The last time I saw Paris

Sunday, July 1, was our last day in Paris. Additionally, on the first Sunday of every month all of the museums in Paris are free! K and I thus decided to museum our way through our last day. We started at the Musee d'Orsay, the impressionist museum, after getting a bit lost on the way. It was really something, located in an old train station. We saw such beautiful art, by fantastic masters. We spent five hours there, even having lunch there so we could continue our way through the museum. Wonderful.

C and D met up with us at the d'Orsay--we found them waiting in line when we left, and we convinced them to head to the Rodin Museum instead. There we saw the Thinker and other beautiful works by Rodin. However, it was hot, and we'd been walking all day, so we only saw the sculptures in the garden and didn't bother to go inside the museum itself.

Finally, that evening we had a group dinner at a creperie in Saint-Germain. It was delicious, and with fantastic decor, but terrible service. They didn't get anything right and were terribly slow. It was also hot like fire in that restaurant, since we had too many people in our booth. C'est la vie.

After dinner we took a cruise of the Seine as a farewell to the city. It was beautiful at night: the Louvre, the bridges, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame...Paris.

A day off, then to see Napoleon

On the 23rd, Saturday, I took the day to stay in and work, which was well worth it. In the evening, I went out to see my cousin. She was in Paris with a group from her high school, and it seems like she loved every second of Paris. I met the group at Pont Neuf, where their boat cruise of the Seine dropped them off, and we walked to Saint-Michel, which is where the students (and the tourists) tend to go to hang out and enjoy nightlife. We went to a bar. The kind of bar which is almost a club, with a bit of a dancefloor and a DJ and a bouncer and the whole bit. After their tour guide did some finangling to get a group of 10 high schoolers past the bouncer, we were in. Maybe I'm getting old, but I was worried about the girls in the group, considering that not all of them had great French and there was a group of pompiers (firefighters) on the dance floor. With an eye on all of them, though, Dani and I had a great time dancing. It was tons of fun to see her, and I certainly love to dance as much as possible.

On Sunday, after sleeping in, Chris, David, Kate and I headed to Invalides, which was once a military hospital (and, we think, it still is). It now houses three military museums and includes the church where Napoleon is buried. His body is inside 6 concentric coffins, each made of a different (expensive) material. The outermost is wood. Additionally, the sarcophagus (I suppose that's what it is) is set in the cellar, but the first floor is cut out, so that an observer still must bow to Napoleon to see the grave. Apparently, Hitler thought this was a great idea when he saw it.

We also visited the World War museums, which were huge and extremely comprehensive, and the museum with miniature representations of the fortified cities of France. We skipped the museum of armor. Being in the WW museum made me wish I knew more military history, as I always do when I take classes as well. Scott would have enjoyed it more than me, because he would have appreciated it more. Note to self...more military history.

After a hot tea post-Invalides, we headed home. We took naps, then met up again (with Edgar this time) to head for dinner. We did a terrible job of locating a restaurant, since so many things are closed in Paris on Sunday, and ended up at a terrible little Italian place near our foyer. The food was provided by Sodexho. Always the optimist, Chris referred to it as the best restaurant in Paris, and it really didn't taste as horrible as I expected. However, both David and Chris got sick the next day. Go figure.

The Phantom's Opera House

June 4 and 5

On Monday, I found that it is an unfortunate thing to be in Paris without an umbrella. Despite mentally reminding myself 3 or 4 times before leaving, I did not bring one with me, so of course I had to buy a new one. It was orientation day, including a walking tour of the Left Bank, and of course, as is the norm in June, it was raining.

However, once I purchased la nouvelle parapluie, it ceased raining. Luckily, I've needed it since then, so it wasn't a waste.

The tour was lovely, walking past Notre Dame and Ste.-Chapelle, with highlighted bars to visit at some point in the next month. It was kind of quick and dirty, but it made us (or at least me) excited to be in Paris. However, after all of that, and some grocery shopping for necessary things I had forgotten to pack, I retired to the foyer to read the readings for the next day's class. I'm here, at least in part, to co-teach one of the courses the study abroad students are taking, so if anyone in the room should be prepared for class, it's me.

On Tuesday, though, I did go out in the evening. Class was really nice. (I have class, Human Rights in Europe, from 10-12 M-Th.) The students are all really smart and participate without goading in class. It's a really nice atmosphere in which to learn and teach, and I hope they get as much out of it as I do. We ate lunch as a group (as we do on all class days) and then they have other classes while I either do organizational work for the program, sight-see a little, or (most often) return home to work.

That night, though, one of the students and I headed to the Opera. The national opera offers student rush tickets of 25 euros (down from 150) the last 15 minutes before the show, and I was determined to go at least once, if not more. We saw a very modern opera entitled Da gelo a gelo, which is an interpretation of several Japanese love poems. Though the music did not translate the story well, which I think operas should do at least to some extent, the music was interesting and the staging was gorgeous. And the opera was in L'Opera Garnier, which is the famous opera house of Paris. It was built under Napoleon and was made famous by the Phantom of the Opera, who has his own box you can visit on the guided tour during the day. I would have watched boy scouts rub sticks together in that venue...the ceiling was painted by Chagall.

Glass Orchestras and Inky Tentacles

Off to Venice, or Venezia. I had been there before, when I studied abroad in Geneva, so I didn't take many repeated photos. However, the sights are no less breath-taking the second time around. I imagine I could return to Venice a thousand times and never get tired of the beauty, the smallness, the romance, the tourists, the shopping, the pigeons, the Italians, or anything. I care not that it's almost overrun with tourists. It's incredible, with nothing to which I might compare it. Venice is among the most incredible things I've seen in my short lifetime, and though other things might compete with it, nothing will compare to it.

Our courier, Sebastian, who was our companion on the entire tour, coordinating with venues, hotels, restaurants, tour guides, everything, was a Venice resident, so he took us on a little walking tour on the way to meet our guides, informing us of good places for gelato and groceries. We then went on a cool walking tour with a terrible, racist guide. He kept cracking snide remarks about Japanese tourists until one of our (half-Japanese) choir members spoke up. We saw the Rialto bridge, packed with shops, the beautiful Ca d'Oro, and a fish market. We also saw a beautiful spiral staircase, which my guidebook (though not our terrible guide) told me is rumored to have been designed by Leonardo da Vinci. Since the choir sang a wild piece about Leonardo, we were particularly interested in those things related to him. We also saw the opera house, and progressed our way to the Piazza San Marco, made famous in so many movies and diamond commercials. We went into the Basilica for about 4 minutes, but it was fascinating. Most fascinating, I thought, was the fact that the floor is sinking in various places, making the marble floor very uneven as you make your way through the cathedral.

After breaking off from the group, a few of us walked up the grand canal, shopped a little, and slowly made our way back toward the hotel, getting lost in corners a few times. We stopped for dinner, and true to my conviction to eating local food, I had cuttlefish in the Venetian style. When reading that the specialty in Venice is seafood, I should have paid attention to the section of the guidebook explaining that the Venetian style is boiled in squid ink. I only ate about a third. It was too, um, rich, for me.

The next morning, Emily, Dipika and I headed to the islands. I was determined to buy gifts for everyone while in Venice. What makes a better gift than beautiful, hand-blown glass from Venice? So we walked once again to the Piazza San Marco and jumped on the Vaporetto (water-bus) around the main island. Our first stop was the cemetery island where the Venetians are buried. There is buried one of Darick's favorite composers, Igor Stravinsky, so I took a photo for him. Also of note were the cypress trees all over the cemetery. These trees are all over Italy, but they are particularly notable in cemeteries, since they reach toward heaven.

Finally, we ended up at Murano, where artisans blow glass that is reknowned around the world. The trade is passed through families rather than through schools, and one must be an apprentice for 20 years before having one's own shop. We were able to watch a demonstration, and it was fantastic. We then shopped, all day. It was fantastic. You'd never believe the kinds of things they can make of blown glass. I bought, of course, Christmas ornaments for myself, and gifts for others. At one point, I saw an entire tiny orchestra, no player larger than an inch and a half, made of delicate glass. It was incredible.

We sang that evening in a church built in the year one thousand, to another really receptive audience, composed of about half tourists. It was really nice, with another decent performance. Afterward we ate dinner on a dock on the canal, facing the sunset. It was perfect, as only Venice can be.