As you may or may not know, I will not be blogging regularly throughout the summer because I am studying abroad in Europe. I will be traveling for five weeks, and then will spend the last six weeks in England. As I am writing this, I am on the bus on my way to Chamonix. It is going to be a long ride with no WiFi, so I am writing this to pass some of my time. If I have time throughout the rest of the summer, I will make a few more blogs on my experience.
I have been in Paris for four days. I had a wonderful time! This is a place that I have wanted to go since I was younger, so it is something that I can check off of the bucket list at a relatively young age. 10-year-old me never imagined, so I can sense that she is overcome with joy. The first day that I got here, I went to see the Eiffel Tower and had crepes. This was one of my musts, so I am glad that I was able to do it. It was huge and I was in awe at how large it was and at the sight of it overall. People were ziplining from it, which was shocking. Lines were long to go up into it, so I did not do that. People were outside selling things. I rode the metro all of the time that I was in France. Let me just say that it is a complex system and people did get pickpocketed, so I would suggest going in groups on the metro and either getting a PacSafe, fanny pack, or something that you can keep a close eye on.
The next day, I ended up going to the Opera Garnier with my class. Going to the Opera Garnier was just for a tour, so it was slightly boring, but I took some nice pictures. I had a bit of duck (my roommate gave me some), we went to a store, to this place called the Sacred Heart (I believe it was a church and it was Ascension Day in Paris, so there seemed to have been a service of some sort happening when we went inside), and went back to the Eiffel Tower (I was with a completely different group who hadn’t seen it) and watched the light show at night. It was a nice experience, but I was extremely exhausted after day two. Mind you, we were waking up early (like 7 or 8) every single day.
On day three, we went to the Louvre, Pompidou, and a concert. All of this was for class. At the Louvre, I was able to see the Mona Lisa and other paintings that we had discussed in my art history class. It was very exciting and interesting. The group that I hung with on this day (completely different from the other two days) and I spent over 30-minutes looking for the painting Pilgrimage to Cythera by Watteau (during the French Rococo time period) and felt very accomplished once we found it. The Pompidou had mostly modernism, fauvism, cubism, and paintings of that nature. I saw some more pieces from class and also saw a really cool earphone exhibit. Between that time, I ate and then we went to the concert extremely late. We heard a group play three of Bach’s violin concertos and one of Mozart’s divertimentos. The concert was late and a little over an hour and I was tired, so I don’t think I appreciated or enjoyed it as much as I could have. I went back to the room after this because I could tell that my body was still adjusting and needing rest.
On the last day, I hung out with a new group that I felt like I meshed the best with. For class, we went to the Musee d’Orsay and Paris Music Museum. The Musee d’Orsay was cool, we saw a special exhibit highlighting artwork with black people in them, such as Olympia by Edouard Manet during the Realism time period. We have to collect a postcard from each museum for my art history course, which has been pretty fun so far. We have to write information on them. The music museum was pretty cool because we walked around with whisperers on and listened to different instruments. After that, we went to the cemetery and found some cool people there, went to eat, and went to the Sacred Heart (again) to watch the sunset (this turned out to be a very funny, interesting, and cool experience). I had a fun last night.
Now, this morning we are off to other places. We are staying in Chamonix one day and then going to Italy. Paris’ culture was interesting, some say it’s like a New York vibe. Most of the people, particularly those in businesses, spoke English. I was able to use a card almost everywhere (I would recommend having some euros on hand). Most of the time people didn’t say excuse me or anything. There were all kinds of people. I never really got a chance to meet anyone French or have extensive conversations, but overall it was enjoyable. There were things that were very different, and I learned that sortie means exit. I will keep you all posted. Have a great one! If you want to know about anything in particular, do not hesitate to ask. Au Revoir.
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