Bonjour Y’all
So today was a great day for traveling. It was my last day in Paris, and it started with me planning the rest of my trip. I am going to be in Rome until the 13th (starting tomorrow) and Amsterdam until the 16th, when I will go back to London just in time to catch my plane home the next day. In Rome, I want to be super touristy, but I will also be in hostels. Hopefully I can meet some people there, and have random adventures.
Yesterday I went to the Louvre as well as some awesome restaurants. I’ll attach some pictures.
Today, I had a random adventure, but more on that later. The day started with planning, and then going with Gabe and Stephen (the people I am staying with who are totally awesome, hilarious gourmands) to Sacre Couer (a church on a hill) and then lunch at Café Louis Philippe. Lunch was amazing. I got a leg of duck with potatoes au gratin and some vegetables. It was truly an authentic, comforting meal. The fat of the duck mixed with its salty meat tasted amazing. After that, I tried to meet some UGA at Oxford friends at the Musee D’Orsay to go look at its art. I was a little bit late, and the weather was really bad, so I didn’t see them. While I was in line, however, I made a friend. Here’s the adventure part I was talking about.
So, I start talking to this person next to me as we get under the museum’s awning, because we are still in line but we just got under the awning as soon as rain starts pouring down in waves. I have seen more temperate floods than this rain. This rain was so intense it would drown fishes. I make comments like this to the person next to me, and we struck up a fun conversation. Her name is Camilla, she’s from Sweden, and she’s doing a gap year working in Paris before university. Since I couldn’t find my friends anywhere in the museum, Camilla and I ended up going through the museum together. She was really fun to talk to, especially because she could teach me French and Swedish, and I could help her with the finer points of English. We went all through the Impressionist part of the Museum, which lacked Van Gogh but had a lot of Monet and Renoir (all totally amazing). I was sad I didn’t get to see Van Gogh, but just a half an hour before the museum closed, we stumbled upon the Van Gogh wing. Those paintings did not disappoint. He was a true genius, and by looking at his self-portrait, I was overcome by the beauty of this soul that saw the world not as it looks, but as it is. That may sound cheesy, but hey, I’m a sucker for impressionism. It’s my favorite.
After that, Camilla and I decided to have dinner. We got a sandwich and some apple crumble at Cozi (totally awesome) and then decided to go see a movie. We navigated our way to a tiny Parisian theatre, having great conversation all the while. When we got there, the ticket lady was a little crazy, and a lot rude. She almost seemed to actively want to subvert the theatre’s profit margins with her sheer vitriol. Anyways, we got in, and watched “The Artist”, a silent black and white film about an actor in black and white silent films in old Hollywood before ‘talkies’. This movie was definitely one of my favorite movies ever. It wins Connor’s seal of awesomeness, and therefore everyone in the world should see it. It also had some killer tap dancing scenes that make me want to learn how to tap dance.
We left the theatre, had some coffees, and I got home from an awesome day with a stranger at 1:30am. I have a bus to the airport in an hour, so wish me luck!
Lovers at the Louvre
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