City of the week: Parigi - Paris

Interaction of the day:
Me:  Pourquois le troisieme etage non est ouvert?
Security:  C'est ouvert, vouz prendez le ascenseur.

Me:  Why is the third floor [of the Eiffel Tower] not open?
Security:  It is open, take the elvator.

When we stand in line for the elevator we see a sign:  3rd floor is closed. 

So anyway, the security guard at the Eiffel tower had no idea what he was talking about.  We ended up getting a nice french lady to take a picture of us.  Unfortunately, the picture is on Sara's camera and I don't have it yet.  So you'll have to wait.  Hopefully I'll get it from her soon.

Anyway, let me start again from the beginning.  So the original calender that the director of Kent's study abroad program gave us said that we had Tuesday through Friday off due to the Thanksgiving holiday.  However, in reality, we were only supposed to have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off.  We were taking a one credit hour class called the post-modern city taught by Giandomenico Amendola, who is a sociologist and world famous urban planner.  It was supposed to be a three week long class.  But, because of M. Sabini (the director who makes mistakes a lot) we only had 2 weeks of the class.  This is torture.  Giandomenico built up a case for his class, week by week, class by class.  He was two thirds of the way into his story, and now I'll never get the ending!  How can you start a story like that and then stop???  It was a great class.  I really like to hear the different disciplines/point of views on cities that I've been getting this semester.  We've had a class taught by a historian and by a sociologist.  Unfortunately, we never got to complete the sociologist's class.  Kent's ineptitude strikes again.

So anyway, class was cancelled because all of us had plane tickets or planes for Thanksgiving.  I caught the Tuesday flight from Pisa to Paris Orly on Tuesday afternoon.  For the most part, everything went smoothly.  I bought a metro ticket and found the apartment that Sara and I were going to stay at.  She had actually arrived on Sunday morning and was staying with her friend from highschool, Pelham.  I found the apartment easily enough, and Sara was inside waiting for me!  She had picked up a bottle of wine and ingredients to make dinner.  We made dinner and drank the wine and since Sara was still jet-lagged we stayed in for the night.  I watched a bad, dubbed, film called "american special forces" or something like that.  It was dubbed into french, and it was american special forces unit involved in bad action sequences.  It was pretty bad and yet somehow entertaining.  Sara was asleep already, so I didn't even feel guilty about watching it.  Ha!

So the next day we went to the Louvre and the Musee du Quai Branly.  The french prime ministers have a history of creating public works before they leave office.   For example, le Defense, the Grand Arch, the Glass Pyramid to the Louvre, etc.  Jacques Chirac got Jean Nouvel to design a museum for non-western art and artifacts along the bank of the Seine near the Eiffel Tower.

 

It was really interesting to see how similar the beliefs, art, and artifacts of african, american, asian, and oceanic tribes were.  We saw tons of masks, totem poles, pots, etc.  The building was pretty nice.  It was really dark, but I liked it because of it.

I forgot to mention that we went inside Sainte-Chappelle as well.  It's a small chapel within the French Judicial complex (which houses their supreme court amongst other things).  It was originally built to house the crown of thorns.

Sainte-Chappelle is renowned for its stained glass windows.  The pictures and stories displayed are not that impressive by themselves.  However, the collection and the sum of all the stained glass is quite impressive.  There was scaffolding over the main altar unfortunately.

After the Musee du Quai, we were so close to the Eiffel Tower we decided to visit and take a few pictures.  My camera is pretty nice.

So from there we walked down Rue Cler.  It's a nice little street with markets and open air stalls with people selling shit to you lining the street.  We got there around, hmm, I'm not sure.  But it was dark and the markets were closing.  However, thanks to Rick Steve's guidebook we went to Cafe du Marche.  Sara had a pasta with cream and truffle sauce, and I ate a chicken.  It was all good and very cheap (for Parisian standards at least).  Dinner was good and then we walked slowly and made our way back to the apartment.

On Thursday, we tried to go to the Georges Pompidou but they were on strike (and they stayed on strike for the rest of the week) so we couldn't go inside.  That was a bummer.  We ended up going ot the Musee du Orsay.  On the way there a van ran into the temporary barriers that surrounded the wet concrete that was being poured for the sidewalk.  The barriers ended all over the street, I ran in the street and through the barriers on the wet concrete and stepped in it by mistake.  Hopefully my Sperry's will be immortal.  Anyway, the Orsay was nice.  We then walked down the Champs Elysees where they were having a christmas fair.  I got some hot wine and Sara got hot chocolate.  It was fun.  We went form the Louvre towards the Arc de Triomphe.  We climbed up the Arc and took pictures and it was all quite nice.  Yada yada yada.

The next day we went to Versailles.  In Versailles town we found a market that was giving us whole chickens.  We got a chicken, a shish kebab, and a load of potatoes for 10 euros.  We ate most of it.  After we saw the chateaux.  It was really cold and windy in the gardens.  But, the chateaux was outrageously large and obnoxiously baroque. 

I feel like I'm forgetting to tell you guys things... I'll have to re-read this in a day or two and edit it and add stuff.  I still have a few more days of Paris with Sara to tell you guys about.