Paris

Last weekend, the whole program went to Paris with Maité, Mme Scott, Gay, and Destiny, plus a few of the girls' boyfriends who were visiting. We left early Thursday morning and arrived in the afternoon, dropped our bags at the hostel (the same one in the Marais where Elyse, Dani, Lindsay, and I stayed back in October), and grabbed sandwiches before a boat tour along the Seine.
The trip was pretty laid-back. We had several group things to do but with a good amount of free time in between so that we could go off on our own. Everyone had been to Paris before except Matt's friend and Destiny, who kept excitedly saying this was her first time in France...
It was pretty chilly, but we bundled up and sat outside the cabin anyway to get better pictures
Destiny being crazy

After the tour we were left to our devices for a while and went to a café for chocolat chaud. It wasn't quite as terribly cold as I was expecting, but I wore tights and leggings pretty much the entire trip, so maybe that's why. We met back up outside Hotel de Ville a while later to walk to dinner. Mme Scott made a funny toast about how great it was to be in Paris even though we were probably all going to eat something weird like spaghetti. I had salad, pasta, and chocolate mousse, so no, not all Thanksgiving food.
The next morning, we met Mme Gailliegue, my art history professor, at the Louvre for a tour. We first went to the room with all of the Rubens paintings commissioned by Marie de Medici to tell the story of her reign in a positive light, which was really interesting since Mme Gailliegue was there to give us a brief history, and then we saw most of the big Neoclassic and Romantic paintings we've studied in class, and that's always cool.
Victory of Samothrace Landing on the landing where we split off so everyone could see the Mona Lisa (La Jaconde). I was so disappointed the first time I saw it because it was much smaller than I'd expected, so this time it actually seemed a little bigger than I remembered. Funny thing to share is that my friend Claire got physically pushed out of the way by an angry Asian man who really wanted his picture with the Mona Lisa. The crowds there are rough.
Mme in front of Le Radeau de la Méduse. Unlike the Mona Lisa, a lot of these paintings were much more massive than I had realized, so seeing them all together is really cool.
After the Louvre we had lunch and went to la St. Chapelle, which elicited some "Wow!"s from even our most cynical group members.

My friend Andy, who I know from the London Maymester, happened to be in Paris with his parents visiting family friends, so he met us there for the tour. It was really fun to see him. I kept translating things the tour guide said to him without really thinking, and then I finally asked him if he'd ever taken any French, and he told me he'd taken it for 6 or 7 years...
Inside the Palais de Justice. According to our guide, you can wander around throughout the whole thing. We only saw the Grande Salle

After the Palais de Justice, a few of us tried to go to the Hotel des Invalides to see Napoleon's tomb, but we missed the last entrance, and most other things were closing about that time, so we headed back in the direction of our hostel. Andy and I ate pastries and caught up until he had to meet his parents for dinner, and then I joined back up with my friends for dinner and drinks, although it was a pretty early night since we had to get up the next morning for a tour of the Musée d'Orsay.
Model of the Opera Garnier. so cool!
Inside the Musée d'Orsay, which is only about 20 years old. I had no idea it was so new. It used to be a train station, as you can tell from this pic
Degas
Monet, Les Coquelicots. We got to see the second half of the works we've studied at d'Orsay, since we finished the class with Impressionism. I have sooo many photos of paintings, but I just stuck a few in here.
After Musée d'Orsay, Elyse, Lindsay, and I went to Musée de l'Orangerie, which houses Monet's Nymphéas. It's really cool because the giant canvases wrap all the way around the two oval rooms.

Giverny is one the things I remember best about my first trip to France, so I really enjoyed seeing these.

Model of the apartment of Paul Guillaume, founder of the museum

More Impressionism downstairs Renoir, Femme nue dans un paysage, and then the temporary exhibit was called Les enfants modeles, and it was all about artist's children with portraits painted by their parents, etc.
L'Orangerie is in the Jardin de Tuileries, so after the museum, we walked along the Champs-Elysées through the Christmas market. Then, we went to Café de Flore, which is famous for being frequented by intellectuals Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Lindsay had to do a powerpoint presentation about the café for one of her classes, and apparently she included pictures of Elyse and me drinking cafés as examples of contemporary intellectuals you might find there

The Hotel de Ville all lit up. It'd be better if I'd crossed a little further to snap a picture without the streetlight, but it was raining, and I was in a hurry to get to the Comédie Francaise to get a last minute ticket. We had wanted to see an opera but couldn't get tickets, so I was pretty determined to see something while in Paris
View from my seat, which I got for 5 euros. I was hoping to see Moliere, but it ended up being Figaro Divorce that night. I went toute seule, and I think that's the first time I've seen a play by myself. The Comédie Francaise is the oldest theatre company in France, and it was nice to see the space, and the production did some really cool things.

Afterward, I met up with friends who were out, and Dani, Elyse, and I went to the Bastille area for a while. The next morning most people went to mass at Notre Dame, but I slept a little later and went to Pere-Lachaise. For those who have seen Paris, Je t'aime, this is the cemetery in the scene with Emily Mortimer.
A couple of my friends who had been the day before when it was raining warned me it wasn't worth it in bad weather, and it was supposed to rain on Sunday, but I chanced it anyway, and the weather was great the whole time. I definitely recommend spending the 2 euros for a map when going because it's gigantic.
Géricault with a replica of Le Radeau de la Méduse on his tomb
It wasn't like any cemetery I've ever been to before because all of the graves have these massive monuments that are clustered together and nearly on top of each other, but it's not at all irreverent, just really pretty and peaceful
Moliere, next to La Fontaine in a gated plot
Oscar Wilde, covered in lipstick kisses and quotes like "Oscar is the greatest man who ever lived!" There's a sign in French and English telling people not to deface the tomb that clearly no one obeys
Edith Piaf
Jim Morrison. I ran into friends Katherine and Lindsay here randomly and accidentally scared them
I had planned to try to do a bit of the Museum of Modern Art that morning too, but I ended up spending the entire morning here, and I still didn't see quite all of the tombs I would have liked to because I spent too much time just wandering the paths, and there are so many artists/musicians/writers, etc. I'd definitely go back when in Paris again