Paris! Journée 3...

Okay, Day 3! This day was especially exciting because we saw a lot of sights that I hadn't had a chance to go to when my dad was visiting me. First off, we visited the Grande Arche de la Défense, which was built as a sort of mirror to the Arc de Triomphe, but as a monument to humanitarianism instead of war victories. (You can see it way off in the distance from the top of the Arc the Triomphe, along the line of the Champs Élysées.) The Grande Arche is in the shape of like a giant cubic picture frame, and there's a suspended canopy-type thing in the middle. You used to be able to go up to the roof, but it was closed to the public a few years ago.

The Grande Arche is in a really modern district, with lots of glassy office buildings (I believe we even saw a KPMG!), a huge shopping center, and plenty of modern art installations. It's a big contrast with all the historic stone buildings of downtown Paris! We walked around a little checking out the cool architecture, and this crazy art store inside a fancy shopping mall.

Dog in front of the cool art store

Apollinaire's grave

Next, we went to the Père Lachaise Cemetery, probably Paris's most famous cemetery. It was a little bleak and spooky - following Christophe's advice, I decided against taking photos of my little cousin's Flat Stanley doll here. To summarize, there are a lot of really old and elaborate tombs. There's also a ton of famous people buried here, which is why Père Lachaise is so famous. We didn't want to buy a map, so finding our way around was a little confusing, since the cemetery is huge and the paths are all kind of winding, and there aren't signs pointing you to the famous graves. We did find the graves of Guillaume Apollinaire and Marcel Proust, two authors whose books I was reading in my literature classes, which was pretty cool.


From there, we got on the metro and went to see the Sorbonne, which I explained to Christophe as being the French Harvard. The buildings are all historic and really pretty - a little nicer than the Université de Bordeaux campus! You used to be able to tour the inside, but today it's really complicated for security reasons.

Next stop: the Louvre! Aka, the most pretigious art museum in the world. And free for me with my French student ID! We didn't have too much time before it closed, so we ran through to see the most famous stuff so we could say we saw it the highlights. We saw Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, The Lacemaker, and of course, the Mona Lisa. There's a huge crowd around the Mona Lisa, so you have to wiggle your way to the front to get a good look. But then there's a rope and guards blocking you from getting any closer, and a bulletproof glass case around it (the reflections on the glass are kind of annoying). And yes, all the stories about it being really small in real life are true. But the way people complain, you'd think it was the size of a postage stamp. It's just like normal, smallish painting size.¹ Anyways, it's cool to see such a famous/significant painting. We also checked out the Impressionism section and saw a lot of Monet and Degas paintings.

Venus de Milo

The Lacemaker

Mona Lisa

After getting ushered out of the Louvre at closing time, we admired the glass pyramids outside and walked toward the Champs Élysées, looking for somewhere to eat. Courtesy of a certain AJ, we had some delicious steak frites for dinner. And Christophe finally got that cheese plate he wanted!²

I wish the trip could have been longer, but the next day, Christophe headed back to New York and the real world of like work and bills and stuff, and I headed back to Bordeaux and the fantasy world of like studying abroad and going to cool places all the time.³  Merci beaucoup for visiting me, Christophe!



À bientôt!

1. According to Wikipedia, it's 30"X21". Not that small.
2. We had roquefort, brie, and maybe chèvre or brebis, I don't remember the third one exactly. (Chèvre = goat's milk cheese, brebis = sheep's milk cheese.)
3. But now I'm back in California, so don't be too jelly.