Paris
I'll update again with pictures sometime. But here's the jist of it.
Paris is wonderful but I’ll be happy to head home tomorrow. I’m not looking forward to the plane ride, but there truly is no place like home.
Mostly we’ve complained about wanting liquids. Unlimited beverage refills at restaurants is a concept completely unknown to the French. Four euro for a soda (approximately $5) with no refills is a painful price to pay for a drink. It’s a small drink too, not even a full can in most cases. Even water is expensive because most restaurants don’t want to bring you tap water and instead sell you Evian at roughly the same price as a Coke. I have spent most of my time in Paris dehydrated as a result of this as I could easily spend a large chunk of my savings on refills of Evian water. Wine may sound like a good alternative at a price around three euro for a glass of the house stuff, but each glass is about 25cl (not a whole hell of a lot where I come from) and if you’re eating a three course meal (and trust me, the French could turn a hotdog into a three course meal) it simply won’t last and you’ll have to order a second (which brings your beverage total to six euro) and if you have a third you might as well go ahead and get drunk.
Another thing I miss about the U.S. is space. My hotel room is on what we would call the sixth floor and what the French consider the fifth (this is a devious misrepresentation of the facts in my opinion) and it is quite a hike up some dizzying circular stairs if you don’t take the elevator. Our hotel elevator is about three feet by two feet. This tiny elevator is only for people who don’t mind being pressed against one another (two at the absolute maximum) . Some people in our party have taken to riding it just for fun for this reason alone. There is no space in Paris, but the Parisians have adapted to this by being tiny themselves. The average Parisian male must weigh no more than 150 pounds (if he’s tall) and at least a few of those pounds could be from scarves and hair gel.
As easy as it is to complain about Paris, I am overwhelmed by its beauty and history. An old building in the U.S. is two hundred years old, in Paris the old buildings have been here for a thousand years. The places that are supposed to the most amazing are those that appealed to me the least. Fighting crowds at Notre Dame (though I can’t deny it’s incredible beauty) made the experience less enjoyable. I much more enjoyed places like St. Denis Cathedral (burial place of most French royalty) that were less crowded and allowed me more time to soak things up. Museums abound in Paris, you can hardly turn around in this place without bumping into a museum, but they’re not as much fun for me as some of you would think… I tend to enjoy museums but it is much more difficult here because everything is in French. I don’t speak French so museums tend to lack a little something for me. You would think that with the large volume of foreign tourists running around this place and paying exorbitant entry fees that they could come up with a good translation for us but they apparently cannot.
Art is universal though, it is just as striking when the nameplate is in French as when it is in English. There is just so much to see. There comes a point at which you cannot possibly absorb all of the incredible work in these museums. At the Louvre they have more incredible art than they have space, and they have miles of space. It all blends together eventually and you find yourself thinking ridiculous things like ‘Oh, another Renoir, ho hum’ If even one of these paintings were at the Birmingham museum of fine art people would get in line to see it, but in Paris they’re everywhere. It is impossible to appreciate it all because there is simply so much. Still, I have to admit that it is incredible to look at paintings that I memorized for my art history class. I enjoyed it all very much.
It is not difficult to see why the French dislike us. We are loud, we want things faster and cheaper, we want to speak English, we want to spend dollars, we laugh, we’re large, and we want our damn free refills.
I think I’ve hit all of the highpoints in Paris at this point, and I’m exhausted. We’ve been staying up late and waking up early. We’ve been running from incredible art museum to awe inspiring cathedral and eating baguettes on the way. I’ve had French wine and cheese, and seen the Mona Lisa. I've cruised the Seine at night with good friends. It’s been a fulfilling trip, and certainly a grand end to my education at Huntingdon. Rachel, I bought you a bottle of wine.
Paris is wonderful but I’ll be happy to head home tomorrow. I’m not looking forward to the plane ride, but there truly is no place like home.
Mostly we’ve complained about wanting liquids. Unlimited beverage refills at restaurants is a concept completely unknown to the French. Four euro for a soda (approximately $5) with no refills is a painful price to pay for a drink. It’s a small drink too, not even a full can in most cases. Even water is expensive because most restaurants don’t want to bring you tap water and instead sell you Evian at roughly the same price as a Coke. I have spent most of my time in Paris dehydrated as a result of this as I could easily spend a large chunk of my savings on refills of Evian water. Wine may sound like a good alternative at a price around three euro for a glass of the house stuff, but each glass is about 25cl (not a whole hell of a lot where I come from) and if you’re eating a three course meal (and trust me, the French could turn a hotdog into a three course meal) it simply won’t last and you’ll have to order a second (which brings your beverage total to six euro) and if you have a third you might as well go ahead and get drunk.
Another thing I miss about the U.S. is space. My hotel room is on what we would call the sixth floor and what the French consider the fifth (this is a devious misrepresentation of the facts in my opinion) and it is quite a hike up some dizzying circular stairs if you don’t take the elevator. Our hotel elevator is about three feet by two feet. This tiny elevator is only for people who don’t mind being pressed against one another (two at the absolute maximum) . Some people in our party have taken to riding it just for fun for this reason alone. There is no space in Paris, but the Parisians have adapted to this by being tiny themselves. The average Parisian male must weigh no more than 150 pounds (if he’s tall) and at least a few of those pounds could be from scarves and hair gel.
As easy as it is to complain about Paris, I am overwhelmed by its beauty and history. An old building in the U.S. is two hundred years old, in Paris the old buildings have been here for a thousand years. The places that are supposed to the most amazing are those that appealed to me the least. Fighting crowds at Notre Dame (though I can’t deny it’s incredible beauty) made the experience less enjoyable. I much more enjoyed places like St. Denis Cathedral (burial place of most French royalty) that were less crowded and allowed me more time to soak things up. Museums abound in Paris, you can hardly turn around in this place without bumping into a museum, but they’re not as much fun for me as some of you would think… I tend to enjoy museums but it is much more difficult here because everything is in French. I don’t speak French so museums tend to lack a little something for me. You would think that with the large volume of foreign tourists running around this place and paying exorbitant entry fees that they could come up with a good translation for us but they apparently cannot.
Art is universal though, it is just as striking when the nameplate is in French as when it is in English. There is just so much to see. There comes a point at which you cannot possibly absorb all of the incredible work in these museums. At the Louvre they have more incredible art than they have space, and they have miles of space. It all blends together eventually and you find yourself thinking ridiculous things like ‘Oh, another Renoir, ho hum’ If even one of these paintings were at the Birmingham museum of fine art people would get in line to see it, but in Paris they’re everywhere. It is impossible to appreciate it all because there is simply so much. Still, I have to admit that it is incredible to look at paintings that I memorized for my art history class. I enjoyed it all very much.
It is not difficult to see why the French dislike us. We are loud, we want things faster and cheaper, we want to speak English, we want to spend dollars, we laugh, we’re large, and we want our damn free refills.
I think I’ve hit all of the highpoints in Paris at this point, and I’m exhausted. We’ve been staying up late and waking up early. We’ve been running from incredible art museum to awe inspiring cathedral and eating baguettes on the way. I’ve had French wine and cheese, and seen the Mona Lisa. I've cruised the Seine at night with good friends. It’s been a fulfilling trip, and certainly a grand end to my education at Huntingdon. Rachel, I bought you a bottle of wine.