Day 16

I'm a little behind due to my weekend in Spain, (I'll post on that next) but because it was the start of our free weekend we had a shorter walk to accommodate some early flights. We saw the modern side of Paris and visited the financial district at La Defense.   

This is the modern "arch" Notice there is no arch at all. But it's an office building as well.

There are random art installments all over the place here. This one was my favorite. Side note, the area of all those trees in the background is a cemetery. 

We were promised a "surprise" at the end of the walk this day. It turned out to be a ride on the carousel for a reduced rate of 1 euro.. wah wah.  This is me and my friend Jonathan looking a little too big to ride on the horses. Oh yeah and wearing a dress was a bad idea. I definitely should have sat side saddle...

Afterward I headed back to the hotel, grabbed a crepe from across the street, and got back on the metro to head to the airport. 

I don't have time to post about Barcelona, but I will do that tonight when I return from our walk! 

P.S. Mom, when I get back I could desperately use a pedicure :) so I hope you have some time for a little mother daughter bonding! 

Day 15

Happy Fourth of July! Today we had a short lecture and then had a free afternoon before our picnic to celebrate the Fourth. My friend Pam and I went back to the Marais for falafel. This restaurant is the number 1 rated restaurant on Zagat in Paris (at least it used to be) and it always has a long line down the street, but we had a craving so we waited in line. 

After lunch I met up with my newly engaged cousins Kami and Matt :) We went to the Mosque for tea and then decided we were still thirsty so we went to happy hour at a bar around the corner on Rue Mouffetard where I was yesterday. I don't think the French understand what happy hour means though because 5 euro for less than a pint is no deal in America. But anyways, I had a lot of fun catching up with them. Thanks again Kami and Matt! It was nice to see some familiar faces as well! This photo is of us at the Mosque.

Then to celebrate the Fourth we had a picnic on the Pon des Arts, which is one of the more popular bridges along the Seine to picnic on. It started raining, but quickly passed. While most girls were worrying about their hair frizzing up, I was worried my baguette was going to get soggy. We also had a night walk through a more grungy part of Paris after dinner. I didn't particularly like this walk, but it's a part of Paris our Professor wanted us to see.

After the walk we ended at the carnival and we could either stay and ride the rides or go back to the hotel. I really had to pee so I decided to go back to the hotel because I didn't want to look for a bathroom and I am REALLY bummed I didn't stay at the carnival. Want to know why? Because Karl Lagerfeld, head designer of Chanel, was walking around taking photos of the rides and things. One of my friends took a photo of him with her flash and he yelled at her. So he doesn't seem like the nicest guy in the world, but still, it would have been awesome to see him!

Well I'm off to Barcelona tomorrow afternoon for the weekend! Please pray for safe travels and that everything goes smoothly.

Day 14

We had a shorter day today, but it was all walking. We started by looking at the Medical school. The universities in Paris are all free tuition, but they are extremely difficult to get into. One of the guys in our group has applied to 76 med schools in the US and he has met one of the doctors/professors at the med school here. He's already been doing rotations with the doctor and getting to work in the lab. He did this all within the first couple days of arriving in Paris, it's nuts. We keep joking that he's just making connections and wants an easy in to the med school here so he doesn't have to pay for it.... but who wouldn't! 

So it is Paris Fashion Week right now and while we were looking at the med school there was a fashion show being held for the designer Basil Soda. I've never heard of it, but we didn't have access to the building like we had planned because it was being used for their show. It's kinda cool though, we keep running into places that are closed because fashion shows are being held in them. 

We didn't go in, but this is the Pantheon. It was built as a replica of the Roman Pantheon and it served as a church for it's early years, but now it's basically a mausoleum for the extremely wealthy French.  

We next stopped at the St. Genevieve Church. While we were there a traveling choir from California was rehearsing so we got to hear some hymns. But before we were all asked to leave so the choir could continue to rehearse I took some photos of the spiral staircase that is a replica of the first spiral staircase Leonardo Da Vinci created. It is beautiful! 

We ended our walk on a great street to have lunch called Rue Mouffetard. It also had a farmers market. I had never seen so many cherries! This isn't even all of them....

 This little baby, or should I say giant fig, caught my attention and I had to have one.

I didn't even wash it, which in retrospect was probably a bad idea... It wasn't all the way ripe even though it was mushy, but it was still pretty darn good.

I went to a Greek creperie for lunch and will definitely be going back. Look at this artist... So much feta!  

Afterward my friend and I walked around and went to the zoo, but didn't buy tickets because we were distracted with the wallabies in the middle of the park. We then decided that was enough for one day and headed back to the hotel to take a nap.

I hope everyone has a good fourth of July! I'm bummed to be missing out on welcoming Charlie home from Australia and having a good ol' family BBQ! We're having a picnic to celebrate, but I doubt there will be any hotdogs or hamburgers or red white and blue desserts. Oh well, you win some and lose some. I am in Paris after all, so that's a pretty big win!

Day 13

I've reached the half way mark of my class. 13 days left walking around with a group of 44 students, blocking sidewalks, metro entrances, and overwhelming street venders. Our professor tries to help us not stick out as american tourists, but the size of our group alone gives away our status.

Today we took a shorter walk around the 1st and 4th arrondissement, stopping at the Pompidou (museum of modern art), Stravinski fountain, Nicolas Flamel's house, and various towers that the pilgrims had to check into at when migrating to Paris. We also stopped at a wine shop owned by one of my professor's friends, who happens to look just like Ollivander from the Harry Potter movies. 

This is me at the fountain. It's full of sculptures by the artist Niki de Saint Phalle, who is also the woman who did the Sun God sculpture at UCSD.

Nicolas Flamel was an alchemist and is the only person to have written about the philosopher's stone, which is said to be an elixir of life and have the capabilities of turning metals into gold. But if you've read Harry Potter you'd know that already :) You'd also know that Dumbledore did research with Flamel.

So here I am standing in the doorway that Nicolas Flamel and Dumbledore walked through. The building is now a French restaurant that I hear has fantastic food.

We took a walking break for some ice cream. I was standing across the street waiting for the line to go down and my professor walked up to me and handed me a 5 Euro and said if I got him a chocolate ice cream he'd pay for mine. What a nice guy, how could I pass that up!?  I got pistachio and chocolate swirl.

Now I have one complaint about Paris and it is this:

Do you see all those poles that are about 3 and a half feet tall? They are all over the sidewalks and if you're not paying attention you will walk right into them and they HURT! What's worse is when I bang my elbow or funny bone on them. So many kids in our group walk right into these things and they are perfect crotch height so I feel really bad when the guys walk into them...

Day 12

Sunday's are our free days to do whatever we want so I went to the flea market with a friend and did a little shopping. Also, the first Sunday of the month is when museums are free so we went to the Musee Orangerie after lunch. The museum was so cool! I didn't get away with taking photos here, but it's the museum that holds Monet's Water Lilies. The museum's roofing is a giant skylight so when the clouds would pass by it changed the entire lighting of the building and it changed the way the paintings looked. It was amazing. The paintings are all over 30 ft long and are displayed in an oval room. I kept spinning around really fast trying to take all the paintings in at once, but it just wasn't quite working the way I had expected... 

After checking out the other exhibits we hung out at the Tuileries, which is just another huge garden/park place. And then we went to the carnival strictly for dessert. We decided to split an order of churro fries that came with a pocket of nutella goodness for dipping. Why hasn't The US jumped on the nutella bandwagon yet? 

We're planning on doing this one night too so look forward to photos of the view!

Tonight we cooked this delicious dinner with some other friends, got crepes across the street, and watched Spain win the Euro cup. Viva Espana!

Day 11

Last night we went to the Vaux le Vicomte in Maincy, France. It was a tad disappointing because there was a restoration of the center dome going on and there was a big ugly tent on top of the palace so we couldn't walk all the up to the top to get the nice view, but it was still gorgeous! The gardens were by far my favorite part. It was built for King Henry XIV's treasurer, Nicolas Fouquet in the 17th century.  

 This is me with the front facade

It had a spectacular kitchen! All the cooking ware was copper and the counters were open with windows that have a view of the garden in the back of the palace.

There was a cafe out on the grounds of the garden so my friend and I got dessert. This is my view

While we were watching the sunset by the main pond a guy who was not in our group started freaking out because a giant June bug was flying around his head. We all laughed and felt bad for him, but then a few seconds later the June bug was buzzing around my head! There were several groups all around the pond and the darker it got the more the June bugs came out. You could hear the people screaming around the garden and running away from the bugs, it was pretty hystarical. A couple minutes had passed and right as I was taking a picture of the clouds in the pond a June bug landed right on my hand. It was the size of a quarter and it freaked me out so bad I threw my camera on the ground and ran away!  So this picture was taken by one of my friends who, after laughing at me, picked my camera up.

 This is the picture I was trying to take before the June bug attack...

I'm having a great time, still. I can't believe I'm getting school credit for this! 

Day 10

The weather is so sporadic here, I've never experienced anything like this. Yesterday was hot and disgustingly humid and today was rainy and cold. It was a nice change from the heat though, so I'm not complaining too much. The only thing that is a bummer is that my umbrella broke in the wind. It was awful and like the movies when it gets blown inside out and then when you fix it its limp and you're stuck getting rained on... Anyways we went to Chartres, pronounced like shart, and yes I laughed a bit to myself every time someone said it. It's a small little town about an hour and half out of Paris on the country side. I would love to live in this town! It was adorable. I also just learned it is where stage 19 of the Tour de France will start this year, so if you want to see just how cute it is watch the Tour on the 21st. The Chartres Cathedral is absolutely humungous! Way bigger than Notre Dame and you can see the spires from 15 miles away on the freeway. We were there when a funeral was in session and it was a little sad because I felt our group was being disrespectful by taking photos with the flash on all while the priest was talking. But I guess they should've expected that since they held the funeral in a legendary cathedral. 

After walking through the church and walking the labyrinth in the floor we were released to roam the town and find some lunch. Some friends and I went shopping and then stopped and got chorizo pizza. It was dang good! And I snapped a few photos around town of things that caught my eye. Most of the buildings here were built in the 17th century, but there have also been a lot of additions since then.

After our lunch break we took a walk to the back of the cathedral to see the view of both it and the city.

This is a replica of the labyrinth inside the cathedral. I don't know why there is one outside, but if I had to guess it's so more people can walk it while in prayer.

We got back to our hotel around 5 and I went to grocery store with a few people and we bought ingredients to make chicken minestrone soup because we were all feeling vegetable deprived. Pam, the girl in blue above, is a phenomenal chef so she did most of the work, but our soup was a major success!