To begin the weekend, Margaret and I headed off to see the catacombs around 9:00 am on Saturday. After waiting until they opened at ten, we walked down a very narrow, very tight spiral staircase for quite a while, and then began our circuit of a portion of the old quarry tunnels that criss-cross the limestone beds below Paris. It was fascinating to see engineering inscriptions dating from the late 1700's, which is the first time anyone thought to get some engineers into the tunnels to make sure they wouldn't keep collapsing. But the most unusual portion of our walk led through the ossuary. Around 1800, when Paris's cemeteries had become so overcrowded that they posed a health risk to nearby neighborhood, hundreds of sets of bones were disinterred and stacked neatly into the catacombs. And we walked past them. It was quite an experience. In all honesty, I didn't feel nearly as unsettled as I had expected I would, as it was very difficult for me to think of the bones as having anything to do with actual people. I took a few pictures, but since I want my mother to continue to enjoy reading this blog (hi, Mom!), I am not going to put them up. The interested/morbid reader can find enough with Google, I'm sure.
And then for something completely different, I headed off to the Musée d'Orsay. Although it was raining a bit as I walked from the Tuileries across the Seine, it was still a picturesque stroll.
At the museum, I was very pleased to discover that I could get in for free as a student, even into the special Degas exhibit. It's a lovely building:
(But the above picture is probably contraband. I didn't notice the signs forbidding cameras until a few minutes into the visit.) After walking through the special exhibit, I headed straight for the Impressionist gallery. As it happens, the gallery is on the fifth floor (sixth American floor) and required a bit of fear-facing on the staircases. But I made it! For the sakes of the Impressionists! The gallery is entirely worth it. There are five or six long rooms filled with wonderful, lovely, colorful, vibrant (and incidentally extremely famous) canvases by such figures as Monet, Pissarro, Morisot, Degas, Cezanne, and Renoir. Oh, Renoir. I can look at Renoirs for solid minutes at a time. I spent quite a long time with the Bal du Moulin de la Galette. (The real thing! For years I've loved that painting!) And the one of the girl on the swing. The links do not at all show the colors, the way in which the light and shade are dappled across the painting, the soft glows of the faces...Oh, Renoir.
I couldn't even make it through the whole gallery. About halfway through, I was overwhelmed and saturated. So I went downstairs and looked at some comparatively light, un-exciting displays of, er, furniture, I think. After a while I could face some Rodin sculptures and a bit of Toulouse-Lautrec, but I will certainly be back another day to absorb more Impressionism. The museum is like a very, very rich dessert - I can only savor a bit at a time.
But wait -there's more! Leaving the museum, I caught up with Kierstin, Caleb, and Mir. The sun finally broke through the clouds, so we spent a very pleasant hour sitting out on the lawn and eventually having a baguette picnic with Nutella and an interesting mild goat cheese Mir brought. Since the sun decided to stick around with us for the whole evening, I went to the Luxembourg Gardens and spent the hour or so before dusk wandering and enjoying the evening. The gardens are much larger than I realized, and have many pleasant twisting paths and unexpected statues.
So much for Saturday. I spent today at Versailles! Since it was a sunny Sunday, the whole place was swarming with visitors. Most of my time was spent wandering the gardens, in part because it took only a few minutes to get into the gardens, as opposed to the hours of waiting for the palace. At the risk of being disbelieved, I'll admit to initially being slightly underwhelmed by the gardens. For one thing, most of them are really more of a park than a garden - rows of pruned trees and smooth lawns, cut by a vast artificial lake. Not many flower beds. And as I walked through the "groves" (lanes through very tall hedge-tree-things), I kept coming upon impressive basins that looked fountain-like but weren't fountaining. This was very disappointing to me.
But my mood improved as I explored the outer reaches of the grounds. After I walked the mile along the Grand Canal, there were many fewer other tourists around, and I found some pretty woodland areas (which may not actually have been part of the gardens, but that's okay). After a few hours, I headed back towards the castle, where I discovered that 3:30 pm is a magical time of day, because that's when all the fountains begin spouting! Then I was perfectly content.
Near closing time I tried my luck at the palace tour. The line was much, much shorter, but the people were still packed into the rooms from wall to wall, which wasn't too fun.
I think the visit was still worthwhile, though I'm not likely to return to the palace. (The gardens may be a different matter.) The decor was opulent to the extreme, and it was fun to see a real palace.
The last few pictures from the above batch are from the Hall of Mirrors, which really was the most beautiful room on the tour.
By the time I caught the RER C line back into the heart of Paris, I was quite tired, with aching feet and over 200 photos on my camera. Then it was time for dinner! Chau-time this week (chow time! ha.) took place at a nice little restaurant/bar that Caleb discovered just one RER stop from the dorms. There was live music, and an interesting menu. Setting a personal best in the field of adventurous eating, I opted for a dish that turned out to be chicken, some rice, a small dish of yogurt with mint leaves, some greens, and an unusual mini-quiche sort of thing with finely-diced zucchini and more mint. I ate it all except for two-thirds of the quiche! And it was tasty.
I've had a very full, very good weekend. Now for more spectra!
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