Places I Would Rather be on Monday Morning: Forgotten Paris

Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

Okay, you got me.  Paris certainly isn't forgotten. And the Eiffel Tower is probably one of the most recognized structures in the western world.  However, I completely forgot I had taken this picture.  Just goes to show that it pays to revisit your photographs since that's why you took them.

Places I Would Rather be on Monday Morning: Paris in the Spring

Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

Places I Would Rather be on Monday Morning: Riding an Elephant

Les Machines de l'île, Nantes, France

Paris in the Spring

The one nice thing about the way my exam schedule is set up is that I was able to escape for a little while in between the first half and the second half of my exams. My friend Jennie and I ran away to Paris for 5 days after I finished exam four of seven.

Nantes (Dec 26-28)

Number one impression of Nantes was COLD. The city is located on an estuary and there is nothing like the chill of wind coming off the water. Our hotel was outside of the city center so we had to take the tram and a bus to get to it. The room was small and very nautically themed. It could have been a cabin on a hokey cruise ship. We were exhausted from our marathon through Paris so we basically settled in and watched the 'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer' in French before passing out.

The next day was our only actual day in Nantes since we had gotten in after dinner time the night before and were leaving early the following day to get to Geneva. We got up early to face the frigid cold wind again and catch public transport back into town. We had breakfast at a cafe on the main road and then got Nantes day passes so we had unlimited public transport and free admission to a lot of the touristy things. The first place we visited was the castle of the dukes of Brittany. The castle is just off the river and still has a moat around it. It wasn't as big as Warwick castle but it had even more of a fairy-tale-esque feel to it. There was a museum of the history of Nantes inside one of the buildings. It was probably one of the most informative museums I've been to since I came to Europe. Nantes is mostly a residential city now but it used to be a major industrial hub and a political hotspot (apparently the politics haven't completely died out either). Two of its hay-days were during the slave trade and then sugar processing. Nowadays its known on a smaller scale for cookies and candy. There's an old cookie factory across from the castle that has a tower you can climb and look out over Nantes.

We decided that we wanted to over Nantes in a different fashion. Leanna had heard about this place called Les Machines de L'ile which was the reason we decided to go to Nantes in the first place. It's a small sort of theme park with mechanical animals you can ride on. Much of it is still being designed and built but they completed a 14 meter high mechanical elephant that we can ride on like an Indian War elephant. We bought tickets for an elephant ride and got free admission to the machine gallery with our Nantes day passes. The gallery houses the machines that are being built for a sort of carousel inspired by Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. (Random Fact: Jules Verne was born and lived in Nantes.) So far they've built a crab, a giant squid, an Angler fish, and a couple other fish. The small creature holds two people and they all had levers and other controls so the people riding it could move tenticles, fins, claws, etc. One of the coolest things about the creatures was that they were obviously made out of wood and steel. The elephant ride was freezing due to that stupid wind but other than that it was awesome. We don't really appreciate how huge 14 meters is until you actually see the elephant. It was massive. We watched the end of the ride immediately before ours and were shocked to see the amount of expression and personality the machine conveyed. The ears flapped, eyes blinked, and trunk swayed. At randoms time the trunk would spray a mist at any kids who got too close. Watching the elephant go by in the setting sun it was really easy to forget that there was a human driving the machine and it couldn't think for itself. After the elephant ride we headed for the gift shop. We mostly wanted to thaw out a little but being two RPI nerds was also wanted to find some sort of souvenir because we were wowed by the mechanics and physics involved in everything we had just seen. To our surprise there was very little that was unique to the attraction. The majority of the gift shop was devoted to random elephant and sea life inspired toys. There were postcards of the animals but we were hoping for something a little nicer than that. Finally in the back corner we found a few things that at least said "Les Machines de L'ile" on them. The nicest thing we could find were tins with butter cookies in them. We each got a tin because they were pretty nice and had the logo of the attraction on them. It turned out to be a very good decision because the cookies were amazing! Once the tin was empty it proved to be a safe place to store the rest of my souvenirs during the trip.

The last thing we saw before searching out dinner and going to sleep was the Buren's Rings. These rings are set out along the edge of the same river island as Les Machines. They light up different colors at night and make for some pretty pictures. We went at sunset and were still able to get some good shots. Dinner was a quick affair at a cafe followed by chocolate eclairs from a bakery shop. After eating that chocolate eclair I will never be able to enjoy supermarket eclairs as much ever again. It was soooo good.

Once we were back at the hotel it took us a while to thaw out to the point that we could fall asleep. We were definitely not looking forward to our early morning train to get to Geneva, especially if it was still going to be so cold outside. Alas, morning came and it was freezing but we easily made our train and were on our way to Switzerland!

Paris (Dec 23-26)

Arriving at the train station in Paris was an interesting experience. I was trying not to get too excited because I didn't want to build the city up so much that I was disappointed. At the same time I was ecstatic to final be visiting Paris!

The first thing we did was buy our transportation passes for the four days we were going to be in Paris. We had to get 5-day passes because they didn't have 4-day passes anymore. The extra money was well worth it though. Those passes were the only reason we were able to see as much of Paris as we did and believe me, we saw a lot!

The first afternoon we were in Paris we went to the Louvre to check it's holiday hours and then walked from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe. The walk is much longer than you think it's going to be. During this particular trek you walk past the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, Jardin des Tuileries, Luxor's Obelisk on the Place de la Concorde, along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees with it's large Christmas fair which gives way to a high-class shopping district, and finally to the Arc de Triomphe itself. I would guess that it was over a mile of tourist sites one after the other. Add in the crazy Paris traffic and the entire experience was a little over whelming. From the Arc de Triomphe we caught the metro out to the Eiffel Tower. It was definitely dark by then so the Eiffel tower was all lit up. It was lit with blue lights and had the EU ring of stars on the front. I was hoping they had switched it back to gold because I think it looks better that way. It was still an incredible site. We took an elevator up to the very top. The view was amazing. The elevator stops at several levels along the way so people can get out and look around. Absolutely fantastic. Looking out over the metroploitian of Paris, France I found that I had to keep reminding myself that regular people actually live in Paris and go to work and buy groceries and all the other everyday tasks that come up. For some reason I could not wrap my head around 'living' in a place like Paris. I suppose it stems from never living in a big city before. It's just hard for me to comprehend what it would be like, especially in a high-profile city like Paris.

The next day was Christmas Eve. We had a very full day planned because so many places had limited hours for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We got up really early, or so it appeared by French standards, and went to the Louvre first thing. The Louvre is big. Really big. There is no way you can appreciate how big it is until you're actually inside it. The only museums I could think of the may rival it in size are in the Smithsonian. We passed through the ticket line quickly and then battled the early crowd to see the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and the Venus di Milo. Even after seeing the Mona Lisa in person, I still don't quite understand all the fuss about it. Clearly the art historian or conspiracy theorists know something I don't. That being said, I couldn't imagine going to the Louvre and not seeing the Mona Lisa. Because we got to the Louvre so early we didn't have to wage war against the masses of people that arrive later in the day so we were able to see our three "must-sees" relatively quickly. After that we had no idea which wing to go down next. We ended up going into a hall of prodominantly Greek and Roman statues which were pretty cool. We didn't linger in the Louvre for too long because we didn't want to get lost in the maze of galleries and we had a lot more to do that day. As we were leaving through the glass pyramid entrance (we couldn't find the inverted pyramid they go on about in The Da Vinci Code) we saw droves of people waiting to get into the Louvre and were immediately grateful that we had arrived early.

Our next stop was the Pantheon. I personally thought the Pantheon was much cooler than the Louvre. The Pantheon is the location of the original Foucault's Pendulm. There is currently a working replica set up in the same spot. As a big time science nerd I thought that was really neat. I found the crypts below the Pantheon even more impressive. Entombed in the crypts were close to a dozen extremely influential people that were familiar to me including; Rousseau, Voltaire, Alexandre Dumas, Louis Braille, Victor Hugo, and the Curies. Seeing the tombs of the people from my high school textbooks was awesome. Reading about things that happened in the past is fine but nothing beates visiting the spot where something happened or the tomb of the person who did it. It makes history less of just a story and more real.

We left the Pantheon, grabbed some take away macaroni, and set off across town to Montmatre. Montmatre is the highest geographic point in Paris. Sacre-Coeur is a bascilica at the very top of Montmatre and is moderately famous for the the steps leading up to it. Looking up you see white marble steps leading up to the white basilica. Looking down and out from the steps you see Paris spread out in front of you. Every picture taken on these steps in either direction always has people sitting on the steps in it. This is partly because of the views available and partly because it's a hike to get to the top of those stairs. We walked aorund Montmatre for a while and bought crepes which were pretty good. There were portrait artists and souvenier shops and crepe stand everywhere. Leanna said it reminded her a lot of Greenwich Village. I've never been to Greenwich village but I'll take her word for it. We decided that we would go to Notre Dame for Christmas Eve Mass but still had over an hour before we needed to head over to the Cathedral so we sat on the steps gazing at Paris and listening to this guy play the guitar. Further down the steps were other street preformers. There was a woman dressed as a statue of mother nature, another musician, and a guy juggling a soccer ball. I like watching street preformers especially musicians so much more than dealing with people who try to push cheap trinkets.

Notre Dame was essentially having back to back masses for most of the evening and it was still packed. The youth choir was preforming at the mass we attended. The choir was much older than the choir than the youth choir at St. Matthew's but they were still younger than me and very talented. I was very happy the program had the readings printed in both French and English. I've been to many Christmas Eve masses over the years but it's still hard to follow a mass in a different language than you're used to hearing. Eventhough I couldn't understand most of what was being said during the mass, I still thought it was very beautiful and would definitely recommend going to mass there if you ever get the chance.

Christmas morning was interesting. The calendar said it was Christmas Day and we had reservations for Christmas dinner at the restaurant adjacent to the hostel for that night, but it did not feel like Christmas. Everywhere we went on Christmas day was outside because outside wasn't closed for the holiday. The first place we went was Pere Lachaise cemetary. As we made our way out to the cemetary, the city looked like a ghost town. Pere Lachaise must have been the place to be buried starting about the time of the French Revolution if not before. The oldest part of the cemetary is PACKED with family tombs and doesn't have a lot of order to it. As time passed they expanded the cemetary and made it more orderly but its still obvious that you need to have money to be buried there. You can get a map of famous people buried within the cemetary. We found the final resting places of Chopin, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, and Oscar Wilde. While we were walking to Oscar Wilde's very eccentric head stone, we passed a headstone with the name "Beaudet" on it. Perhaps a very distant relative? who knows.

Our next stop was the "Bastille." There's pillar situated across from the Bastille Oprea house where there prison used to stand. The actual prison was torn down over a hundred of years ago. Part of one tower was discovered when during excavation for the Metro and is now in a near by park. I wish they had kept the Bastille around. I think it would have been really cool to do in. Before we continued to our next destination we stopped at a Mcdonald's so I could get a Royale with cheese in honor of the movie Pulp Fiction (yes, I am nerd). One nice thing about Mickey D's is that it tastes the same no matter where you get it including Paris, France.

The rest of the afternoon was spent taking pictures. We went back to Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower to get some pictures that would have been difficult to get both because it was dark out. We also went to the Centre Pompidou, a museum of modern art with an unusual exterior desgin. Neither Leanna nor I are big fans of modern art so we were perfectly satisfied to just take pictures of the outside.

Christmas dinner was good but definitely not the home cooking I'm used to for the holidays. The first course was fois gras, salmon, and cured ham, served with bread. I ate all over it just because I was in Paris and determined to try what they thought was edible. I definitely thought the cured ham was the best option on the plate though. The main course was turkey and roast vegetables. It was alright but nothing special. Just a piece of turkey breast and standard roast veggies. Dessert was a piece of Apple torte with carmel and nuts. By far the best part of the meal. I knew that dinner would have to be really amazing for it to beat what I would have been eating if I had gone home, and for what we paid for the meal there was no way that was going to happen.

The next day we were on our way to Nantes, France. We had covered a tremendous amount of ground in Paris and had seen a lot of cool stuff. Even though it was definitely a Christmas that I'll never forget, the day we left it still didn't feel like Christmas had arrived yet.