Salut!
(I’m horrible at posting but I’m just going to continue and pretend that this is me recounting the day as if it were that day. Am I making sense? Maybe not.)
My 30 Days of Happiness Challenge continues. Today is my first full day in Paris and so far it is amazing. The first stop today was to visit the Catacombs. The lineup to enter was fairly long and so the wait lasted about an hour. Thank goodness we stopped at PAUL before lining up to grab a few sandwiches because I might have started to become hangry. It was eerie, dark, and quite impressive. It was strange to see the bones of 6 million people. Every skull and bone unique to a person. How bizarre would it be to think that my remains could possibly end up in a place like that?
Anyway,
The next place we visited was, La Musée d’Orsay. Unfortunately for this museum, I had forgotten to bring my carte d’étudiant and this lead me to pay for a ticket to enter rather than reaping the benefits of being a student in France. Therefor, pro-tip: bring your student ID with you everywhere. Despite this minor setback, the museum was beautiful. I could not tell you anything significant about what I saw there but surely it was a beautiful place. One painting I did like there is called “Au lit et le chat”. At least, I believe that that was the title. The painting is a portrait of this woman in bed with her cat. That particular painting certainly resonated with me.
The day ended with a walk through the Jardin des Tuileries towards Place de la Concorde where lies the plaque indicating the place where King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had been executed.
This day did not begin to have a theme of death and yet it happened to work out that way.
As we stood in Place de la Concorde, we found ourselves hungry and so we found our way to Le Marché de Noël des Champs Elysées. There we feasted on chocolat chaud and hot cider. The two beverages proved to be necessary in trying to survive the biting chill of the evening. Soon after a quick look at the Christmas Market, we made our way back to Karen’s apartment – Karen, being the friend from UBC who I was staying with. There, in her home, she made is the most delicious omelette which had mushrooms and truffles. I was spoiled that night. We ended the evening with a study session and a scary movie. I completely forget the name of the film we watched but it was definitely weird. It featured a woman who lived on a farm in The Walking Dead, and in the movie she ended up having to take care of this boy doll who may or may not have been alive. The movie might have been interesting if not for the fact that I fell asleep soon after the movie started.
I was happy to be with friends from back home in Vancouver. Throughout the day we talked about home and comparing our experiences in France to our lives in Vancouver. I was relieved to be in a conversation with people who shared my views on the experience of exchange.
Ok, à la prochain!
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