Day 23: Birthday

Wednesday was my birthday.  This post is going through a lot of editing; if you'd like a more real version of it let me know.

The morning started off well.  I got a delicious pastry called an Opéra, which was almost as heavenly as the hot chocolate from Angelina's.

Yum yum yum

It was the last day of class, and so we concluded with Amélie, one of my favorite movies.  It was amazing to see it again after having been to most of the places in the film, including the restaurant at which Emily and I ate that first weekend we were here.  It's such a feel-good movie, too.  So I was feeling good.

Then we went to lunch at Pizza Bob's, a very cheap place near the Bastille.  I really wanted a hamburger, but the cook just said "No." when I ordered one, so I got a panini instead.  It was yucky, so I ate a lot of fries.

Yuck yuck yuck

It rained off and on for the whole day.  After lunch we went to the Opéra Garnier, which is the opera house off of which the Phantom of the Opera is based.  Apparently there was no chandelier accident to the extent that the book/musical/movie has, but at one point in its history a chandelier did fall, killing the person sitting in seat 13.  Creepy!

Outdoor view of the opera house

The visit was fairly disappointing; we couldn't really go many places inside because a dress rehearsal for the night's show was going on.  The parts we did get to see were very pretty; I've been spoiled by the architecture here.

Inside the opera house

My favorite part was a giant library we stumbled across.  I felt like Belle from Beauty and the Beast, my own personal salvation from the afternoon.  And then I looked closer, and realized the library was entirely composed of opera scores, which made me even happier.  I accidentally found the score to Gershwin's Porgy & Bess, which was a real treat.  I looked really hard for Carmen but couldn't find it.  

I want to go to there (again)

In one room of the library there was a display of model sets from openings of famous operas.  There were a few scenes from Tristan and Isolde, which made me really happy.

Model set from Tristan and Isolde

After the opera house we figured we were right nearby the Galeries Lafayette and stopped by.  It's this giant shopping mall filled with designer clothes/bags/perfume/makeup.  Ridiculously expensive, but pretty.

Galerie Lafayette

Much later in the afternoon we saw a movie that will never receive an MPAA rating without extensive editing, Antichrist.  My initial thought after the movie was wanting to throw up and "WHY??" because it was filled with an obscene amount of disturbing content and extremely graphic violence.  The only thing I feel comfortable enough posting here is a fox eating itself.  That's the tamest scene of violence in the movie.  If you want details, ask, but don't eat beforehand.

I wanted to write off the film immediately as horribly vulgar and tasteless, but after been given a few days of reflection, I wouldn't like to do that anymore.  I don't want to merely classify films as "good" or "bad," as I stressed in my last entry, and that's precisely what I did initially with this film.  So although it was incredibly out there and wasn't entertaining per se, the director succeeded in making us think extensively about his work, and I can appreciate that.  I'd like to write more about the film at a later date.

Dinner [elliptical edit there] was at an Italian restaurant, which was alright.  I had lasagna, which ended up not sitting so well.  Then I came home and read nice messages from my friends and family, so that's what counts.

Walking total for the day (why am I so infatuated with this?): 5.8 miles.

Day 22: Film Critic Guest Lecture

In the morning we saw La Heine, a painful portrait of three disadvantaged youth in the rundown suburbs of Paris.  It was tragic and raw, one of the best films we had seen thus far.

Lunch was held in our favorite patisserie that we go to every morning for breakfast.  I tried to get the formule for six euros but was charged eight.  But the woman I usually ask for orange juice is always  really nice to us so I didn't complain about it.

In the afternoon we had a film critic give a guest lecture.  I won't provide her name so I can offer a critique without feeling bad if it were to pop up on Google or something.  She got her start with Variety as a film columnist, which I thought was amazing.  Her lecture was mostly really interesting, and she painted an incredibly attractive picture of Paris as a sanctuary for lovers of the arts to live.  "In France, art matters," she said.  "It's not optional."

Which is not the case in the US, as she kept pointing out.  Arts programs are no longer a staple in schools, an increasing problem as the economy continues to dwindle.  And even while the US is self-sufficient in entertainment and exports (most countries headline American films in their own theaters), art itself is not valued.  Here critics don't explore cinema as a forum for discussion; they broadcast their star ratings and decide what is "good" or "bad." 

I absolutely agree with that statement, and no longer want to do that in my own writing.  Why does a "review" mean that the self-perceived goodness or badness of a film must be preached?  Why can't things be more open-ended, and the cinema heralded as art?

Because Americans (me included) are constantly in consumer mode.  If one doesn't think a film is going to be "good," one generally doesn't want to "waste" his/her time on it.

All these issues were discussed throughout the presentation.  It really undermined my whole perception of reviewing film, and made me sad that we don't appreciate art in the same way the French--and really Europeans--do.

So this first part of the lecture was thought-provoking and extremely worthwhile.  But then came the Q&A.  Aliko asked a question about French national cinema, and I asked a question about jobs as a film critic.  She danced around both questions for a long time, but never answered either.  And so it ended on a disappointing note.

Nonetheless the first part has stuck with me since Tuesday, and I'm glad she addressed those issues.

Walking total for the day: 5.9 miles.

Day 21: General Fail

Another morning, another African film (Life on Earth) I couldn't tell you much about due to exhaustion and lack of sleep (a frustration on which I can only elaborate privately).  Sadness.

After class it was pouring and I was feeling crummy, and decided not to join everyone for lunch due to lack of hunger.

Instead I thought of the wonderful book I've been reading, Hemingway's A Moveable Feast.  It's basically a blueprint of Paris, and every word he writes is just so lovely.

So I was thinking about what to do with myself for the day, and ultimately decided on la Closerie des Lilas, a café which Hemingway frequented when he lived here (I read about it a lot in Feast).  I grabbed my umbrella and braved the rain as I headed to Monoprix to buy batteries for my camera and then to the Montparnasse district to check out the café.  

I got there and it was still absolutely pouring.  But I found the place fairly easily and glanced at the menu before walking in.  Then I did a double take:  26 euros for an appetizer.  So I'm guessing that any place Hemingway frequented that was cheap in his day is now terribly expensive because he once sat there.  It makes sense I guess.  But it was so very sad.

Feeling defeated, I turned around and started walking back toward the metro.  But then I catch a glimpse of an ice cream place to which Monsieur Wyatt told me I should go.  So I walked over, and look at the menu because then I was starving.  And low and behold, two scoops of ice cream was nine euros.  Maybe for my birthday, but not that day.

Ultimately I decided it was a fail of an afternoon and went back to the Cité to buy lunch at the unfortunate cafeteria.  I walked up to the entrance and looked at the clock, which read 2:20.  The cafeteria closes at 2:15.  Fail fail fail fail fail.  No lunch.

For dinner we headed back to the cafeteria, which was open this time.  But the food was not eatable.  The meat had too many bones and too much fat.  No dinner.  Feeling hungry and dejected, I just decided to call it a day as the majority of the group went to Montmartre to see Milk, which I'd already seen before.

Walking total: 4.7 miles.

Day Twenty: Giverny

Once again Emily and I headed to the Gare St Lazare, but this time we were successful in our quest to Monet's house and gardens in Giverny.  We got to the train station an hour and a half early to ensure getting the tickets in time, and spent that time scaring pigeons who were being annoying.

After a fifty minute train ride to Vernon, we took a 20 minute bus ride and finally arrived at our destination in Giverny.  

There's nothing quite like this place - a very pastoral scene with a vast array of beautiful flowers.  

Just one of the hundreds of amazingly beautiful flowers.

We were even able to go inside his house, which was amazing.  

Outdoor view of Monet's house

Unfortunately no photos inside.  Each room had a very bold decorating scheme - one a very bright yellow, one an even brighter blue.

The pond was quite peaceful and almost breathtaking in its beauty.  

The pond

Les nymphéas (water lillies) that Monet was so fond of painting

And at the end of the trip, the gift shop was deadly - I spent way too much money there, but got some cool souvenirs.

Monet's grave outside a nearby church

When we went outside, the rain had started.  The terrible rain that came and went off and on from Sunday to Wednesday.  But we made it back safely, and then went to Angelina's, where the hot chocolate is heaven in a cup.  

There's really no other way to describe it.

Then we came back to the dorm and I did my last binge posting from the previous week on this blog.  Exciting!

Walking total: 6.0 miles.

Day Nineteen: Lunch?

I call this "lunch?" because that was the one thing I did last Saturday.  We walked to a crepe stand fairly close to the Cité, and I got a panini.  Then I was feeling sick and slept a lot, then tried to watch Six Feet Under to no avail.  Whenever I try to watch Megavideo here (using a wireless connection), I watch about two minutes and it says that I've watched 72 minutes and that I have to wait an hour to watch any more.

So here's an observation I made at lunch a few days before - on 6/3 we ate at the Bottleshop again (the restaurant owned by UW alums).  I remember when I first ate there, the second day we were here.  I remember being horrified by the prices of everything and not wanting to go back.  When I returned last week, I looked at the menu and realized that everything was quite cheap in terms of Paris cuisine (menu was 9-11 euros, something like $13-16 dollars).  And that's relativity, sadly.

Also, at the film school a few days previously, I picked up a cinema magazine and read an interview with Eric Cantona, soccer player and star of Looking for Eric (Cannes film festival winner and a movie we saw in Montmartre a few weeks ago).  He gave some advice that I find to be extremely true:

Il faut rester constamment dans la création.

(One must constantly be creating.)

I realized that I am most unhappy when I'm not practicing or creating in some way.

Walking total for the day: 2.6 miles.

Day Eighteen: Food and a "Jazz Club"

In the morning we watched Abouna, an African film that again I couldn't tell you very much about.  Yikes.

For lunch we hit up MacDo once again, this time near the Bastille (which is a few blocks away from ACCENT, where class is held).  In my opinion it was quite delicious.

I love MacDo and I am not ashamed

ICE!!  A commodity very rarely seen here.  I tried to treasure it.

And then we got gelato - the flower styling method seems to be popular here.

In the evening we went to the Latin Quarter in search of a jazz club, something I really wanted to do while here since I'm not legal to in the US.  

Le Caveau des Oubliettes, which heralds its "jazz" performances in the window.

It started off okay -- a trio of a guitarist, a drummer and a keyboardist.  The keyboardist was a bit distracting, in one of his improvisatory choruses of the F blues he held a stationary Bb for 3/4s of the chorus, and insisted on using the same jazz organ patch while the group switched to several genres where jazz organs don't really belong.  With the introduction of the female singer, whose English accent and already nasal tone resembled that of Eartha Kitt, came several English songs I wasn't aware of, one of them "Boy" and a few others I don't remember.  Then there was a song about 'café' in Italian.

But the pivotal moment of the performance for me was definitely the last song we stayed for - "These Boots are Made for Walkin.'"  Quality jazz right there.

Called it a night fairly early and hoped the next day would be better.

Walking total: 4.4 miles.

Day Seventeen: Centre Pompidou

While the morning was spent watching Code Unknown, a film I unfortunately couldn't tell you very much about at all, the afternoon was spent at the Centre Pompidou, Paris's modern art museum.  I will admit that I didn't think I would be at all interested in the museum, as we never studied much modern art in school (surrealism, but that's it), but I managed to have a good time.

I guess I'll start out with the depressing part first to get it out of the way.  They're doing an exhibit called "elles @ pompidou" (dedicated to women artists, who get virtually no credit in the art world...or any other world for that matter, as the exhibit showed me), which was good to see.  And yet, if you have to distinctly create an exhibit dedicated to women because otherwise there's not enough by women artists in the museum...that's not good.

And then at the end of the exhibit, they had this poster in English.  I don't really want to describe it so I'll just post pictures.

And no one actually cares about those months.

This poster put me into an existential crisis for a few days.

But I'll end on an extremely high note, if one can appreciate it.  My absolute favorite moment was this:  we were getting into the surrealist section of the museum, and as the tour guide gave a lecture on a sculpture in the room I thought I heard the violin part of one of my favorite pieces of all time, "Liebestod" from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.  

The song is the opera's conclusion, and (spoiler alert!) Tristan has just died in Isolde's arms.  The song begins with her denial of his death, a love song describing his physical features.  Even then you can hear the tinges of insanity that are about to explode in Isolde's mind.  And while her song is strangely beautiful and one of the most emotionally affecting in all of Western music, the orchestral accompaniment is the truly powerful element.  The strings first have an ascending, agitating  and chromatic line, crescendoing finally until Isolde goes completely insane and eventually dies of grief.  The piece's climax is one unmatched, and if you haven't ever heard it, please do; it's wonderful and it's heartbreaking and it's insane.  (Can be found here; watch the whole thing for full effect.)

I tell you all this because I did indeed hear the violin part in the museum, and when I turned around I saw an avant garde film of Salvador Dali playing.  Just hearing "Liebestod" and seeing the inital second of his film I was instantly moved.  So the strings are building to this incredible climax, and the film is crosscutting between two lovers and an orchestra playing the piece.  And when the piece finally reaches its climax--the moment in the opera where Isolde is the most heart-wrenchingly insane--the conductor stops conducting, for he has gone insane; he clutches his head and does John Cleese's "silly walk" into the other storyline. 

I love, love, love Dali for this musical connection.  I fortunately started video recording at exactly the right time, so I have it on my computer if anyone's interested.

Walking total:  6.6 miles.

Day Sixteen: Père Lachaise

Today in class we were supposed to watch Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, but unfortunately the DVD was lost.  Aliko tried to show us another film, but it didn't have subtitles and we gave up.

So after lunch we headed to Père Lachaise, a very famous cemetery.  The most visited graves are that of Jim Morrison, Chopin, Edith Piaf, and Oscar Wilde, respectively.

I don't have a problem with going to cemeteries, but I must admit that hearing children laughing and screaming at recess at a nearby school while walking past the Holocaust memorial was a little bit creepy.

Jim Morrison's grave.  They used to have a statue of his head there, but too many people were climbing in and touching it, so it was removed.

As I stood at Chopin's grave I was trying to run through a few measures of each of my favorite piano solos of his in my head.  I suddenly remembered one I was enamored with in high school, Polonaise Op. 26 no. 1 in C# minor, and decided to make it one of my summer music projects.  I more or less like this rendition.

I was taken aback to be next to such greatness.

Edith Piaf's grave.  On the other side it lists Marcel Cerdan, her lover who tragically died in a plane crash...

...and this quote. :)

Oscar Wilde's grave...

...covered in kisses!

In between seeing all these graves, two awesome things happened.

#1

Kitty was very shy at first - she kept running away when people tried to pet her.  Then everyone in the group gave up but me, and I coaxed her and eventually got to pet her.  AND THEN SHE CRAWLED INTO A TOMB AND DISAPPEARED.  Zach got a video of it; it was pretty creepy.  But I enjoyed our time together.

#2

This kitty was actually sleeping IN a grave, next to Edith Piaf's.  At first everyone was petting him, until someone said that his fur was all matted and he seemed very sick.  So everyone said "EW" and left, except for a few other people and me.  One girl, Lauren, started feeding him pieces of crossiant with butter, and he immediately perked right up!  Faker punk kitty.

Walking total: 7.3 miles.

Day Fifteen: La Fémis and La Défense

The morning was dedicated to a visit at Paris’s prestigious film school, La Fémis.  We received a tour of the building and got to see HD cameras and various other equipment used for filming.  We were even able to walk onto a set, which was a little surreal.  It’s amazing how detailed every room of the “house” set was – and there was even a pseudo-backyard, which was only used for shots of the window in the set kitchen, when parts of the “yard” could possibly be seen out of focus.  I was very impressed by the intricate detail provided by these film students.  I'm still very inexperienced with all this though; I look forward to the progress I hope to make in the next 2-3 years.  We also got to see a few student films.  Two out of three resembled a professional film in its camerawork, acting, and writing.

Here's a secret: I picked up an application.  Don't tell anyone that my French isn't so good...

The "outdoor" set

In the afternoon we had a guest lecture with Professor Bernard Bastide, a film professor at the Sorbonne who worked closely with Agnès Verda, the director of Cléo from 5-7, for four years.  He wrote his thesis on the film and gave us an hour lecture on its important themes and basis of inspirations.  The subjective reflection of time--namely from Cléo's perspective--was an important topic of discussion, as well as the film's reflection of societal fears of the time - cancer and the Algerian war.  He also showed us paintings that were inspiration for Cléo's character, which were valuable insights.

After, the boys, my roommate and I decided to check out the metropolitan district of Paris.  We can see the skyline from out room, and I thought the area might be cool since I'm in love with the big city feel.  But boy was I wrong.

So far so good...

L'Arc de Défense.  Not particularly beautiful, but we're still doing okay...

And then this happens.  Yep, it's a thumb.  I'm in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and I am looking at a giant thumb.

So we got out of there fairly quickly, after harassing pigeons (a new pastime of mine) and attempting to feed them scraps.  The pigeons were big and dumb, but these ninja sparrows kept on flying in exceptionally quickly and stealing them.  I was proud.

Walking total: 7.2 miles.

Day Fourteen: La Place des Vosges, Climbing l'Arc de Triomphe, and MacDo on the Champs Elysées

One moment from Day 13's post I forgot to include: when I was at the Monet museum, standing in a room filled with his most famous artwork, I saw a woman slowly walking to each painting, then looking down at her left hand and smiling before moving to the next one.  Here's what I perceive to be some of the most beautiful art ever created, and this woman is constantly starting at her engagement ring.  My guess was that she was recently proposed to in this "city of love," and this made me smile for the rest of the day.  Extreme cuteness.

Anyway, on to Day 14 (this will have been June 1; I am very behind).  The morning was wonderful because we didn't have French class anymore and film class was postponed to the afternoon, so most of us slept through it (the morning, not class for once).  A "normal sleep pattern" is something I most look forward to upon arriving home in the US - a lofty ambition but I'm going to try.

But the movie of the day was Cléo from 5-7--pretty much the last New Wave film we watched (which brings the total to...four?).  This film was an almost real-time account of two hours in the life of a self-centered singer worried about her health.  I really enjoyed this concept, and the film's general manipulation of real-time through the eyes of the characters.  There were still elliptical edits, so it wasn't really just two hours (and the film time was something like 1:30) in the film world, but more or less it was faithful.  I also was interested by its undercutting of the Hollywood concept that every narrative element (love interest, conflict, etc.) must appear at the beginning minutes of the film.

After the movie, Aliko (our professor) took us on a walk to the Place des Vosges, which is the oldest square in Paris.  It was commissioned by Henri IV in the early 1600s.  Wanna live there?   It's only 1,390,000 euros.

Places des Vosges

Victor Hugo lived there!

Later in the evening, the boys in the group, my roommate and I went to L'Arc de Triomphe to make the climb.  I'm growing a little weary of the statement "it's the best view in Paris!" because of its constant usage to describe a lot of different places, but the view was very beautiful.  Atop the L'Arc a family heard us speaking English and asked us to take a picture.

"Where are you from?"

"Wisconsin, how about you?"

"Colorado.  Go Badgers!"

Yeah, that's right; he didn't even know we were students at UW.  Greatest state in the Union.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - a flame that hasn't gone out since 1920.  And Jackie O had JFK's eternal flame lit because they visited this one together in 1961.

The best shot I could get of la Tour Eiffel

Not a great picture of me (I've had terrible luck), but the Eiffel Tower looks cool.

After we were kicked out at 11, we saw the sparkling light show on the Eiffel Tower and made a very important decision: to go to McDonalds on the Champs Elysées.  For those who don't know, this is a very chic, expensive part of town.

Classiest McDonalds in the world.

A glimpse of the inside.

Check out how small that Coke is.  And it was 2 euros.

The meal was expensive -- 6,80 euros I believe -- but I have to admit, I did get better service there than I have in the past at the McDonalds near my house.  That is to say that no McDonalds employee had taken a bite out of my cheeseburger prior to giving it to me.

Walking total: 7.6 miles.

Day Thirteen: Musée Marmottan Monet

Last Sunday I was still feeling pretty crummy but forced myself to get out of the dorm.  My roommate and I first tried to go to Giverny, to Monet's house and gardens (an excursion which we finally succeeded with today).  

We went to the Gare St. Lazare to buy a train ticket -- 24 euros -- but the machines wouldn't take our UW credit cards.  So we went to a ticket booth, and when I said "Je voudrais un billet pour Vernon s'il vous plait," the cashier immediately responded in English.  I wouldn't have been too disheartened by that if the exact same thing didn't happen with the next person I talked to.  Is my accent that bad?

Time was running out -- it was noon and the train left at 12h20.  A woman stopped me, asking "Do you speak English?"  A question that I now realize always should be answered with "Je ne comprends pas," because she shoved a piece of paper at me (something about someone being held captive in Bosnia...something I might have believed if I hadn't seen her again today with the same act) and then demanded that I gave her money.  I said no and tried to walk away.  I saw that same woman being escorted away by the police today, and I smiled.

In the line waiting for a train ticket, a very tall woman harassed this poor station worker.  "Monsieur...pourquoi vous ne venez pas ici?  Je vous ai appellé cinq fois."  (Mister, why didn't you come here when I called you?  I called for you five times.)

"Je suis très désolée mademoiselle..."  (I am very sorry miss...)

"Ne m'appelez pas ça, je ne suis pas ta copine!" (Don't call me that, I'm not your girlfriend!)

And then we missed the train.

But luckily my roommate had another idea:  the Monet museum in the 16th arrondissement, the Musée Marmottan Monet.

Unfortunately this was the first museum that A) we had to pay to get into (our student ID cards say we're Art History majors and get us into all the major museums for free), B) did not allow us to take pictures, and C) was a contributor to my misery in gross illness (it's a sad story, don't wanna talk about it).

BUT, the museum had a lot of amazing originals.  Including this one, which I had no idea was there:

Impression, soleil levant.  Unarguably one of the most famous Impressionist paintings in the world.

There were also some Nymphéas (Water Lillies) paintings, as well as the Gare St. Lazare.

In one room of the museum, a film was playing, showing the most famous spots in Paris as seen from a helicopter on a big screen.  The film was absolutely beautiful.  And the best part?  During each scene, a different song depicting Paris was played.  And finally, FINALLY, I hear not one but two renditions of my all-time favorite song, "I Love Paris"!!  :)  Not as good as the Kenton arrangement, but still, I had waited for this moment for a few weeks.

And the gift shop was dangerous, in that I went back 3 or 4 times and bought more.  There were a lot of goodies there, all of which I cannot disclose here.

So even though the day started out rough, we ended up seeing some truly beautiful art.

Side note:  at the dorm, there's this study room downstairs that had this photo exhibit up for a few weeks, showing various notable places around the world.  This one just happened to be there:

The inside of the Milwaukee Art Museum :)

So clearly the Greatest State in the Union can be found everywhere.

Walking total for the day: 5.0 miles.

Day Twelve: Swine Flu Scare

Last weekend was really really terrible.  I wish not to publicly describe the horrors of those incredibly long four days.  I truly wish I were being overdramatic.

On Friday-Saturday I exhibited every symptom of swine flu minus a fever.  I was glad there was no fever though.

Friday night was hell, as was Saturday morning.  I tried to go out for lunch to make myself do something and hopefully feel better, but I sat at the table looking at my food and feeling 100% intoxicated with general malaise.  So then I went and slept pretty much all day.

Walking total:  an undeniably pitiful 0.5 miles.

Day Eleven: Versailles

We did not have film class this morning, but we did have our final Survival French class.  I'm very happy to be done with it.  This morning the teacher asked us our plans for the rest of the time we're here, and I mentioned a possible trip to Disneyland and she flipped out at me, saying it was "too touristy."  (Apparently it receives more visitors than does the Eiffel Tower each year.)  And anyone I've talked to knows my thoughts on that class.

Anyway, we didn't have other class today because the weekend was to be reserved for travel.  Everyone was going to go to Italy, but we quickly changed our minds after looking at the final price.  Instead we chose to visit Versailles.

We learned the hard way that we did not in fact have to buy supplementary train tickets; our metro passes would have worked just fine.  It was about a 40 minute train ride.

I remember the Summer Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, where we went freshman year of high school.  The gardens had all these "trick fountains" - buttons planted like land mines would trigger secret fountains in trees, benches, anywhere, and would surprise its unknowing visitor with a water attack.  We were told that the gardens/fountains there were based off that of Versailles, but I didn't recognize a resemblance.

The palace

The Hall of Mirrors

I was a little sad to not have this be an official visit through ACCENT (read: we didn't have an official tour).  When we do have tours they can be exhausting from standing around a lot, but we learn so much about the most intricate things.  I suppose it was good for us all to explore on our own though.

It was amazing to see Marie Antoinette's bedroom and think about the history that surrounds the palace.

La chambre de la Reine

The secret door she escaped through when the angry mobs stormed the palace

After the tour of the Palace, we walked through the gardens and went to Marie Antoinette's estate.  There were clusters of cottages through a tranquil pond and surrounding gardens.  The whole place was quite peaceful, a perfect place for an afternoon nap.

(I tried posting more pictures / a shot of the swan that came right up to us at the pond, but the Internet isn't cooperating.)

After the estate, we headed to a nearby restaurant for dinner.  The waiter was très charmant, and the food was actually pretty delicious.  We decided to get dessert, and he showed us the menu.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est q'un 'diplomate maison?'"

"C'est une surprise!  C'est magnifique..."

So we got it, and he didn't lie; c'était magnifique.

Walking total for the day: 8.5 miles.

Day Ten: Musée d'Orsay

Today's main excursion was going to the Musée d'Orsay, which is famously home to Impressionist paintings.  It was a train station until 1986.

I had been waiting for this day for a really long time - the day I would actually get to see many of the paintings we studied throughout high school in French class.  

Each time I'm in a museum or a cemetery here, it's sometimes difficult to grasp how much greatness is present in the room with me.  It's sort of overwhelming to handle sometimes.

Dejeuner sur l'herbe par Manet.  Taken with our wonderful tour guide Mirek for scale.

Degas!

Monet :]

Last but certainly not least, my favorite Impressionist, Renoir.

About a third into our tour, I saw someone in the hallway who looked exactly like someone I knew in high school.  I figured it was some French person who looked like her, so I walked by and left.  But a few minutes later, I felt a tap on my shoulder and sure enough, three girls from my high school are standing there - Lucy, Cara, and Ashley.  What are the odds?!

That night we went to a frustrating restaurant in the area.  The meal was fairly expensive (I remember it being something around 15 euros per person), and the servers forgot about us for about 30 minutes total throughout the evening.  But all in all it was a good day.

Walking total for the day: a sad 6.3 miles.  But walking isn't that taxing, it's standing around that's killer - so every time we go to a major museum we're pretty dead afterwards.