Only a week left in Paris?!

Yes that is correct. We leave for Lyon next Thursday. Insane. Where has the time gone?? As excited as I am to go on more excursions, I will definitely miss Paris. It really is like no other city in the world. And I'm now enough of a Parisian to:

• read part of Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and recognize all the places he's talking about cause I was there this morning (no joke I really was)
• ride the metro home by myself like it's no big deal
• wander around without a map until I run into a metro to get home
• have perfect strangers (usually French ones) ask me for directions on the metro or street and be able to explain it to them (also in French)
• have a couple favorite pastry shops and know where not to buy crepes
• be annoyed by the stereotypical American tourists who are doing all the wrong things and being extremely rude
• have bread 3 meals a day
• be in love with nutella
• be used to eating dinner at 8 or later (or should I say 20h?)
• not be surprised by walking into a cloud of cigarette smoke on the way home, or anywhere really (but it still freaks me out when they swing their lit cigarettes while passing you on the sidewalk. they could totally burn you! as if secondhand smoke isn't bad enough!)
• not be fazed by a police check on the metro
• and my personal favorite:

• leading my French friends around Paris without a map because I know the area so well (!)

Crazy. And the other day I climbed the stairs out of the metro realizing I had no memory of walking out of the metro. It was so routine to find the right exit that I didn't even think about it! It made me so excited haha.

But don't worry, I've been soaking up all that's left to do in Paris. Are you ready for the rundown of the last 3 days?








Monday:
We went to the Opera again to see la Grande Salle cause it was closed the last time we were there. And we happened to also get tickets for Wednesday night to see the ballet in the Phantom of the Opera's Opera house. More on that later.

ignore my weird face I think I was mid blink

I was in the Opera, wearing a dress, had to curtsy!

 Then we went shopping on the Champs Elysees after I found my souvenir for my Dad! Can't tell though, it's a surprise :) I was hoping to get my gift for Annica-perfume- but holy cow it's so expensive here! 70+ euro for one bottle, that's more than 100 dollars! So that didn't happen. But it was fun trying all the perfumes, it's all fancy. I was way out of my league haha. And I embarrassed myself in H&M asking the vendeuse if they had any wallets. The word for wallet is portefeuille, and that sound (feuille) is notoriously difficult for Americans to say. She looked at me like I was crazy. Apparently I was saying port-fay, when you really say port-eu-fay. They sound practically the same to me, but they are evidently very different.

Tuesday:
I met one of our old french exchange students Aliénor for lunch at the Jardins du Luxembourg. She was in town for Roland Garros (the French Open) with a friend so it was perfect. It was super fun getting to see her again and I managed to talk in only French while understanding almost everything they said!!! Yay! Plus I led them around the Latin Quarter which was really funny seeing as they are from near Paris and I am an American.  (haha she also said she had to look up where the Latin Quarter was on wiki to figure out where to meet me) And they said that my french is really good! That was really good to hear especially after the wallet incident haha.

Me and Alienor

After lunch and class, we decided to go finish the Latin Quarter walk, the required one for this week. So we wandered around-most of it was pretty familiar cause we are there a lot. We found the narrowest street in Paris, it's called "La rue du chat qui peche" the street of the cat who fishes. The street is right next to the Seine, and during the Middle Ages, there was a cat who would fish and bring it's catch to the little alley and eat it. So to describe that road, people would always just say "oh it's the one with the cat who fishes". I think that is so cool.

I think it's exactly my height across!

We also found this random niche by the Academie Francaise and had some fun taking pictures in it.

Four of us squished in

Wednesday:
Went on my favorite walk of the whole trip this morning. I had done part of it with the 462 class, but me and Rachel decided to finish it. First we went to the Musee Cluny, which is the museum of the middle ages. It was so cool! It is housed in a Renaissance Hôtel (not a hotel, but that's the word for the fancy houses the rich would build in the city. Sort of mini-chateaux). But half of the museum's walls are from a Roman bath situated in the same spot. The walls are really high and still standing. Super cool. Here are some highlights of the museum:

These are the remains of the original statues in Notre Dame. They were decapitated and defaced during the Revolution because even though they were depicting Old Testament Kings, the people thought they were kings of France. Plus they were very anti-religion anyways, so they just destroyed whatever they felt like without organizing it or anything. This is the reason Victor Hugo wrote the Hunchback of Notre Dame--he was pleading for Paris to restore it before it disappeared. In his time it was a ruin and the revolutionaries had used it as a barn to store animals.

There was also a really cool sword exhibit, showing how swords changed, why there were important as weapons and symbols. It was fascinating. This is the sword of Charlemagne.










This guy was killed by a sword, you can still see the marks in his skull.

In addition to the viking swords and various other types, they found these little toy swords, and displayed them with a playmobile guy. The exhibit was actually super creative I loved it. They had famous sword scenes from movies playing on the walls, including Monty Python--"I'll bite your legs off!"

Well there's a lot more to tell, but it's way too late and we have an excursion early tomorrow to Ecouen, another chateau near Paris. And I'm meeting up with my roommate who's coming down from London! I'll have to finish up tomorrow. Night!