We went over to Musee d’Orsay this morning for a few hours. This museum was hit or miss for me. I really liked their Oriental section and Vincent van Gogh paintings, but there was also impressionist furniture and some sculptures that were kind of disappointing for me. Actually, what probably bothered me most is that we weren’t allowed to take pictures there 😦 because there really were some pieces that I really liked. Oh well, c’est la vie.
After that we nabbed food downtown and headed off to class. I’ve been saying this for the last 10 days already, but tonight I’m writing my daily journals for class. Nothing untypical of a normal college class by cramming them in the last minute? Overall today was another relatively dull day, but tomorrow morning we have nothing scheduled so we’re headed over to Sacre Coeur where I promise I’ll take pictures!
Oh, you’re still reading?! Alright – we got to sleep in today until crash-course French just before noon. These classes are good, but I wish we had more of them. It’s a good chance for us to listen to French (and understand it for the most part) and also learn some new vocabulary. Memorization and I don’t get along, but at least seeing these vocab words helps out in Paris. Then again, most people here understand English or you can at least get by with pointing at things and looking confused. Anyway, we had just under an hour for lunch, so a few of us stopped over at McDonald’s for a McBaguette. Good news – it was terrible, so I won’t be going back there on this trip!
In class today we watched À bout de souffle(Breathless). I’d give it a 1 out of 2, unless you enjoy art cinema. I’m all about the Hollywood-style fiction narratives, though. After class we went to a nearby movie theater and saw The Artist. This got a 2 out of 2 from me, especially as a film student, because it was about the progression of film from silent to sound and they played around with that aspect a bit to make it more of a modern-esque film while still told in a more-or-less classical style.
After that movie we headed over to the Latin district for dinner and walked around a bit there. Overall, today felt pretty school-like 😦 but we were bound to have one of those days over here eventually.
Like I’ve been raving about for the last few days, we started off at the Louvre this morning. It was neat because we had a tour guide but kind of unfortunate because we only had a few hours, so we sometimes blew by entire rooms to get to our next big work of art (literally, some of these were 40+ ft wide – but then again, the Mona Lisa…). I nabbed a bunch of pictures of the artwork and statues (bottom of post), but after 2 1/2 short hours we had a reservation at a nearby restaurant for lunch and then class at 2:00 2:30 today. But Louvre, I’ll be back.
I got a chocolate-filled pastry and Professor Songolo ordered us all the richest hot chocolate in existence. The thickness seemed like melted chocolate chips or fondue, and the sweetness was unbelievable. Nevertheless, it was delicious – so much so that I couldn’t even finish a full cup of it; sweet, thick drink + chugging = understandable tummyache.
After class and watching La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game), we figured we might as well head back out to the gardens and the nearby Eiffel Tower for some more shimmering. I have dozens more Eiffel Tower pictures, but I won’t bother posting all of them because they start to look the same after awhile and no picture can do it justice – just come to Paris and I’ll show you f’real.
Another relaxing day, until we hopped in line for the Tim Burton exhibit at the Cinemateque we went to last week. An hour and a half wait in line finally led us to room after room of original sketches, animations, and quick thoughts from him that really give you a taste of his mind. It was amazing, but unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures. 😦
On one of the first drawings in the exhibit was a brief description of how he began drawing and realized that he wasn’t able to draw people or creatures “correctly” but he enjoyed the freedom of drawing them however he wanted.
“I like extreme characters who are not aware of their strangeness.”
One of the pages from his notebook reads “I make faces in mirrors – I foam at the mouth – Women’s nightgowns help me animate – I draw pubic hairs on Barbie dolls – I use mayonise instead of pencils – I beat up my wife even though I’m not married – I animate on pancakes because they’re easier to flip”.
And one of my personal favorites was incredibly basic – a trace of his hand with a speech bubble coming from the middle finger saying “I’m the only one capable of an obscene gesture”.
Slept for 10 hours last night, awesome. Minutes after waking up, though, we left for the the 110-acre, largest cemetery in Paris, Pere Lachaise Cemetery (“East Cemetery”).
We were 20 minutes behind another part of our group, so upon getting there we walked straight to the back (15 minute walk) to Oscar Wilde’s grave.
Then we made a loop around to the left to see the legendary “Cinemagician” of fiction film, Georges Melies. Definitely the grave I came to see.
We finished up at the cemetery with the late and great Jim Morrison.
Overall, Oscar Wilde’s and Jim Morrison’s graves were the busiest we saw, and looking back I’m kind of surprised that us 5 Americans were the only ones at Melies’, especially considering how influential cinema is here. Random fact of the week: French taxes contribute to the public school where we went to a few days ago (La famis is only 300 Euro/semester for EU students) as well as support public museums of cinema.
On the walk back we stopped for food and I had my best meal yet – salad and a croque monsieur – and technically I went through the entire meal in French with our waitress, woooooooo! None of these pictures do the food justice though.
The rest of the day I’ve spent catching up on homework and fixing up/uploading a bunch of picture for you Americans my loving fans; you can view the album on Facebook here.
Random events of the day: I spilled yogurt at my desk in the dorm and just barely missed my camera with it – I probably would’ve cried; Nutella, prepackaged waffles, and 1.5L of lemonade are an awesome cheap snack; my roomie, Joe, just made some awesome Alfredo pasta from scratch with French cheese; you can buy 3-minute pasta in the grocery stores here.
Christine and I decided that for the week that she’s here we’re going to head down to Nice, France, a really touristy place (so our level of French shouldn’t be a huge issue) that is right on the Mediterranean.
Last night we went out to bars for the first time here. It wasn’t anything super different from home, except we were definitely the loudest (and usually biggest) group out. I’ve actually noticed that we tend to be the loudest anywhere we go – partially because we’re a large group of college students, partially because we’re American. It really is surprising how quiet and peaceful the city streets tend to be (but definitely not the Metros…). Anyway, nothing else really about the night – pretty typical – but this morning we had a boat tour on the Seine through the heart of Paris, so here’s another picture of the Eiffel Tower, possibly my favorite so far (very very slight thanks to Photoshop)!
Cool, right?! Right. Another cool thing is the flame statue in Paris. If you don’t know (like me, no worries) Paris has an exact replica of the flame that the Statue of Liberty has, further strengthening the bond between the two countries. Apparently a lot of people incorrectly think that the flame is a tribute to one of their queens.
Here’s just a general view from the river.
This is a train station turned science museum, which I will definitely try to go to in the next 3 weeks.
Then they showed us a few more touristy places like the smallest house in Paris (the window in the middle) and the restaurant that Ratatouille was based off of.
After the boat tour we headed over to Marie Antoinette’s castle, now a museum dedicated to her. It’s kind of cool after realizing how old (read: 18th century) everything there actually was. We immediately walked into the great hall which is just enormous. There’s a spiral staircase there that sadly beats ours back home, and is probably infinitely more sturdy. They also have a room dedicated to all of the executions that took place there and a listing of all 2780 people executed (I checked, my ancestors were safe). They also have the guillotine area blocked off now, and it was eerie being there where hundreds of years ago these people were just slaughtered.
We headed over to the Tuileries Garden afterwards which is just outside of the Louvre. It’s basically the Central Park of Paris – lots of open space to walk around or sit and enjoy our 85 degree day. From here we could see the Arc de Triomphe at the end of Avenue des Champs Elysees. At our end of this stretch is the glass pyramid of the Louvre and the museum itself. We’re taking a tour of the Louvre on Monday, so I’m pumped for that. Exhausted, we headed back to the dorms.
That night we went up to see Moulin Rouge (the building itself, the show was 100+ Euro) which was disappointing probably mostly because it was still bright out. During the day it’s just a building, but we might head back up to that area of the city at night so we can really see it. Naturally, after that we went to see a movie in one of the Pathe French movie theater. Moonrise Kingdom is a Wes Anderson film, played in English, and (most exciting part) unreleased in the US. So we didn’t make it to Cannes this weekend due to the train prices, but at least we had a little bit of cinema extras here. BTW I give M.K. a 2 out of 2, see it when you get a chance if you like any of his previous works.
We were fortunate enough to get a tour of the entire place by the technical director of the school. Apparently there are 1200 applicants every year, but they only admit 45. There is a written test that applicants need to take after their second or third year out of high school, and sure enough, some of the world’s best future directors were taking the test as we were walking around:
I know the door’s nothing special, but the people behind it are. We got to see their screening room, which unsurprisingly puts Vilas 4070 to shame.
They walked us through some of their technical areas such as a few sets (no pictures because they’re just empty warehouses at this point), their sound mixing room, their green-screen room, and their editing bays (it’s good to know they use FCP7!). All of these looked pretty standard, but the level of talent of the people that actually use these areas is incredible.
After the rest of the tour we had the honor of going to another screening room to watch 3 short films by previous students. The first film was a drama, Tomorrow Will be Good, the second was a hilarious comedy, Stronger, and the third was a Middle Eastern drama with a non-English-translatable title.
After the tour we were off to lunch and our school where we watched Paris.
The biggest update on today was the beginning of class and 6+ more miles of walking. I woke up with shin splints from yesterday, but we managed to make it to Le Musee de la Cinematheque Francaise (French museum of Cinema) bright and early. It was pretty cool and they talked a lot about the history of film. Nothing new because of classes, but we got a VIP walk-through of the museum with a lot of old projectors, “illusion” machines, and costumes. We weren’t allowed cameras inside, but here’s the building itself which was designed by the same guy that did the Guggenheim.
On the walk back to the metro we passed a football stadium.
We had our first French crash-course for an hour, which was pretty useful, but I’m definitely still learning basic phrases. We also had our first real class where we watched Paris Je T’aime (Paris, I love you). After that we headed out on more adventures across the city.
Along the way to the Arc de Triomphe we passed by many many streets that look similar – like this one – which seems pretty typical. Narrowish, crazy traffic, and tallish buildings on both sides.
We hung out at the Arc for a bit, and will probably climb to the top sometime, but for now here’s a pretty generic picture of it.
And finally a picture looking down the road from the Arc along Avenue de Champs Elysee
I’M ALREADY A DAY BEHIND ON THE BLOG?! So (lucky you) two are coming tonight. Anway, on day 2 we walked about 13 miles, but I’ll get to that in a bit.
This is the view from my window, just in case you were wondering. Nothing too special, but the overhead path on the left is a walkway that I may/not go running on sometime in the next month if I ever get the motivation (or want to sacrifice some sleep?).
EDIT: Oh, we had our 2-hour orientation today. My roommate and I overslept almost an hour because my phone reset in the middle of the night, so it lost track of time and erased my alarms. Lesson learned – set 5 alarms minimum from now on. Luckily it wasn’t a big deal because the university is less than 10 minutes away.
So our quest began with the intention of getting to the Eiffel Tower (La Tour Eiffel). A few stops after boarding the metro (I almost know how to do that now) we realized that Notre Dame is on the way, so we stopped there. Little did we know that Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower are miles and miles apart. After getting off the metro we popped up above-ground right next to the Seine river. The riverside (below, north to the right) is just constant buildings as you see here. You can’t see it yet, but the Eiffel Tower is about half a dozen miles just to the left of straight ahead… oh boy.
We made it to Notre Dame, which was really impressive. We wanted to walk up to the towers, but the line for that stretched almost 2 blocks, and we never saw it move – we’ll stick to the inside for today.
After leaving there, we headed across the river and came across a “locks for love” (my term) bridge. Locks fill almost every open space with lovers’ names on them. Not sure what happens after that, but it was definitely a sight. My roommate, Joe, took a spare Master Lock that he had with him and locked it on the bridge. I was in the middle of video recording it when a French woman came up and pushed 3 of us from our group aside and essentially barged through (though she said pardon every time) – still kinda rude because she could have just walked 2 steps to her right to go around – but oh well, we’re the foreigners now.
After lunch (crepes and wine) we continued to the Eiffel Tower and came across another one of the “locks” bridges, and the Louve was across the street. We’ll get there on a field trip in the next week or so! So we didn’t stop today, just a few more miles to the tower…
Along the river there are tons of book shops, but also many of these closed-up green bins. Elyse, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m assuming these are more shops that either aren’t rented out yet or open that day – they kept reminding me of large green dumpsters.
We lost 5 phone-less members of our 13-member group at this point, so we stopped by a bar for a quick bathroom stop and drinks to wait. Enter: my first French beer! It was good, but kind of watered down from what we’re used to. Not too expensive, but more or less a Miller Lite in France.
We never met back up with the rest of our group, but eventually (2 or 3 hours later?) made it to the tower – impressively large – and we plan on buying tickets to take the elevator to the top on a nicer day. The line to get tickets today was all the way across the base of the tower and we were hungry. After dinner and another wine stop we plopped down on the lawn nearby to watch it light up. These lights popped on around 9:45, and apparently every hour until midnight (after these lights come on) it shimmers – definitely did not know this, so that was an awesome surprise.
And here’s the tower with the shimmering – with video (below)!
I’m up and running on this half of the world! Getting here was a task though… We were supposed to leave Chicago at 5:50. This was delayed because our AC was broken, then there was a storm delay, then we made it out to the runway in line as the #20 plane that was waiting to take off. Then all of this waiting wasted too much of our fuel so we had to go back to refuel, but the fueling truck took almost an hour to get there. At least the sunset in Chicago was cool.
Then we had to hop back in line and finally got to take off after a 4 hour delay. Whew – luckily I had my friend, Cabernet Sauvignon, with me for the plane ride.
And this one too.
And this one.
Then I passed out after getting a few remaining pictures.
We finally landed just before 2:00pm (my time), and it was cold and rainy. We didn’t do anything exciting here today other than exploring within a few blocks from where we’re staying. I’m pooped, what time is it…?
Paris!! 
