Three Major Tourist Attractions, Two Carleton Students, One Day

The title is pretty much what I did yesterday after our first and only class of the day. We had five hours before a little reception at CUPA so me and Anna went first the the Tour Eiffel. We wandered around a little and then looked for lunch. We found a little grocery store where we bought a small baguette and some goat cheese, plus this crazy nutella snack and drink all in one sort of thing. Anything with nutella is fantastic, but it was a little weird to have juice connected to it. Still, it was tasty. I also hope I don't get sick of bread and cheese, because I sure eat a lot of it.

Then we took the metro to the L'Arc de Triomphe and wandered around there for a little bit, which was cool. All of these places I'd visited when I went to France with my high school exchange, but it was neat to be back. After that we headed over to Notre Dame, where I got to do something I'd never done: climb to the top. (It costs money, but we have CUPA ID cards that let us into a lot of things free, because it names us as L'étudiants de l'histoire d'art). Despite the wait and all of the stairs. (So many stairs!!! It was one long, never ending spiral staircase to the top). And despite being forced to spend 5 minutes (it was actually probably more) in the gift shop on the way up, the view was worth it. And the gargoyles? pretty awesome.

Then we had the reception, which was pretty much drinking some juice, eating some super tasty pastries and sort of meeting a couple of students at CUPA (which is the center for about 50 students from various US colleges, who are in Paris for the semester, and are taking classes in Paris universities).

That night my "parents" had a babysitter, so I ate dinner with her after the kids had gone to bed. It was slightly awkward. Half the dinner was spent in awkward silences, and the other making small talk about school, family and so on. But I also had dinner an hour earlier than normal, so I could go to bed a bit earlier. I got to sleep in this morning though.

Today we had one class in the afternoon, and it was a museum visit. Me and Anna decided to meet for lunch and wander the museum (Musée d'Orsay) for a little bit, because we would only be looking at specific rooms for our class, and not the whole museum. Lunch was tasty. (I think everything here is). I had an orangina, and then a sandwich with goat cheese and salmon (I wasn't positive that's what it was going to be when I ordered it, but I panicked at the last moment because I wasn't sure what to order and it was my turn...and I saw it had goat cheese, so there you go.) The Musée d'Orsay is a pretty cool museum. It's an old train station, so the interior layout isn't like your normal museum. There are a lot of sculptures, as well as a lot of super famous pieces of art. It was a long day though, and it was a little tiring to go back in and stand and listen to our professor, but it was interesting to actually hear more information about some of the pieces. Because for the most part, when we weren't with the class, there wasn't really a way to find out more about each piece, or what was happening in a painting. We'll be back at the Musée d'Orsay next week, looking at a different set of paintings. (Today was mostly neo-classicism and romanticism paintings). I'll have to go back again too because I have a short oral report on the gallery of photography there (which I looked a today and is all one guys work, and it's older stuff. So that should be neat to look at more in depth).

And that's pretty much what I've been up to. It's weird to have hit three major Paris locations in one day, and see so much in my first week here, and then realize I still have two more months. Of course, there's always things to see in Paris.