I love Paris in the springtime...

Bonjour tout le monde!

On Monday I returned from what was arguably the best trip I've had since being in Europe. Gil and I were in Paris (and surrounding areas) from Good Friday until the Sunday after Easter. Having studied French since seventh grade, all throughout high school, and minoring in college, I'd learned enough of the language and culture that I was fairly itching to experience everything for myself. It did not fail to deliver.

This is rather a long photo-recap, as we were there a fairly long time and took pictures of simply everything. Allons-y!

Friday: I took the Eurostar in from London, and was met by boyfriend/best friend/travel companion extraordinaire at Paris's Gare du Nord. We dropped off my bags at the hostel (which Gil had been at for a few hours after arriving earlier that day), and headed out to dinner at a lovely, if crowded, cafe.

And then we passed out, both rather exhausted by our journeys.
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Saturday: Day trip one! No sooner did we get to Paris than we turned around and headed back out on a train to Vernon/Giverny, home of Monet.
When I was a little girl, I had a book about Monet's home, gardens and paintings, which I loved, and ever since I've dreamed about visiting.
Here we are in his gardens, which were absolutely beautiful (and can you imagine how they'd be even more beautiful in a couple months when the flowers on those arches are in bloom?).

And I finally made it to Monet's famous and much-painted Japanese bridge.
After we toured Monet's spacious and perfectly decorated house (no photos allowed!) and popped by the gift shop, Gil and I had lunch at a nearby restaurant.

With about an hour before our train back to Paris was due to leave, we started to look for buses or taxis to take us the four miles back into town. There were none to be found, so....we power walked. It was quite a trek, taking us down gravel and dirt paths, into areas with no paths at all, up some hills, along the river, over the bridge and through the town, keeping a pretty steady pace but then running for a bit at the end. Our train literally pulled into the station forty five seconds after we ran up to the platform.

Our feet and legs in a state of full on rebellion after our unexpected hour long near-run, we rested on the train, but then the masochistic tendencies deep within us chose to climb the seventy BILLION stairs up to the Sacré-Cœur. Of course.

We promptly collapsed on a set of stairs outside, and engaged in some pretty quality people watching. And then it began to pour in a torrential, raining-from-all-sides, jump on the ark kind of way...so we scurried back to the hostel by way of the grocery store, nom-ed a massive cheese feast for dinner, put up our angry feet and passed out for the evening.

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Sunday (Easter): Also the first Sunday of the month, which meant that the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay were free! At first we encountered a four hour line at the Louvre, which we decided against, and headed instead to the Orsay, home of the Impressionists.

After our visit there, we returned to the Louvre, and happened upon an entrance downstairs (inside the pyramid) that had no line. We're still not sure if we snuck into the Louvre, but pulling off no line and no admission fee to this major attraction seemed quite a feat to us. Inside the Louvre, we saw this lady (with whom Gil was unfamiliar), as well as the Mona Lisa and lots of other beautiful stuff. We also took some downtime in an indoor courtyard with lovely views and marble everywhere.

Our third and final stop that day was Notre Dame. Gorgeous. We stuck around for Easter Mass, which I followed since Catholic masses are the same in every language and I've sat through enough Easter masses to pick up the message of the homily (priests rarely have anything terribly original to say).

It was definitely something special to be at Notre Dame on Easter, to see the cathedral all lit up and packed full of people.
Afterward it was off to dinner and then back to the hostel we went.
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Monday: Our day of tours--la Tour Eiffel and then the French Revolution walking tour (found and endorsed by my history buff travel companion).

Our alarm failed to go off, and after waking with a start and racing across Paris, we made it to the tower on time for our 10 am reservations. We saw lovely views from the top, and then stopped to snack on a ham and cheese crepe near the Trocadéro.
(And, of course, to take tons of photos, only a couple of which I'll subject you to)

We had a 3 pm French Revolution walking tour, led by a quirky American hipster named Bubba, who took us to the Invalides, the Place de la Concorde, the jardin des Tuileries, and the Conciergerie.

In the time between our Eiffel Tower visit and the walking tour, though, we hit up another major Paris landmark: the Arc de Triomphe.
It inspired victorious feelings within Claud.
And that was Monday!
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Tuesday brought us day trip number two: Versailles. The home of the "roi soleil" (sun king) and Marie Antoinette is truely the pinnacle of understated interior design.

Or not. Here's the hall of mirrors (which should really be called the hall of chandeliers). Fun fact: we learned from Bubba that back in the time of the monarchy, Versailles had at least 200 servants just dedicated to keeping the chandeliers alight. I simply can't imagine why the French people cited royal extravagance as a cause of the Revolution.

Then we chilled in Marie and Louis' backyard. No big deal.

We made some friends sitting by the Grand Canal...
We had a nice lie-out in the sun by the canal, ate a lovely lunch in the gardens, and then jumped on the train back to Paris.
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Wednesday was a pretty laid back day, for which our feet and legs thanked us.
In the morning we visited the Sainte-Chapelle, constructed by Saint Louis to house Jesus's crown of thorns (or so the story goes). It has the most beautiful stained glass windows.
Then it was a cheese feast on the point of the Ile de la Cité! Seriously, French cheese + fresh baguette: best lunch ever. ever ever ever. I defy you to show me a better one.

Finally, we headed to a wine tasting and sort of seminar on french wine. It was a little touch and go in the moments when the sommelier was leading us down a dark alley and then shadowy, winding staircase into a cellar, but when we discovered that we were not, in fact, going to die, we relaxed and enjoyed the wine.
Gil demonstrates the sniffing process. I preferred the drinking part.
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Thursday: Daytrip number three! This time we went to Mont Saint Michel, which is a centuries-old abbey built atop a hill on an island. I'd studied it (along with most other things visited on this trip) in French class in high school, and had always been rather enchanted with it.
Mt St Michel is nowhere near Paris really--it's about four hours away, and getting there on our own through a rather daunting combination of buses and trains with spotty schedules seemed like we'd probably end up stranded on the border of Normandy and Brittany. So we paid a bit more for the convenience of a bus day trip, showed up at 7am and five (nap-filled) hours later, we arrived at this gorgeous, gorgeous place.

The view out our bus window:

A bit closer up (what lovely blue skies we had that day! It was windy as all hell though):
After touring the fortressed abbey with its winding stairs, cloisters, vaults and gardens, we headed back down the hill to the main (and only) street for some lunch. Gil got a plate of fruits de mer.
And I got moules frites....which I originally thought were fried mussels. Little did I know that the French imply a comma between the two components of the dish, fries and mussels. No worries, though: still delicious. But here I demonstrate the use of a comma in separating the two foods.
After a quick walk in the sand, we headed back to the buses....
Where our tourguide Jonathan gave us a "special surprise". We were sort of hoping for free stuff--a keychain? A postcard? But instead, he regaled us with a tune from his flute-pipe-thing. To his credit, he had some mad skills. Weird but sort of charming...like France.
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Friday: A day of relaxation. In the morning we did a Seine river cruise/canal tour. The Seine part was brief but beautiful. The canal part was dull. But in the end, there are worse things in life than sitting in the sunshine as a boat takes you through Paris.

After lunch, we headed back to the Trocadero/Champ de Mars area for some ice cream and lolling about in the sun and fab views of the Eiffel Tower.
Everybody now! (sings)-- I love Paris in the spriiiingtiiime
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On Saturday we had no plans. We checked out of our hostel and into a four star hotel (I'd won one night there after winning a bet with Gil earlier this year), which was an appreciated change in quality of accommodation.
After checking out our new digs, we wandered around Montmartre a bit more, going back to the steps of the Sacre Coeur and then having lunch in the Place du Tertre, a public square populated with artists and their work in a sort of homage to Montmartre's past as home of the city's creative population.
Sadly, Saturday night was our last one together. We went to dinner at a cute little sushi place (albeit with questionable sushi) and then enjoyed the lit-up Eiffel tower from the seventh floor terrace of our swanky hotel.
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Sunday morning Gil left super early. I stuck around our hotel as long as possible (the noon checkout), then took a cab to my hotel for my last night, which needless to say brought a pretty drastic decline in quality of lodging.

Not content to mope about in my sad little hotel room, I ventured back down near the Louvre and the Tuileries to the Musee de l'Orangerie. Though it houses works by other artists, this museum is noted for its two oval rooms with massive Monet paintings of water lilies.

It has to be one of the most beautiful places I've been in my life. The rooms were so tranquil and the paintings...well, see for yourself:

In person it's absolutely breathtaking. I just sat in those rooms for hours.


And that, mes amis, brings me to the end of my 9 and a half day french adventure. A long time coming, but totally worth the wait. I absolutely fell in love with Paris: the food, the wine, the architecture, wandering around our neck of the woods in Montmartre. Simply fabuleux.

C'est tout. À bientôt!