Leah and I arrived in Paris Saturday after an odyssey....involving carrying months worth of luggage through Lyon's metro system....and five flights up a winding staircase to the man's apartment we are staying in. The countless stairs, pounds we carried, and temperature of 90 plus degrees didn't stop us from reaching our destination.
This place is great, except one really weird thing. The shower is in the kitchen. It's not a separate room to the side there's no rhyme or reason, there's just all the components of the kitchen and instead of a dishwasher there's a shower head and curtain. If you ever want to get some water boiling while shampooing this is the place to stay.
Pink shower curtain
That night, we met up with my cousin Maggie's friend who lives in Paris! Yong took us to his friend's art opening and then we went as a big group to dinner. We all walked along the canals, which had the most incredible bridges. Dinner didn't end until 1am! Yong and his friends have been living here for a few years, so we all could speak to what we've learned about French culture and what we've found the hardest about living here.
Sunday morning Leah and I went to the Marché des Enfants Rouges, one of the oldest markets in Paris. We bought breakfast crêpes and fruit.
We went to Pont des Arts. Countless people come to this bridge in Paris every day to write the name of their special someone on a lock, lock it on the bridge, and throw away the key. I made a lock!
Can you spot it?
Next we arrived at the Louvre and in line we ran into our friend from our program in Lyon and her mom. Small world! We all went to go see the Mona Lisa.
And the Raft of the Medusa, one of my favorite paintings of all time. I studied this painting in my philosophy course in school! It depicts the survivors of a wreck of a French ship in the early 1800's. The survivors form the shape of a pyramid which directs the eye to what could, or could not, be a ship on the horizon. No one knows which direction the ship is sailing. You can see the hopelessness of the survivors and wonder whether the ship would be sailing towards, or away, from them. It's a matter of how you choose to view the painting.
This painting sparked quite a bit of scandal as well, Géricault studied cadavers to more accurately paint the bodies of the starving survivors. Additionally, Gericault spiked controversy because he chose to depict the wreckage of a boat that crashed due to the incompetence of a captain appointed by the French Monarchy.
Leah and I then walked around the Louvre for hours. I could live in there! We paid extra for audio guides which really helped up to appreciate what we were seeing.
After the Louvre, we went to Notre Dame! Our timing was great, because we got there during the Sunday night mass. During the mass, they still allow visitors to walk around. I had the opportunity to see both the beauty of the church and then the Catholic ceremony.
Next we went to Shakespeare and Company, the English bookstore of Paris. This is a famous location because many great and famous writers spent time here writing, such as Hemingway, James Joyce, F.Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound (many "beat" poetry writers as well). The store is mentioned In Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast." It was magical to be there.
The upper level is full of antique books and there were little cubbies on the wall where people write notes on the back of a receipt or scrap of paper about their best experiences in Paris and leave them.
After writing my little note for the wall, I was very interested in looking at a book and accidentally mistook another girl for Leah, saying in French "here's your pen!" She asked me where I'm from, and I learned that she's Canadian and had lived a year in Lyon herself. Well we all immediately hit it off and talked for awhile, we went to dinner by the Seine!
Speaking to one of the men working there, he told us that we could find the "dream machine" of Gysin and Burroughs at the Beat Hotel, now called the Vieux Hotel of Paris. Gysin thought of this idea of a machine while driving on the roads of France. The way the sun was flashing through the windows of the car, combined with the passing scenery of the French countryside put Gysin in a dream like trance while he was awake. They designed the dream machine to recreate this trance before and while they wrote.
This hotel, a flea and cockroach ridden mess was the place where Burroughs wrote "the Naked Lunch." The sheets were changed every spring, there were no windows, and there was one bathroom for about 40 rooms, so you can imagine how this might give a writer angsty inspiration.
Of course, we went to the hotel ( now a 4-star) and asked to use the dream machine. We were led to the back room of the hotel to a rotating cylinder light. We turned the lights off to try!
Next, because it was her last night in Paris, our new friend asked us to go with her to the Eiffel Tower to see it light up at night. Although it was already almost midnight and the tower is in the complete opposite direction of our apartment from the Notre Dame, we decided to make the 40 minute walk there.
What a great way to end the night!
Paris graffiti
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