Paris Day 8... June 22nd

Day 28...

Today started off as the group getting ready for a trip to Versailles. That didn’t happen because of the lovely rain pour! So we ended up sketching and designing patterns most of the morning along with getting critiques and discussing our assignments. I won’t bore you with those details.

In the afternoon we took the subway over to the Mulan Rouge. We went during day light, so it wasn’t as shocking as it could have been if we were to have gone at night. We took our pictures then headed up the hill to the highest point in Paris. We were following Darrin, and I learned early on he doesn’t normally take the direct route, so we went up and down a large amount of steps quite a few different places, but we did eventually get there.

We went inside of the Sacre Coeur. I watched nuns and priests walk around while everyone walked through and toured the main floor. For it being the highest point in Paris, I wasn’t all that impressed with the inside, but the outside views of the city are incredible. I could see the Eiffel Tower, the Arch de Triumph, and so many different things that looked so much different from at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

A few of us went through one of the little markets we passed on the way up. Some of us got crepes, characters, gelato and of course I didn’t get anything. I noticed that while I have been in France, I have eaten a lot less and shopped even less, I guess I am just ready to go to Barcelona J

~Aller Retour~

Elyse

Paris Day 7... June 21st

Day 27...

Today was a super busy day! I feel like I hit up everything!!!

We first went to the Catacombs, and actually only stood in line for about a half hour. We went down the stairs and I felt like we just walked into a tomb. It smelt like wet dirt and it continued to as I walked further down into the catacombs. The bones and skulls created patterns like hearts or stair step shapes, or lines lining the hall ways.  The lime stone had various colors from the water marks going down it, and of course if water drips down the rock it means it can also drip on me… multiple times.

The next stop was Notre Dame… sadly the line was too long to get inside so we just took pictures outside and boy is it big!!! Most definitely made me want to watch the Disney movie, Hunchback of Notre Dame!

Hard Rock Café was a bit more difficult to find here. Mostly because no one speaks very good English, so it’s a lot like talking to a wall. We got off the Metro and I feel like we walked back and forth for about 20 minutes then we finally found someone that knew what we were talking about. When we were finally seated, I looked around and it looked very similar to the ones in the US, TVs on the walls scattered everywhere, guitars sticking out of or on the walls, finally France had the feel of America for a few seconds!

The Paris Opera House was our final stop for the day! Everything went by and took us a lot less time than we originally thought! The exterior is magnificent! The stairs leading up to it, the dome roof, the pillars arches, you name it! Then I went inside and it is twice as incredible! I stood in the same place Phantom of the Opera was filmed. The Interior Stair cases are amazing, and the detail work put into the carvings and sculpting and paintings is some of the most complex I have seen.

The rest of my final free day in Paris consisted of relaxing and trying to catch up on blogs. And im sure you can guess, hardly happened at all.

~Folle Journee~

Elyse

Paris Day 6... June 20th

Day 26...

Free day in Paris, which started off with a few failed attempts…

First a group of us decided to go to the Catacombs, and as it turned out, they are not open on Mondays, but are open every other day of the week, ironic sense it’s not Sunday. And of course we didn’t find that out until we got to the ticket office. So we used to metro tickets for that failed attempt. A lot of people were planning on going to Zaha Hadid, which we later found out was also closed on Monday, fortunately I didn’t wasted any tickets to go find that.

Molly and I decided to just come back to the hotel and work on blogs and sketches and stuff like that, and then hit up the Eiffel Tower around sunset. So I got a fantastic nap in as well as wrote a few blogs!

The Eiffel Tower line wasn’t near as long as I expected. We went up to the very top, and boy did I get slightly nervous going up, but the view was 100% worth it! I think I saw the sunset from as high up as I ever have before, slightly felt like I was in the sunset J The view of the city is incredible. I saw the Arch de Triumph, a cemetery, the Palais de Chailot, and basically an aerial view of everything in the city! W stayed up until it was dark and the whole city lit up! It was definitely Christmas in June!

~C’est La Vie~

Elyse

Paris Day 5... June 19th

Day 25...

Today was the first free day in Paris. I was not really feeling like doing too much, mostly because of how exhausted I am and have been. I took my sweet time getting up do to almost anything.

Laura, Molly and I decided to go to the Arch de Triumph. Surprisingly, I figured out how to get us there no problem! We used our museum pass to go up to the top of it. The views of Paris from up there were incredible. I saw straight down Champs Elysees to the Louvre and the glass pyramid thing from the Da Vinci Code ( I had seen it up close just the other day, but seeing it from far away and high up was amazing,)  and the Eiffel Tower in the near distance. The Arch de Triumph is in the middle of this large, over sized round about, and on every corner (11, I think) that a street branched off of it was a building with a very different shape. Fortunately today wasn’t a cold day, but being up that high, we had strong winds hitting us.

We also walked over t the Statue of Liberty. I have now seen both of them within the last 40 days, I have been pretty excited about that sense I realized it! This one, however, seems a lot smaller than the one in New York, possibly because the one here is not that big of a deal because you can just walk to it, pay nothing, and stand in no lines because you cant go inside of it, but it was still amazing! I wanted a picture with it, and because the only way to get the whole thing it the picture with you was to stand as far away from it as possible on the little peninsula, Laura climbed over the railing and got a fantastic picture for me, and of course I returned the favor

~Champ Elysees~

Elyse

Paris Day 4... June 18th

Day 24...

Today did not start till 2 pm! It was amazing to sleep in, but it didn’t end till 1 am, so still a long day. So my morning consisted of relaxation, sleeping in, and actually getting ready!

We left the hotel and got on a bus and headed to the Fontainebleau. We drove through the country side of France and it is beautiful. It’s nothing like London, but it has some amazing hills and fields of its own. The bus ride was about an hour and we arrived at Fontainebleau. I don’t think I ever realized it was that big, but it’s huge. There are high vaulted ceilings in every room with either coffered, beams or elaborate paintings. Multiple different patterns and color inspirations are throughout the house. Louis VII, Francis I, Napoleon III and many others made important renovations at the Palace of Fontainebleau, such as demolitions, reconstructions, additions, and embellishments of various descriptions which all unified the Palace together. The library in the Fontainebleau reminded me of the library in the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast.

We then went to the market to get food for our dinner picnic at the Vaux le Vicomte. After we ate we walked over to the Vaux le Vicomte. The view from outside the gates is incredible. I didn’t even go inside yet and I was already beyond impressed! I decided I wasn’t going inside until a little later because it looked like it could possible rain, but the gardens and the surrounding land is fantastic! I walked down the main walk towards the statue at the end, with a few people and we just had fun snapping pictures. The different bridges and sculpted grounds and the lake/ponds and what I like to call, “the enchanted forest”, every bit of it was amazing. As I’m sure you guessed, my favorite part was the forest, because it reminded me of something out of a fairy tale, which seemed to be my theme for the day, because the PALACE reminded me more of a castle fairytales describe then anything, which the mote, forest, large gates, high ceilings inside, everything. The interior has mostly larger rooms with high ceilings, and like many of the other palaces, castles, or houses I have gone into here, there were hidden doors for servants in the walls. When I was walking through the upstairs and parts of the downstairs it reminded me a lot of The Three Musketeers and Man in the Iron Mask. There were even set ups of what I thought looked like them!

Tonight I got to see my fireworks sense I will be missing the ones on the 4^th of July. I had front row seats right by the lake. The fireworks were the cherry on top of one of my favorite days in Europe!

~Legit Castle~

Elyse