the Alt control. Geez…); some were cute but nothing was particularly unique, so I didn’t buy anything (I may regret that later, I kinda lovelovelove boots and I’ve been wearing mine nearly every day). [Whoa, that was very ADD.] Anyway, I didn’t buy much.

{Notice the careful wording. “not much” = ONE THING. JUST. ONE.}

The furniture/antiques market was ASTOUNDING, though! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many antiques in such great condition! Some were insanely old, too (then again, Europe in general is old). Everything we saw was veryyyy expensive, but much of it was high-quality, if you ever happen to want a quite-expensive-in-Euros antique something. xD

[Sorry I don’t have any pictures of ANY of that! We really didn’t take any!]

After we got bored of that, we began our search for a cell phone for me. Fnac.com (except they just call it "Fnac”, and that’s pronounced “F-nack”. As in the letter F, nack.)We finally found one (a cell phone, that is) for as-cheap-as-possible. It’s really simple; a tiny Samsung flip phone. We tracked down Mobiho (that’s the name of a cell phone company, just so you know.) SIM cards (that wasn’t easy, I tell you!) so I can call the US for 0,19€/min, but incoming calls are FREE so YOU COULD CALL ME.

(I have a calling card to call my family, but we don’t think it’ll work. SADNESS!)

Unfortunately, the SIM card is only 8€ of calls for now, and each SIM card has its own number attached, so my number will change every time I have to get a new SIM card. I know, confusing and problematic.

Fnac is what you would get if you combined Barnes and Noble and Best Buy and then translated it into French. So, not only did we find my cell phone there, but I bought Harry Potter et le prisonnier d’Azkaban to read. It’ll take me months, but it’s my favorite of the Harry Potter series so I’m looking forward to reading it in my favorite language. And we got an alarm clock—the buttons are all in English, which makes little sense. Not that I’m complaining!

After we dropped off all of our “loot”, we headed over to the Musée d’Orsay, but decided not to go in since we didn’t have enough time to fully appreciate the art. BUT WE ACTUALLY MADE IT THERE THIS TIME, so we did better! Rawr!

At last, we walked/ran/rode a bus for two blocks over to the Eiffel Tower. It’s basically required that you take far too many pictures there, but here’s some of the far-too-many pictures that WE took! (and when I say “we”, I mean “Dad” because I’m too lazy to take my pictures off my camera right now.)

See? I DO HAVE MY OWN CAMERA!

I like this picture because it looks purple. xD

Slightly idiotic expressions are my trademark.

Dunno why there’s dustiness in this one.

You can tell by my expression that this is take 4. Also, it was very cold. xD

The lights were flashing on the tower so you can actually see us well!

As expected, the lines at La Tour Eiffel were long and by the time we got to the first floor (we walked because it was cheaper and we thought it would be more interesting), it was already dark. Then again, it gets dark early here.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the views! (We didn’t get any higher than the 2nd level because we figured that once you get that high, there’s really not much else to see but a further-away view of the same things.)

Montmartre.

Sacre Coeur. Blurry; I think my picture was less blurry but this camera has a better zoom.

The lights turned on while we were on top of the 2nd floor :)

See? Same, just higher.

I confess, I don’t know what this is, but I like the blur. I think it looks cool. xD

La Seine

Once we returned to the ground, it was dinnertime, so we took the bus over to Odeon, where we found a tiny Italian place, and had escargots. That shouldn’t need translation: SNAILS! Yum. They weren’t as good as last time, but still good :D

After we were happily full, we went to see Pas si simple because the lines at the theaters playing Avatar were too long. It was still in English, but it had French subtitles, which definitely weren’t exact. (The title itself is an example of this—pas si simple is literally “not that simple” in French, but the title of the movie was actually It’s complicated.) The French seemed to enjoy the French references… “it’s so very… FRENCH!” xD

{It’s funny; but it had a lot of filler but the cast was well-cast which probably helped it a lot.}

So, that was day four!

Hopefully that made up for my lack-of-post due to Skyping my twin! :)

-Aly

Day Two: Marrons Chauds!

Le Grand Palais

Hello!

So, "Day Two"; day one being yesterday, since the day was spent on a plane/arriving/sleeping/eating, most of which actually happened in FRANCE! (Therefore it counts.)

Today was pretty eventful, if you ignore the fact that Dad and I completely disregarded the alarm clock we set on my running watch. It's just our luck that the only clocks we have in our room are my computer and our watches. We don't have an alarm clock in here, and we both neglected to consider that his phone WOULDN'T work here, so we can't use it as an alarm clock. We definitely meant to wake up at 6:30, but ended up sleeping until 10:something, and didn't go anywhere until it was nearly noon. Again, whoops.

Waiting for the train. (My hair is in the beret cuz it was still wet.)

We managed to make our way over to Châtelet-Les Halles via Metro, which is the train station underneath the mall. The mall ("centre commercial") is called Forum des Halles, which is 4 (maybe? I didn't count...) stories of shopping. I swear the idea is to trap you in there and make you shop for the rest of eternity. Luckily, WE ESCAPED (after going in circles)!

It's really cool, though; there's escalators all over, and a maze of hallways leading to all different stores. H&M, Pimkie, Gap (go to France to buy American clothes? Yes. Of course! It was REALLY BORING in there though, and the sizes were even more confusing than everywhere else. Fail.), and other stores. What's really cool about Les Halles is that there is this courtyard-like area, not that we actually went out there since it was wet. xD

I'm not sure what that building is behind me, but it looked cool.

See?So very modern!

We ended up at H&M, mostly because I recognized the name of store, and although it is in the United States, there aren't any near home. They had some pretty strange things in there, I have to say. There were far too many pairs of sparkly leggings (some multicolored) that were no more than leggings COVERED in sequins.

They had some truly bizarre jeans too; patchwork jeans, jeans with no less than 50 zippers or studs, jeans that were actually leggings that looked like jeans (whaaaat?), shiny leather (hello, 1980s) pants, and in the men's section, they had jeans that had paint all over them! (My comment: I bet *insert name of relative that paints* has a pair of those! FOR CHEAP!) They had "man-pris" (Capris! For men! Apparently quite popular... I still can't convince any Americans of that, though), which are still very amusing.

Did you know that Levis are like... DESIGNER jeans?! I was unaware of that fact. You could buy some and say they're the hottest style in Europe now! You could even call them your "Parisian pants"! :O

So, after that, Dad and I went to lunch at this little cafe; Café Etienne. The waitress didn't understand much English, but with my feeble attempts at speaking French (this is what happens after five-ish years of français in America; you still can't speak it fluently!) and dad's ridiculous gestures, we managed to get by. Lunch ended up being an hour or more; the waitress kept wandering off, but the food was good (especially the fries. *insert pun about the best french fries being French*)!

I'm not sure if this is standard, but les toilettes were co-ed. Each one was this tiny toilet with it's own door and motion-sensor light so you had to move or else you'd be stuck in the dark. Awkward French bathrooms are funny.

This is the bathroom in our hotel room. Typically small.

By then, it was raining harder, so we braved the wind to locate a place to exchange our dollars for euros and finding a BNP Paribas, the bank I'm allowed to withdraw from here. The teller told us directions to a place to exchange our money, but we of course got lost and ended up going to the Banque de France; the gendarmes let us in, and then we discovered that it was basically the Federal Reserve of France. For future reference, the people in there are quite nice and didn't yell at us for being stupid Americans who don't know where to exchange money.

The courtyard behind the entrance to the Louvre.

Quite by accident, we wandered into this little hallway of the Louvre (not the musée, but the building said "Louvre" on it so...*shrug*) that had a currency exchange. Now I'm not carrying around $5 US anymore, yay! Unfortunately, that was about 3,31 (, = . as far as money; odd) euros (when I figure out the alt-command for that symbol, I'll use it. Until then... EUROS), and as in any city, 3,31 can't get you ANYTHING. [Actually, you can get postcards for cheap! YAY! Or give money to the street performers! Like the accordion guy!]

We wandered a bit more until we were in front of the Louvre, and took pictures. (I'll include some, including one of me making a completely ridiculous face!) Dad decided that I shouldn't be the only one with pictures taken of me, so I have a few of him, too.

~~PAUSE FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERLUDE. (Pretend there is music here to make the time pass more quickly. In fact, here (it's a French Christmas carol-- "Un flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle")!~~

*weird face* (I think I was saying "AHH! My hair! Don't take a picture of that!")

Dad: "There's never any pictures of me..."

Dad wanted a picture with the policemen-dudes, but we were afraid to ask since they had guns.

The entrance to the Louvre from the side (and behind).

After we decided NOT to go to the Louvre since it only had an hour more while it was open (it definitely takes longer than an hour to tour it), we wandered through le jardin du carrousel et le jardin des tuileries, and stumbled across a "Sandemans" tour, which is a free walking tour in English! Each tour lasts about 3 hours, and takes you to well-known monuments. The guide is usually a student living in that particular city, and they love the city.

They know lots of little tidbits about the city and monuments; though the tours don't actually get you into monuments and such, they are a good way to get to know your way around and figure out places to go. Sandemans tours (such as "New Paris") are in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Dublin, Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Prague, Jerusalem, Madrid, and Paris. I highly recommend them if you go to any of those cities (we've taken the ones in Munich, Berlin, and Paris). :)

With the tour, we wandered through Place de la Concorde, where the obelisk stands where people were guillotined during the French Revolution, through some of the Christmas market along the Champs-Élysées and to le petit palais and le grande palais. We learned some interesting things about World War II and one Nazi general who basically saved the city (Hitler wanted him to destroy Paris, rather than let it fall to the Allied forces). Apparently, the French don't like to acknowledge that this general (or the Allies) were the main reason that they regained Paris. (SHH! Don't tell them I told you!)

Christmas market & our tour group.

Behind me: Place de la Concorde and the HUGE ferris wheel.Can we *not* be hit by cars? Please, dad?

After the tour ended, Dad and I wandered back through the Christmas market. We bought marrons chauds, which are roasted chestnuts (I should have guessed what the name was, actually: "marron" is the french word for 'chestnut' and is often used as 'brown', and "chaud" means hot... so, hot chestnuts); you can't get those in the US because chestnut trees are basically endangered, which is sad because they are YUMMY! A bit sweet, but soft; the flavor is different than that of any other roasted nuts. (-_- if you're laughing at that)

After that, we had some chocolat chaud, which was definitely a treat-- it was a lot more substantial and rich than the kind we make at home with dry mix. I have no idea what they did to it, but I was quite pleased! It didn't even have MARSHMALLOWS or WHIPPED CREAM! *gasp*

You can't see 'em, but I'm holding a small cone-thing of chestnuts. (I dropped some later, whoops.)

(Oh, right! I forgot about the fresh smoked salmon! I think it was called saumon norvège, and it came with crème fraîche et salade [which is really just a large piece of lettuce?] on a baguette. I still don't know what crème fraîche is, but it's quite good.)

By then, it was raining pretty hard, so of course we chose to walk to across the river to a Metro station. And we got lost. And ran in circles. And rode two different buses, and three different trains, as well as walked through the same block far too often. We agreed that being lost in Paris is a lot more fun than being lost anywhere else; for one, despite the rain and generally miserable weather, Paris is still "The City of Light."

Pont something-or-other. La Tour Eiffel in the background.

Finalement, we found our way back to the hotel. I guess that's the end of Day Two, since I consider Messe de Minuit part of Day Three (even though we got there at 9:something). So, you'll hear about that later today after we have MORE adventures!

Montmartre et Musée d'Orsay later today! (with far too many pictures, of course!)

Speaking of pictures... here's a few more! YAY! :DBehind me is the National Assembly. (This is where we began to get lost)We don't know what this building was, but it was so bright that we figured it must be something special.

Place de la Concorde and the Ferris Wheel from the other side of the Seine.

Un bateau mouche (I don't know what they are 'en anglais').

Merry Christmas from Paris!
-Aly

P.S. If you haven't figured it out yet, you can CLICK on each picture to see the full-sized version! :)