paris, part 3

on our last day in paris, we took a train to versailles and spent the day exploring on our own. it was definitely one of my favorite days of the entire study abroad. versailles was so huge and ornate and extravagant that it's hard to come up with sufficient adjectives to describe it! we started out by walking through the palace and we obviously had to take the ultimate mirror pic in the hall of mirrors. that incredibly beautiful and ostentatious bed pictured above belonged to marie antoinette, of course. one of the reasons i loved visiting versailles is that i am so fascinated by marie antoinette and her life. i really love sofia copolla's film. i love how much it humanizes marie antoinette and shows the reality of life at versailles, and i love that it was really filmed there. it's a beautiful movie, if you haven't seen it. i also want to read the biography on which it was based, and this book that my professor recommended.

after we saw the rest of the palace, we headed outside to explore the gardens and the rest of the buildings and grounds. one of the best things about versailles is that you can rent a boat to row around the canal or bikes to ride around the grounds. we rented bikes and had so much fun riding them around. we rode to the petit trianon, which was marie antoinette's personal palace, and then we rode to her hamlet, which is an idealized french village that she would visit to escape from the responsibilities of court life. the hamlet was unreal. it was so beautiful and picturesque. there was a field where all these animals, from peacocks to pigs, were frolicking together and every little cottage and garden was picture perfect. it's pretty incredible to think that it was supposed to represent real french villages, which i'm sure looked nothing like these perfect, pretty cottages. we learned that they used to groom and perfume the animals before marie antoinette would arrive, and they would lead them around on lace leashes. that's pretty unlike any farm i've ever visited!

versailles was amazing and so much fun to see. afterwards, we headed back to paris to spend our very last night there. we were so sad to leave. paris, je t'aime! i want to come back so soon!

paris, part 2

in paris we visited plenty of museums besides the louvre. the top two photos are from the pompidou, europe's largest modern art museum. it's housed in a very cool building and it was refreshing to see some more recent works in comparison to all of the older and ancient artworks we'd gotten so used to seeing. we also visited the musée d'orsay, which might have been my favorite museum in paris and probably the entire trip. the musée d'orsay has an incredible collection of 19th and 20th century art, and the museum is actually a renovated old train station—so neat! i especially loved seeing all of the familiar works by impressionists and post-impressionists. the degas and van gogh above are found in the musée d'orsay. we also went to the musée marmottan-monet, which is a private collection that includes quite a few works by monet. another highlight for me though was definitely the musée de l'orangerie. it's a pretty small museum located in the tuileries gardens, but it has eight large murals by monet and they were breathtaking. i could have stayed in there forever and i was so sad they had a strict 'no photography' policy.  i was also sad to miss the musée rodin because i came down with a sickness that was going around in our group by the time we got to paris. it was okay though, because i am lucky enough to have visited philadelphia's rodin museum. i guess i'll just have to make it to the musée rodin next time i'm in paris!

because we were in paris for so long, we got to see and do so much and we still had free time! it's probably not surprising that we spent our free time eating. we ate pastries and falafel in the marais, macarons on the champs élysées, gelato in the tuileries, cotton candy at the eiffel tower, french onion soup in the latin quarter, and crêpes and croissants everywhere. the best crêpes are by the eiffel tower, and we spent a whole lot of time hanging out there. we climbed the eiffel tower one night, which was physically exhausting, but so worth the beautiful view of paris by night. once it's dark, the tower lights up and every hour it sparkles. that sparkling is definitely one of the most magical things i've ever seen! our group took a boat ride on the seine one night, which is something i definitely recommend doing if you're ever in paris. it was fun and so beautiful and the view from the boat totally reminded us all of van gogh's starry night over the rhone.

our group also visited the chartres cathedral and the basilique du sacré-cœur. chartres was a beautiful, quaint little town, and it was fun to spend some time there. sacré-cœur is located at montmartre, the highest point in paris, and it has an incredible view of the entire city. montmartre wasn't my favorite, and we didn't spend very long there, as it's also the red-light district, but i know lots of people who really like that area. montmartre is also where the moulin  rouge is located and where the film amélie takes place, as well as the area where many artists and musicians lived and worked, which is neat. i loved paris and getting to see so much of it. we spent our last day there at versailles, which was amazing and over-the-top and deserving of its very own post!

paris, part 1

we spent ten glorious days in paris! i tried really hard to narrow down my photos but it's still going to take me three posts to publish all of the ones i deemed necessary. all of these photos look kind of dreary and overcast, because it rained pretty much the whole time we were in paris. i really like them though; i think they definitely capture the feeling of the city while we were there.

the first thing we did in paris was visit the beautiful notre dame and sainte-chapelle cathedrals and the musée de cluny, which has a collection of medieval art. during our free time we headed to the champs-élysées to see the arc de triomphe and get some macarons at ladurée and to the champ de mars to see the eiffel tower up close for the first time. paris was dreamy and exciting and everything i imagined it would be. and one great thing about paris is the delicious cheap food. we had crêpes multiple times a day and all of the street food was so good. we went to a famous place called l'as du fallafel in the marais and it was the best falafel i've ever had by far.

in paris, of course we spent lots of time in the louvre. three days, in fact. with 35,000 objects on display, of course we could spend three days there and still only see a fraction of it all! some of the highlights pictured above are the nike of samothrace, the venus de milo, canova's psyche and cupid, the seated scribe, david's oath of the horatii, rembrandt's bathsheba at her bath, and of course, da vinci's mona lisa. we walked past the mona lisa during the middle of the day and it was madness. the secret to getting up close is going first thing when the museum opens or last thing right before the museum closes. we went to see the mona lisa just before closing a couple times and it was always totally empty and we could get as close as we wanted! i love the louvre. and paris. two more posts to be continued!