♪ Come on and show me the best! ♫

Ok, this is called catch-up-on-all-my-journals time. Because this blog is also part of an assignment for my class over here. So...here goes. I'll hopefully come back and fill in details later...

Saturday, May 15

We went to the Chateau de Fontainebleau. I really liked that castle. (Paris did too.) I can't really believe why anyone would need an additional castle after Versailles. lol. I guess Fontainebleau is a summer castle, technically. Or a hunting lodge. A lot of important things happened there, though. Like Napoleon stepping down from the throne and leaving for exile and some royal marriages.

I think I would have preferred Fontainebleau to Versailles. It seems like not as many people were there. And the ballroom was exquisite! I would love to have a ballroom! The columns of this one were really interesting, along with the little side rooms going off of the ballroom. And there was a place for an orchestra, which was pretty cool. Although, I thought it looked funny, because there was this gaping hole in the wall to access the orchestra balcony. The wall was painted, so it looked like someone just punched a whole through the wall. They might have put in a door, at least...

The gardens were amazing, too. They weren't like normal French gardens, but had a lot of trees and flowers growing all over, instead of in straight lines. The front part of the garden is one of the most romantic places (at least as far as gardens go) in Paris, I think. There were tons of bushes with flowers, and benches surrounded by leafy hedges. Unfortunately, it was just Paris and me without our boys. :/

Paris and I walked around the village surrounding Fontainebleau a little bit. There was some sort of fair going on. One whole block of the village was filled with pens of farm animals. Going down some of the side streets, there were rock walls for kids to climb and pony rides and a bunch of other fun things. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but it was cool. :)

That night, I had the opportunity to experience football, Parisian style, with a couple of people from the group. Whoa... And we technically participated in a protest, even though we didn't really know that's what was going on. lol. The game was kinda sad...Montpellier creamed Paris Saint Germaine. But I'm not really sure how people can keep track of the game when there's cheering every moment. We bought the cheap tickets, meaning we were in the crazy fan section. Where every person there smoked, many going through four or five cigarettes they continued to roll themselves throughout the game. That place stank so bad! Seriously...if you're addicted to smoking, you don't even have to bring your own cigarettes to the game, you can get just as much nicotine from secondhand smoke. :P The cheering was kinda fun though, even if it was really intense. It's so funny, because their cheers weren't very clever, and most just said "Allez Paris Saint Germaine" over and over and over again. No other words. Just that. (Although they did vary the order of the words sometimes, just to make things interesting.) And everybody had a scarf! Every single person in the crazy fan section! lol. The funny thing was, every single scarf was different! They were all for Paris Saint Germain, but I only saw a couple scarves that were the same. lol. That just goes to show how intense Europeans are about their football teams (even if the team is the worst in the League, like Paris Saint Germaine). After the game, tons of people started lighting flares in the section across the stadium from ours. It looked like the place was on fire! And they threw a lot of them onto the field, and the security guards had to hurry and put them out. One flare was lit in our section, and it smelled so bad!!! And all the fans stayed in their seats doing cheers for almost an hour after the game ended. It was so weird. We couldn't figure out what they were waiting for, but stayed and cheered with them for a bit. We found out later they were protesting the leagues system or one of its policies or something.

Sunday, May 16
Ah! I don't remember what happened this day... I think it was a good Sunday. We didn't do much, just went to Church, came home, talked to family, had dinner.... Pretty low-key day.

Monday, May 17
So, this day we realized we had already done the walk we scheduled! So we did another walk. lol. This one took us to the Madeleine. On the metro I was wondering...do they really make the metro smell like cookies? Or is that from a bakery? Because I definitely smelled something good (which is strange for the metro) but...was it just the book playing tricks with my senses?

The church was kinda cool. Very ornate. A little over the top, I thought. And something really bugged me. They had a huge sculpture of Mary Magdalene behind the altar. The statue of Christ was off to the side. That was really weird to me. Most of the cathedrals are named after saints, I know that. But usually they have Christ at the center. (Often with Mary, but at least the focus is somewhat on Him still.) This church kinda made me sad because of that.

And I tried macarons for the first time ever! They were pretty yummy. lol. Not my all time favorite, but still very delicious. And it's crazy that that patisserie has been making those for over a hundred years! I kinda felt bad for the girl in front of me, because she spoke broken English and no French, and the cashier didn't really understand her at all. :( I should have helped out...

I thought this was the grossest line ever (it's a sentence from the introduction to the walk): "As for the French palette, Napoleon's legendary letter informing his beloved Josephine of his return from Italy says it all: 'Home in three days. Don't wash.'" GROOOOOOOOOSS!

Tuesday, May 18
Tuesday dawned bright and beautiful, and Paris and I geared up to take on the Louvre. We were so excited (or at least I was) when we got to the Pyramides, because hardly any people were there! We were going to go through with few crowds, and it would be amazing! Then we went up to the sign and realized....it was closed. Unlike every other museum in Paris, the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays instead of Mondays. :P That was dumb. Instead, we started the Marais walks.

This walk was really interesting, I guess. I liked seeing Victor Hugo's house and the old wall. I also really liked the little passageways going through the city blocks. And the little cobblestone streets. I like cobblestone streets. :)

Le Musee Carnavelt etait formidable! I really did like this museum. I thought the little rooms all around it were so cool! And so cute. I would have loved to have one of the little blue and white sitting rooms as my own. I'd have so much fun in there. lol. And seeing all the Revolution stuff was really neat! I especially liked seeing the stone models of the Bastille made from building itself. And the beds in the bedrooms! I don't know why, but I'm obsessed with old fashioned beds. I totally want one when I get my dream home. That and a million other things. Sigh. Oh well. It's called a dream home for a reason, isn't it? :)

Wednesday, May 19
Louvre Day!!! It was amazing. There is so much art in that ginormous building! I think I could spend an entire day just looking at the outside of the building. But inside!

We first went to the Italian painting section. That is where we saw so many things I studied in AP Art History! I was having an art history moment every five minutes! lol. It's kind of surreal to see the real works of art that you've studied so much from slides and books. They always look a little bit different.

I saw a couple of paintings that I absolutely adored from artists I've never even heard of before. (I forget the names now, I'll have to go back and look them up. Yay Google.) I also saw a couple of Da Vinci paintings that I've never seen before that I really liked. One was of John the Baptist. I didn't really like it as a representation of John the Baptist, but I liked it as a painting.

There was also a cute painting from someone I didn't know that I loved too! I have it on my Facebook page, if anyone's curious. It's a little girl in a white dress. She's so precious. Oh, my goodness! I kinda coveted that painting. I've never seen it before.

That's the thing with the Louvre. There are so many paintings that are so famous (some for who knows what reason), but a lot of the ones that I like no one would recognize... The Mona Lisa is one of those paintings that has a ton of fame that I don't get. They have the painting roped off so you can't get within 10 feet of her. lol. It was kinda funny, because I almost missed seeing that painting completely. We walked into the big room where it was, looking at all the other paintings in the room. I was so confused as to why there were so many people in the room, but figured it must be a couple big tours running into each other or something. It wasn't until I was about to leave that section of the room that I saw the little painting on the wall and realized, "Oh! That's the most famous painting in the world!" lol.

The Egyptian stuff was really interesting too. They even had a real mummy! It was really cool and really disgusting at the same time.... I was fascinated and getting squeamish at the same time. lol. I wondered who the person was. But the plaque didn't give much information. :P We also passed some sarcophagi that were smiling. lol. They were so funny. I liked them. Not very often you see happy dead people in art. I'm amazed at how much stuff has been preserved from the Egyptian dynasties! They have cloth and baskets and chairs and a bunch of other things that don't seem like they'd be able to survive this long.

I also loved the sculpture galleries. I don't know why, I just love marble sculpture. I love Greek sculpture, even if they could use a couple layers... I think the way that they could make a piece of stone look like something alive is incredible. So yeah, saw the Venus de Milo there. That was kinda cool. Again, another piece of art that makes me wonder why it's famous. Although, Winged Victory, which I also saw, was pretty magnificent. Now that is an awesome sculpture!

Someday (maybe when I come back to Paris, if I ever do) I just want to take an entire day and sit in the Louvre and walk through and admire the work. Not rush. (Which probably means go by myself or with someone who doesn't mind waiting on me.) Just stroll through all the beauty and genius of the art.

Another funny thing about the Louvre, or at least my time at the Louvre, the paintings I took the most pictures of were Madonna and Child pictures. I'm not really sure why. lol. There were some really sweet pictures there. I guess I just love mother and child pictures. I don't really know. lol.

Thursday, May 20
We got so much done this day! We got two walks done, all before Paris left for Liverpool! (And I was so jealous, by the way, because I love Liverpool so much! But I could afford to save a little money right now... And I was going to make money instead! lol.)

We did the second Marais walk through the Jewish quarter. I thought that was really interesting. I haven't been to many Jewish towns. We didn't stop and get falafel...because that kinda sounded gross to me. lol. Deep-fried equals gross, especially when it comes to chic peas. At least it did that day. :) I really liked seeing the elementary school with the plaques honoring the children who were taken from the school to concentration camps during WWII. And I loved the one honoring a teacher for saving a number of students from being taken to the camps.

The Musee Cognac-Jay was kinda cool. The paintings inside were cute, and I loved the boxes and portraits in one of the rooms. (They were all in a long cabinet.) And again, I really liked the bed in the bedroom. Pretty!

After finishing that walk, we did the Bastille walk. This involved tons of walking, but luckily my brain was really preoccupied, so I didn't mind so much.

Basically, this walk took us down the streets the revolutionaries marched through during the revolution. There were a couple cool monuments to the Republique and freedom. I thought the one on the site where the Bastille used to stand was really interesting. It's hard to imagine a huge fortress standing there. Now it's all roads and new buildings. I wondered if the cars driving through the round about ever thought about all the lives that were lost on that spot. Actually, there are a lot of places like that in Paris. Like Hotel de Ville. That place has been the site of so many uprisings and strikes and protests and calls for liberty. But I don't think anyone really remembers it as they watch the children playing on the carousel in the courtyard or sit by the fountains to eat their lunch.

Anyway, that's about all there is to report on the Bastille walk. Basically, it was a lot of walking. lol. Oh! There was also a viaduct which was kinda cool. It was turned into a bunch of shops.

Friday, May 21
With Paris gone, I tagged along with a few girls from our group to hit up the Cluny Museum and the Pantheon. The Cluny was actually a pretty cool museum! It's filled with medieval stuff. You could basically see any medieval form of art there. We saw stained glass windows and sculpture in stone and wood and illuminated manuscripts. It seemed like a lot of the stuff (at least the sculpture) came from Notre Dame. There was also a bit of armor there. And tapestries! I almost forgot those. There are six huge tapestries of Mary with a unicorn. I think the whole Mary and unicorn thing is a little strange, but the tapestries are really pretty and had really cool meanings. (Five of the tapestries each showed a physical sense.)

We saw the university of France. But we couldn't go inside. Too many riots and stuff. Now only students and faculty are allowed in.

The Pantheon was really cool! This isn't the Roman Pantheon. This is where famous people like Marie and Pierre Curie, Voltaire, Hugo, and many other great Frenchmen are buried. It's kinda cool to have them all buried in one place. The church was pretty cool. The paintings on the wall, especially the Joan of Arc paintings, were exquisite. So detailed and so colorful.

The next stop was St. Etienne, another Gothic cathedral. Actually...I think it's and abbey. Or something like that. But not a cathedral. I think we studied this one in AP Art History too. It was cool inside, and a little strange because of the people reciting things very loudly in front of the altar just randomly.... but it was interesting. Not gonna lie, all the churches are starting to run together in my mind. lol. You'd have to visit each of them a million times in order to be able to remember all the differences and not have them get really mixed up.

We ended the walk with a stroll through a gladiator arena. Cool, huh? And Grace and Judy did a gladiator fight for us so Beth could get pictures. lol.

HEY! I'm all caught up now! That's amazing. :) Happiness. Now on to the next project...which hopefully doesn't keep me up the entire night. Joy. :P