Paris avec Maman

Late Friday evening, I got off my train from Lille and had my reunion with mamchik: it was almost as exciting as the many public and make-out-filled couple reunions surrounding us. When we got out of Gare du Nord, we spent an obscene amount of time next to a huge pile of garbage, figuring out where to go (even though our avowed mission was to "walk around Paris and find a nice cafe to sit down at"). We finally decided to take the metro down to the Marais region where I decided I had had enough of maps. I said I just wanted to "wander", though apparently what I said in Russian (bradat' instead of bradeet') was horribly mispronounced and merited numerous retellings over the phone. We bradated straight into the red light district of Paris; my mom was so sure that she wouldn't understand anything, however, that she failed to read the names of any of the stores we passed and thus notice that they were all versions of "sexy shop." Only after dinner when I accidentally mentioned the dinginess of the area we had passed, did she realize where we had been. She should be excused though, because even there, we passed two beautiful triumphal arches and the buildings looked like mansions. We didn't get back to our hotel too late, but we stayed up until 4 AM, talking and catching up like little girls on a sleepover.
Mamchik didn't wake up until noon Saturday morning, but maybe if it had started earlier, the day would not have been as perfect. When we got off the metro, there was an awesome Russian band singing traditional Russian music (see video). Once on the streets, we couldn't decide on any of the specific "walks" from our guide books, and we were to spastic to actually follow them anyway. On our second try, we found a nice cafe near the Chatelet where we stopped to have croissants and coffee for breakfast. We then made a detour to the Conciergerie and the beautiful stained glass windows of Sainte-Chapelle before returning back to Marais to continue wandering. We saw l'Hotel de Ville and then walked to the Jewish Quarter which my mom really wanted to visit. As real Jews though, we forgot it was Shabbat until the last second, and when we arrived, most of the cool little shops were closed. We did get to see the little synagogue (photo) and some depressing memorials though, as well as a few Jewish/ Eastern European bakeries. As we continued on to Place des Vosges, we passed lots of nice cafes, shops, and galleries where I mused about how I would grow up and have a house which I would fill up with all of this really cool art (though my loyalty still remains with the little gallery in Colmar).

In the evening, we made our way over to Ile de St. Louis, a beautiful island in the center of Paris with a breathtaking view of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. After thoroughly exploring the island and vacillating between the too many options for dinner, we stopped at a wonderful brasserie right by the water where we stayed until midnight, enjoying the perfect Saturday night as different musicians stopped and played for us. I was feeling adventurous for dinner, so I ordered escargots (still in the shell) and then frog legs. The garlic and pesto escargot was delicious, though I earned a few laughs from neighboring tables when I rocket propelled one of the snails across the table in a valiant effort to use all the correct machinery-apparently it happens "all the time" as one of the ladies said in a strong French accent. After the escargot, we moved on to frog legs. I'm not a huge fan to be honest: they taste a bit like slimy chicken with lots of bones and they also look very definitively like the frog legs/ butts of the frogs that jump around our pool all summer long (I've never once had the urge to eat them). In any case, when we finally got home, we were happy and exhausted.


The next morning, we got up earlier to go explore the Louvre. We got off at Forum des Halles, so we got to walk through the park and see l'Eglise de St. Eustache on the way. The Louvre was beautiful on the outside, as I had already seen, and I don't know if I'm really allowed to say this about the "greatest museum in the world', but the museum itself was miserable. I felt like I was in a herd of cattle with lots of miserable tourists taking pictures and making funny faces with very old works of art that no one appreciated. We saw the Code of Hamurabi and some ancient works in a wing where there were fewer tourists, so that was nice. Otherwise, there were road signs pointing to the Mona Lisa and other "important works." Sometimes the crowd was so thick that you could only see some paintings through the photo you took by holding your camera over the crowd (if you chose to do that). The Mona Lisa was actually very interesting because of the wonderful people watching opportunity it provided. Everyone pushes like crazy to get to the front, they take a picture, look at her for a few instants, and then push back out. People leave so quickly, that if you just stand instead of pushing, the space in front of you clears up in a minute or two, so pushing is entirely unnecessary. There's also always a plethora of people commenting on how "she's nothing special" and asking "why did we come here to see her?" I decided that her mysterious smile was actually a smirk at all the people who were looking at her, taking pictures of her, and guarding her as though she were the President of the United States. There were some nice other paintings by Goya and de Vinci, but unfortunately they were in the main "try not to get run over while looking at art corridor" so I didn't enjoy it that much. The museum itself is too cluttered and full of gold, decoration, and paintings to let any of the individual paintings really shine through; my overall impressions is of long gold corridors with gigantic paintings squished together and stacked on top of each other; we got out soon enough.


From the Louvre, we crossed the river to St. Germain des Pres in an effort to get to the Latin Quarter, but we stopped for a truly fantastic dinner. As we were about to leave, I realized that on TV inside the restaurant, they were showing the fifth set of the Wimbledon final between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer, so we were stuck. It was my first time in a bar watching sports and it was funny to be there with the mixture of Americans and French people going crazy in the dramatic fifth set. Even the Americans were rooting for Federer, though, so I was the lone Roddick fan there. My mom and I challenged each other with predictions, but we were both sure that Roddick would choke, which he did, so that was no fun. Afterwards, it was already late evening, so we headed back to Lille after an almost perfect weekend!

Here's another interesting article from aldaily about Orwell's take on the use of rhetoric and its relevance today: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/46506232.html

Also, there's a few people who automatically get an email when I post a blog...if you want to (or if you already do and don't want to), just leave a comment or email me! And...here's the video