Rainy days at the Louvre

We had a class at the Louvre the other day, but I am a genius and brought my digital camera sans memory stick, so I didn't get any pictures until now. Today Paul took us on a tour of the Louvre as a monument, so stay tuned for a brief synopsis of the 800+ years of the building's history.

We convene in the central courtyard of the Louvre. The glass pyramid, designed by the Chinese-born American architect I.M. Pei (much to the chagrin of Parisians), was added in the 1980s and serves as the entrance to the museum. Although starkly modern in its use of glass and steel, the addition reflects a sensitivity to the museum's integrity in that its pyramid shape calls to mind the first Egyptian treasures the Louvre held. Also, since the glass is alternately reflective and transparent depending on the weather, visitors' attention is ultimately drawn back to the surrounding architecture of the historic courtyard.

It was kind of a yucky day today, but the Louvre is still pretty in the rain.

When the construction on the Louvre began, the site was actually in the countryside just outside the city proper of Paris. As the city limits expanded it became more central-- now it's right in the middle of several busy thoroughfares. It's hard to get a picture of a lot of the Louvre at one time because it's ginormous, but here's the part of the facade that bears some of the earliest and most ornate architectural detail.

Like this Medusa head! Paul says the popularity of the Medusa in French architecture is probably due to the revived interest in classical Greco-Roman iconography.

When construction on the Louvre site began in 1190, the intention was to use the structure as a fortress for the protection of Paris during the Crusades. Until the 1980s no one knew that part of the original medieval foundations were still in place underground. This part of the Louvre is built over the site where the original castle stood.

Once inside the Louvre you can tour the remains of the medieval foundations. Here we are in the area that would have been the moat. The glass-protected feature on the left is part of the supports for the original drawbridge.

These heart-shaped engravings, found in multiple places on the fortress walls, were made by the original stonemasons. Ancient graffiti!

Kristen poses in the keep.

The Louvre was transformed into a palace in the 1350s and housed the kings of France until the mid 1500s, when it underwent renovations to make it less fortressy and more hospitable.

The Louvre courtyard was once fully enclosed; a fourth wing connected those on the left and right in this picture. It was burned down in the 1870s, though, so now the courtyard is only bordered on three sides, affording onlookers a view of the Tuileries garden and even L'Arc de Triomphe, in the distance.

Following the Revolutionary sentiments of the late 18th century, the Louvre became a museum open to the public in 1793.

The next series of pictures are from the stunningly overdecorated private apartments of Napoleon III, who lived in the Louvre.

I love the giant circular couch! This would have been the main reception room for visitors to the palace.

Everything in these rooms glitters. It's mesmerizing.

I have a not-so-secret love of opulent chandeliers.

These chairs are so unusual and cool. Paul explained that they were made this way so that three women could sit on it simultaneously and whisper gossip to one another without looking conspicuous. Facing them away from each other also allowed room for the giant skirts to drape over the edges of the chair.

I'm inside the glass pyramid.

Across the street from the Louvre is the Seine River.

We love pictures where we can sneak the Eiffel Tower into the background just to remind people that we're in Paris.

Molly was dying for a picture where she could look cute with her parapluie.

Hey look, my first view of Notre Dame!

The advertising on the side of this restaurant is awesome.

Our day ends with our first visit to Le MacDo. Elizabeth tried some kind of hot chocolate that also possibly had powdered banana and/or wheat in it, it was hard to tell from the packaging. I got a diet coke-- when they ask if you want the "petite" size, they're not kidding!

Then I walked myself several blocks in the wrong direction and it was dark before I found my way home, because I have zero sense of direction. The end!

Encounters with egg cups / Le Marais

As with yesterday's entry, we will begin by having some laughs at my cultural ineptitude.

I should begin this story by saying that dinners at my host family's house are something of an enigma. I have never had a dinner with all three of them at once, for instance-- on the first night Louise and her dad ate with me, then one night I had dinner with just the dad, and on other nights it's been both parents. Also, the things they serve never seem like cohesive dinners: one night we had cold cuts and a bowl of celery coleslaw, another night we had broccoli cooked with bacon, and another night we had salmon lox on bread. Tonight might have been the strangest night yet, though, in terms of the dining debacle.

Louise popped her head in my room at around 8:15 (we normally eat late) to tell me that dinner was ready. I followed her into the kitchen to find that only one plate was set, and my host mom was apparently on her way out. More puzzling than the lack of dinner partners, though, was the dinner itself: a halved avocado drizzled with red wine vinegar, and two soft-boiled eggs sitting next to an egg cup at the side of the plate. Between the avocado and the eggs was a tiny bowl of sea salt, complete with miniature spoon.

What was I supposed to do with this meal? I assumed the avocados were meant to be eaten with a spoon, but the eggs were more of a mystery. I remember egg cups from when we lived in England-- people would crack the tops off the egg and dip rectangles of toast into the warm yolk. Somehow I thought that that probably wasn't the intention here, though. I decided that whatever my eventual course of action, it would be necessary to rid the top half of the egg of its shell.

But apparently that was wrong. Midway through my peeling act, Louise came in and gave me a very puzzled look, then went off in very rapid French in a tone that indicated I was doing something wrong. I understood that she was probably concerned that I assumed the eggs to be hard-boiled, and would bite into one and be sprayed by molten yolk. Finally I said to her, in English, "are you saying that the insides are still gooey?" "Ouais," she confirmed, with a smile.

She left for a minute and I decided it would be best if this whole dinner debate ended as quickly as possible. I scooped out most of one of the avocado halves, but had to forgo the second, and tried to separate out the remainder of the egg innards but ate several shell fragments in the process. My mom had also indicated I could partake of the fruit basket and yogurt, so I grabbed a kiwi and a container of yogurt and smuggled them back to the safety of my room. The small-scale adventures, I expect, will never end here.

While we're on the topic of amusing French food, consider the following snacks I bought today at Franprix (competitor to Monoprix):



From left to right, we've got: Barres (Chocolat Noir), a granola bar variety that I buy because it's the cheapest that the supermarchés carry, but also because they are tasty goodness; a breadstick-type snack product called Flutes, which are made with carbs, cheese, and butter, from what I can discern from the packaging, and probably pack about 1,000 calories per stick but it's totally worth it; fruit biscuits, also cheap; a doll that I bought at the Musée de la Poupée; sugared "cacahuetes," which may or may not be cashews since it sounds kind of similar; and finally some roast-chicken flavored ridged potato chips. How best to describe these chips... let me just say that if heaven has a vending machine, these chips will be in it. I am seriously considering sending a care package of French snack foods to my U.S. address, just because they're better than anything I've ever eaten.

Alright, now that I'm done singing the praises of pantry staples, I will take you on a whirlwind tour of Le Marais, a former swampland that is now home to a charming Renaissance-era neighborhood of Paris.

Here we are at the Hôtel de Sully, one of several hôtels particuliers (former private mansions) in Le Marais. We are standing in the stone-paved courtyard that would have served as a driveway for carriages bringing visitors to the mansion. The building is now owned by the state and contains offices for the Ministry of Culture and Communication.

A passageway leads to the gardens and former master/mistress's quarters of the Hôtel de Sully. The precise, well-cropped garden is typically French, according to Paul, and contrasts with the more natural, overgrown style associated with English country gardens.

The entrance to the Hôtel Carnavalet, another hôtel particulier that has been converted into a museum on the history of Paris.

Inside the carriage courtyard of the Hôtel Carnavalet is this amazing statue of Louis XIV. Paul pointed out the interesting contrast in Louis' attire: his hair is contemporary to the 17th/18th-century, but the artist has presented him in the wardrobe of a Roman warrior, presumably to suggest that his status equals that of the great men of Antiquity.

Here we are in front of another architectural marvel: l’Hôtel de Soubise. Although most of the building was erected in the early 1700s, it incorporates a portion of an earlier residence. The turrets visible in the upper left corner of the picture are the vestiges of the Hôtel de Clisson, a 1300s manor house that once occupied the site. Now it's used to house part of the French National Archives.

Before Paris underwent a city-wide initiative to clean and restore its historic buildings, all of the facades looked like this hôtel particulier. Paul told us that the black deposits are due to the pollution of diesel fuels; for some reason this building has escaped governmental pressure for a similar revamping. The wooden doors are decorated with twin Medusa heads to discourage unwelcome visitors.

So that's your architectural history lesson for today.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who's been leaving comments-- it's nice to know my lame jokes are being appreciated.

Boursin: a delicacy for the simpleminded

I'll explain the heading for this entry by relaying the conversation I had with my host parents tonight at dinner (with Dave Sedaris-esque translations).

Dad: Do you know the cheese Vacherin?
Me: No, I know it not.
Mom: One can buy it solely in winter. We must snack on it after dinner.
Me: I am in accordance.
(we snack on the Vacherin)
Me: Mm!
Mom: You enjoy?
Me: Oui! (then, after a pause) There is a French cheese that I like, which is called Boursin, but in the United States it is very expensive.
Mom: Ah oui, le boursin! It is not expensive here.
Me: Yeah, I saw it in Monoprix, less than two Euros.
Mom: Yes. But in France, that is not considered a real cheese.
Me: Oh... I like it.
Mom: I will buy of the boursin for you. But it is not a true cheese.
Me: The Vacherin is like the fondue.

So just in case you thought buying that $6 boursin from the Busch's cheese section makes you cultured... it apparently doesn't.

In other news, I had my first Louvre visit today. We spent an hour in line getting our unlimited access student cards, so now in theory I can go back whenever I want. We spent a lot of time looking at 18th-century female painters (Vigée-Le Brun and Vallayer-Coster, for those wondering) but on the way out we passed the headless statue of the Winged Victory, and I had another one of those gasp-of-realization moments that I'd had when I first saw the Eiffel Tower. It was incredible to be five feet away from something that had only ever existed in my Humanities 101 textbook.

Meanwhile, back at home, Tilo was busy retching all over my possessions. Just kidding, but I did wake up this morning to discover that he had had a little kitty barf on the one blanket I brought from home. Since I was already late for my first day of French class and didn't know the word for blanket or vomit, I decided not to tell my host mom until later ("vomir" turned out to be the appropriate verb).

Speaking of French class, it went well despite being three hours long. Mondays and Wednesdays are going to be looong mornings. It's pretty interesting though because we are required to speak entirely in French (not like UM, where the "French-only instruction" means that the prof talks to you in French until she has something important to clarify, and the students whisper in English during the lesson). At the Institut Catholique (le "Catho") you can't whisper in English to your neighbor anyway, because the classes are international. In mine we have American, Japanese, Taiwanese, Peruvian, Thai, and Korean students. It was interesting and a little confusing to hear the various students' first-language accents coming through as they spoke French. My professor is really nice though, and she seems like she'll be a stickler for correcting our pronunciation mistakes, which is good. Tonight at dinner I was telling my parents that my French prof is actually Italian (not that you can tell from her perfect French) and that her name was Madame Palmiero, and my dad laughed and said, "Ah, she must use her hands a lot when she talks," then added "PALmierO!", imitating the sort of accent that Americans always use when they're impersonating pizzeria chefs ("Mama mia! The cheese-a is perfetto!").

I really hope the class helps me become more conversational in French so that I can talk to my host family more animatedly at dinner. Right now I mostly say "oui" et "merci" and "ah!". I thought I'd known a fair amount of French before I got here, but it turns out that the kinds of things you learn in high school and college French are not really all that applicable to everyday conversation. I have a lot of random phrases stuck in my head that are more or less useless in casual conversation ("He is going parasailing" "Do you think the windbreaker suits me?" "This changes nothing"). In talking to the other girls in my program, though, we realize that we are largely at a loss for the things we need to say to our families on a daily basis ("If I bought a pack of yogurt at Monoprix would you mind if I stored it in the fridge?" "I was wondering if there is a laundromat near here" "Tilo vomited on my blanket this morning"). All in good time, I suppose.

Musee de la Poupee, Musee Grevin

Before I get into the real point of this entry, consider the following image:




Chicken and thyme flavored potato chips! Love it!

Anyway. So I woke up this morning and decided it was a lovely day to knock a few items off the extensive List of Amusing And/Or Bizarre Places to Visit in Paris, which I created before I left home. I called Elizabeth and we decided on a duo of themed attractions: the Musée de la Poupée, and the Musée Grèvin.

The Musée de la Poupée was a several-room collection of dolls, dating from the early 1800s to the present. I wanted to go to this museum because I have a genuine interest in dolls, having been a connoisseur of Barbies and the American Girl Doll fad, but also because large groups of dolls scare the daylights out of me. I've selected some of the best pictures to represent our visit.

Aww, cute little turn-of-the-century dolls.

Is this politically correct?

Fifties Housewife Doll instructs pupils in the art of wife skills.

I feel like this picture should have an lolcats caption. "ATTACK BABY: PWNAGE IMMINENT."

The museum also had fertility figures and dolls from other cultures. The one on the top is a voodoo doll with pins stuck into it. What I want to know is whether the intended victim really wore that awful pink checkered dress.

Thus concludes the doll museum, so now it's time for the Musée Grèvin. A lot of the waxworks were of famous French persons that Elizabeth and I didn't know, but we posed with them anyway.

Me and the Governator, one of the few American celebrities that the Musée Grèvin deemed worthy of inclusion.

Jean-Paul Sartre and I discuss existentialism and the reason for No Exit's anticlimactic ending.

Apparently these women are comic French characters? Elizabeth blends in so realistically.

They had Rhett and Scarlet!!

Joan of Arc and I are stoic because we are about to be burned at the stake.

I contract Black Death. ("Bring out yer dead... bring out yer dead..." "I'm not dead yet!" "You will be." "I'm feeling better!" "Bring out yer dead..." "I'm going for a walk later!")

Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!

Charlemagne and I are pals.

Elizabeth assists Leonardo da Vinci with his latest invention.

Maybe if I stare Hemingway down his writing won't suck so much.

Shopping

No pictures today, because blogspot apparently can't handle the National Geographic-esque onslaught of photos that I have been attempting to weave into my entries. But that's okay because I didn't take many pictures today anyway, since I was too busy shopping until my feet fell off.

My first and most important mission was to locate a hair straightener, since I wasn't allowed to bring mine due to European voltage incompatibility (according to the people who went last year, converters did not prevent their electronics from frying). In yet another poorly-constructed sentence, I asked my host sister if she knew of a good place to find the device ("As-tu une suggestion pour un edroit ou je peux acheter un....") but realized I didn't even begin to know how to say hair straightener, or blowdryer, or anything that might help me explain my need. "It is for... the hair..." I attempted, pulling a section through two fingers to imitate straightening. "Ah," said Louise, mercifully understanding, then told me that I could probably find one at the "grande surface" near the St. Placide metro stop. After meeting up with Erin, who was enjoying a $13 French onion soup at a nearby cafe, we set off. Despite getting temporarily sidetracked by a FNAC store, which turned out to be the equivalent of a Best Buy, I did eventually find a straightener in the Montparnasse centre commercial. Unforunately I also spent like, my life savings on it. C'est la vie.

After the successful purchase of the hair straightener we embarked on a long and far less successful search for a specific pair of boots that Erin had seen at a boutique, but couldn't find any in her size. Since we were nearby we also took a jaunt to Le Bon Marche, which Wikipedia tells me was the first true department store in history. It was very "aesthetically pleasing," as Erin said, but about as expensive as a Saks, so we limited ourselves to trying on some hats and critiquing the architecture. Outside the Bon Marche we ran into an anti-colonization protest parade (one of the banners proclaimed that it was anti-colonization week. Is it usually pro-colonization week?) which was interesting, but since our student handbooks clearly state that we should avoid participation in any social or political rallies and protests, we were obliged to keep walking.

Today was my host sister's 22nd birthday and I thought it would be a nice gesture to get her un petit cadeau, so our next stop was at the chocolaterie near my apartment, where I had one of my landmark victories of language. The shop was set up with some prepackaged chocolates and truffles, but for the most part you had to indicate which of several homemade chocolates you desired and estimate how many grams' worth you wanted. I asked the vender a question about the pricing, made three selections, and told him that I did not want the total package to exceed 300 grams, all in French. I was happy when he responded entirely in French, too, since most Parisians have been humoring our attempts to pose questions in French before they cut us off and finish our thoughts in English. Even if the responses are too complicated or the questions too fast, it makes me feel better when a Parisian speaks to me in French because it's an indication of their faith in my ability to comprehend. Not that I always do, but I'll never improve if they keep narrowing their eyes and repeating things slowly in English. Louise looked surprised when I presented her with the assortment ("J'espere que tu aimes le chocolat...") but gave me a grateful if awkward hug nonetheless. Now I'm at home eating taboule and some sort of chicken pita sandwich that I purchased from another Monoprix, which incidentally had the same giant psycho chocolate bunnies as the last store. I have decided to purchase one of these bunnies so that I can be like Dave Sedaris in Me Talk Pretty One Day ("the rabbit of easter. he bring of the chocolate.") and also because it's the funniest and/or most horrifying Easter candy I've ever seen in my life.

So that was my first Saturday in Paris. Tonight Erin and I are going to see Atonement (in French it's Revien-Moi, "Come back to me") at a local theater, but we don't know if it'll be in French or English. We're hoping it'll be English with French subtitles, which would be an amusing change of pace in the world of foreign films. I hope there won't be a lot of other Americans there though, like there were last night at the Eiffel Tower. Apparently the Americans come out in droves after sundown in Paris, because I heard more English under the Tower last night than in the whole week I've been here. And of course it was also the English speakers lounging around on the grass, sitting between each other's legs and yelling to their friends across the street, or shelling out pocketfuls of Euros to purchase mini light-up Eiffel Tower keychains. For the first time I wanted to pretend I wasn't one of them, but someone who actually belonged in this city, or who at least deserved to be here appreciating its culture. Despite all the times I've been one, I just wanted the tourists to go home.

I have the feeling this blog is going to have a loooot of pictures

So that tour was yesterday. A few of the girls went out afterwards to check out some bar they'd heard of and/or to see the Eiffel Tower at night, but the rest of us took the Métro back to our apartments. Paul had warned us that the people on the Métro can be a little weird, and we're definitely finding that to be true. If a car is totally empty, for instance, and you plop yourself down in a seat, the next person on the train may come and sit RIGHT next to you, and then you are forced to have an awkward "excusez-moi" encounter when your stop arrives. Also the men have no reservations about staring at you if you happen to be a youngish, moderately attractive woman. One of the girls in our group even said that a guy licked his lips at her in the Métro the other day. Paul assures us, however, that Paris is exceedingly safe.

Molly and I decided to wait until today to see the Eiffel Tower. We're going to be visiting it for our Paris by Site class, but it's not until the end of the semester and it seems odd to live in Paris for four months and not even see its most famous landmark. She lives in the 16e arrondissement, so she's not all that far from the Tower, but I'm more centrally located in the 6e, so I had to take three Métro lines to get there this morning. None of the stops are right on top of the Tower, though, so I had to get out and walk for the last fifteen minutes. I walked down the Boulevard de Grenelle and turned the corner, looking at my handy Paris Pratique guidebook to make sure I was going in the right direction. According to the map, I was close-- I looked around to see if I could spot the Tower on the skyline. Nothing to the left. I turned to the right and literally gasped.

There it was, right in front of me, the feat of engineering that turn-of-the-century Parisians abhorred as an ugly, industrial eyesore, but which has since become a symbol for their beloved city and its brilliant ingènieurs. It's one thing to see something over and over again in pictures and movies, but to get off the Métro and wander uncertainly down the Quai de Grenelle until you find yourself within mere blocks of it is quite another. I followed the dirt concourse of the River Seine, casting not-so-furtive touristy glances at the world-famous monument across the street, and smiled at the thought of that first moment, the sharp inhale and realization of "oh my God, there it is." This was why I had come to Paris. I want life to take my breath away.

As I got closer I got better pictures.

I met up with Molly under the Tower. We dodged some Bosnian beggars asking for money and got in line for a ticket to the première étage, mostly because it was cheapest to only go to the first floor, and we'll be climbing to the top with our class in June.

From the first floor of the Eiffel Tower the people look like tiiiny ants standing in line to overpay for their tickets.

On the first floor there was some sort of global warming exhibit, which included this ridiculous picture of a seal.

It's me in front of the River Seine!

Molly poses next to what is undoubtedly the smallest taxi in Europe.

Sorry Ji Li, I don't buy my Asiatic Specialties from traitors.

The text on this news magazine says "Generation Obama: Can he change America?"

The bunnies are freaking scary! Look at their eyes!

Easter is so much more intense in France than it is in the States-- at least the candy. We went to a Monoprix, which was sort of the equivalent of a Meijer, and there were entire aisles devoted to this specialty Easter candy. You can get chocolate rabbits of all shapes and sizes, in addition to eggs, bells, snails, seashells, roosters and fish.

And, apparently, Strawberry Shortcake! But in France she's called Charlotte aux Fraises (Strawberry Charlotte).

They sure do love Mr. Propre!

And that concludes the photo tour for today. Tonight we're going back to the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up, and then out for dessert to celebrate Elizabeth's birthday. Au revoir!