as previously mentioned (go back and read the other entries right now if you haven't. i'll wait… k i'm bored we'll go on without you for now), our first two days in paris were very busy and absolute perfection and packed full of sightseeing and wine. so busy, in fact, that we slept until about eleven the next morning. exactly none of us were upset about that. so our morning started off with our grabbing lunch at a sandwich shop that had an economically-friendly student lunch special just waiting to be taken advantage of. we each got a sandwich (a baguette stuffed full of ham and cheese, of course), a pastry (pain au lait au sucre, anyone?), and a drink (san pellegrino all day every day) for a measly five euro fifty. we carried our spoils to a nearby churchyard and sat on the benches eating/throwing bread at the pigeons. the presiding nuns thought we were 100% hoodrat-worthy.
our only real destination on tuesday was the musée d'orsay. we spent a healthy bit of time standing outside in the rain in an ungodly queue and drinking coffee that tasted only like cardboard and nothing else while various peddlers yelled "UMBRELLA?!?" once per two seconds. probably my favorite hour of the entire #euroricks adventure. (you'll get there.) once we finally made it to the promised land, we were in love.
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| inside musée d'orsay |
the musée d'orsay is located in an old train station that was built in 1898 for the world fair. it is particularly famous for its extensive impressionist and post-impressionist collection - lots of monet, renoir, manet, cézanne, van gogh, picasso, etc. nbd. the crowds were thick so we all fanned out and squeezed through the masses at our own pace. some of the paintings i almost ran past, while others made me "that girl" that won't quit standing directly in front of a piece. i won't go on about it, because you get it, but i will say that seeing monet's "woman with a parasol" and manet's "olympia" were two moments of sheer delight.
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| as if telling time from the front wasn't difficult enough |
the most important part of our time at musée d'orsay was undoubtedly the pseudo nap we took in the cloud-like circular couches beneath this clock. pretty sure my feet actually sang a song. after an ample amount of time with the crowds and art, we decided to take our talents to a café in the marias district to refuel and watch the rain fall. it was here that i finally got a taste of that famous french waiter attitude. he was so disinterested in our presence that we almost apologized. the café au lait that ended up in my possession was one of the best i had in paris, but jett ended up with a beer that tasted like a glass of warm cat urine so we bailed at our first chance.
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| cafe au lait, not the cat urine beer |
we found ourselves staring down the barrel of another night in paris, and cooper had just the spot for us to visit and feel like we were actual aliens from another reality. we then proceeded to a ghetto conservation museum right in the heart of paris and it was one of the most unusual experiences of my life. we walked down an alley and into a dank hallway where we made a mandatory "donation" to receive our hand stamps, then were ushered into a large greenhouse that was bumpin' some african jams. there were little clusters of vintage couches and armchairs and coffee tables, remnants of an old barber shop, a thrifty library, a dance floor, a cafeteria-style food station, and a big wooden bar featuring a few beers on tap and a handful of signature cocktails. welcome to le comptior général, brain. don't even try to understand what's happening here. i was too awestruck (not sure if that's the right word here) to take a photo, so i found this one on the internet instead. thanks, internet!
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| this. except with one trillion people inside. |
the only thing i didn't love about this haunt was the lack of direction. after walking back and forth between this room and another room that was set up like a classroom an almost psychotic amount of times, we finally sidled up to the bar and ordered a pitcher of a ginger-rum house special: heavy on the ginger, heavy on the rum. we awkwardly leaned against the bar and assumed our role as vultures, preying for (GET IT, GUYS?) a chance to snag a place to park. the patrons were bohemian parisian to a t, so my people watching game was on. i kept thinking i looked so out of place until i realized that i was but a hazy background to the impossibly cool crowd i stood among. eventually, we managed to collect a miscellany of armchairs to accommodate two out of our three, so we took turns being comfortable and waited for the dinner announcement to be made. they serve 3-4 menu options each night, so we were hoping for something exotic to satiate.
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| i drink when i feel uncomfortable |
unfortunately, once the menu was disclosed, everything started to look subpar and overpriced, so we ultimately decided to leave our tiny haven and seek out some five euro kebabs instead. we wandered down the street until we found an eligible place to occupy and nom on questionable meat stuffs. they swear to allah it was lamb but i have some deeply rooted doubts about the matter. we stuffed our faces and split ways, cooper heading back to meet up with friends at comptoir général and the ricks team leaving to find their way home via métro (with intensive directions from cooper, of course).
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| our metro stop |
each day began in largely the same fashion: sleeping until late morning, waking up and throwing open our double french doors that led to the plant-covered balcony overlooking our street, making a trip to the boulangerie on the corner of rue cardinal lemoine and rue monge. we took our time getting ready, sipping on tea and chewing on the pâtesserie du jour. this particular day found us meeting cooper outside our apartment and hopping on the métro toward the opera and some shopping plazas. we stopped and had lunch on a busy street at the first cafe we found, ordering croque madames (or variations on the theme) and sipping espresso. we considered a dine and dash because we waited thirty minutes for our check, but since cooper almost had a panic attack at the mere thought, that one remains on the bucket list! (aren't you proud of me, mom?)
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| when in doubt, croque madame |
we, and i use that term loosely, decided it was time for mal to get her shopping on. we stopped at mango and h&m before hitting the motherload at galleria lafayette, a five-story department store that i am fairly certain was modeled after a recurring dream i have. it was here that jett and cooper made a regrettable choice. they wanted to go to the fifth floor to have ice cream at mcdonalds and i was a) in a large parisian department store and therefore b) not interested in an american-fast-food-chain-lactose-induced-bellyache, however tempting. so they sent me off to explore, and that i did.
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| galleria lafayette |
fast forward one hour. jett and cooper, after realizing they set me loose like a wild animal without a working cell phone, are frantically searching throughout two stories of mini-shops while i am skipping through kate spade, topshop, zara, etc. jett finally found me wide-eyed and loaded down with approximately forty items of clothing. we narrowed my choices down and i managed to only purchase a skirt, two tops, and a new pair of shoes. i called it a grand success, cooper called me the hide-and-seek master extraordinaire. potato, potahto.
my shopping adventure left us with little time to spare to get to musée l'orangerie before closing time. we waited outside for our turn, then jaws dropped as we walked into the first of the two rooms featuring monet's masterpiece replication of the water lilies in his garden. up close, it looked nonsensical, but as you stepped back to take in the entire piece, you felt like you were standing in his garden at giverny. the rooms were designed specifically for the exhibit with large skylights for natural lighting and pond-shaped rooms to contain the two installations. while i drooled on myself with all the other tourists, jett and cooper's chief focus became taking contraband photos. they did nail it, in their defense.
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| don't tell anyone in paris that we have this photo |
we had one last museum on the agenda that evening: the louvre. but first! food and espresso. we headed through the jardin de tuileries and landed in the coolest coffee spot of all time called anti-cafe. you paid an hourly rate to sit, enjoy free wifi, drink all the coffee and eat all the snacks you could physically make yourself consume. we posted up with our lattés and nutella toast (and peanuts and cake and biscotti and everything else ever) and played uno while we re-charged. i wanted to live there but alas, paris awaited.
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| it's true what they say: paris is somehow more beautiful in the rain |
and so we headed to our final destination. the clouds were dense and the skies were gray as we made our way toward the famous pyramid. the crowd level was low since we went late at night, so we were able to cover quite a bit of ground in the few hours we were there. we checked our bags and managed to consolidate all of my shopping swag into our bags (which was a christmas miracle, for the record) so we could explore without feeling like pack mules. with our rick steves guide in hand, we set off toward the greek statues, making our way through the apollo gallery and into the medieval world before arriving at the italian-renaissance-packed grand gallery.
at last, it was time to see the mona lisa! i have heard several times how unimpressive she was in real life. maybe part of it was due to the fact that the room was essentially empty compared to what it normally contains (i.e. ten thousand asians), but i was neither disappointed nor underwhelmed. i was able to stand right up in front and found myself pretty amazed. though i will say we were equally entertained by the enormous veronese painting on the opposite wall depicting their adaptation of the wedding at which jesus turned water to wine. it was like a where's waldo painting. we took some photos, including this three man selfie (four including mona), then moved onward to check out the da vinci, raphael, and michaelangelo masterpieces back out in the grand gallery. swoon.
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| very flattering shot |
we wandered a little while longer before ending up in cooper's favorite area packed full of marble statues and such. it was here that the "guards" started corralling us out of exhibits and back toward the glass pyramid so they could, presumably, get their asses home. here's the deal: there was a torrential downpour happening outside. these were not ideal times to be leaving an area with a roof over your head. we held on as long as we could inside, but the attendants were actually starting to physically push people through the revolving doors.
i felt like i was in that scene in titanic where jack and rose are posted up on the front of the ship, its highest point as it was sinking into the atlantic, holding on to one another and talking strategy on how to not drown. we stood there, pressed into the glass walls of the pyramid, until woosh! out the revolving door and into the arms of the mighty atlantic! (okay, so it was just rain… work with me) what was once the majestic courtyard of the louvre became the expansive divide we had to survive to get to our lifeboat: the métro. the wind and rain were sweeping sideways so intensely that we had to run diagonally to be able to propel ourselves forward. that part is not an exaggeration.
after what felt like seventeen solid minutes of running, we found brief shelter in a tunnel shared by many fellow pedestrians and passing cars alike. the tunnel was beginning to flood and the tidal waves created by the vehicular passersby were hardly a solace, so we broke free and sprinted the few blocks to our métro stop, finally safe from the mother of all storms. amazingly enough, the three of us seemed to be the only ones in the entire public transit system that looked like we'd been thrown into a pool. stupid americans. i think there is something magical about the nondescript black umbrella carried by every parisian. could've sworn i saw one girl pull it out of her bra. i digress.
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| so much fly |
once we were back in our neighborhood, we were searching for food when we realized we were slowly growing the we-are-lost-so-you-should-probably-offer-to-help-us-then-really-rob-and-probably-kill-us bulls eyes on our backs. we quickly ducked into a sweet little pizza place out of hanger and desperation and were pleasantly surprised to find a friendly couple making delicious pies. we shotgunned both a pizza and a bottle of wine in record time before returning back home to play cards and maybe have more wine...
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| home turf (view from our balcony) |
