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Jan. 2nd, 2007 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunshine_queenBecause of my lack of internet in Paris, I have this huge, huge account of my trip all in one fell swoop. To summarize: I had a fabulous time.
ETA: Sorry about the weirdness of the paragraphs! And lack of accents!
According to my computer, it's 5:03 AM at home, and I just got to Paris a little while ago. Driving in from the airport, France had a disturbing resemblance to New Jersey or New York- all grey and foggy, at least until we got off the highwayish thing and we realized that we were next to the Seine. And then, just barely visible in the fog, there was the Eiffel Tower. My french is sufficient- I had a nice conversation with the guy who got us our taxi-van thing, and I got us into our rooms at the hotel. I slept on the plane, and I just had the best shower of my life and even though we're dying of le
tired, we're roughing it out and going to forge on- probably to see the Eiffel
Tower, which is literally just down the street from our hotel.
Why am I not online and telling this to my LJ (or, for those of you crazy enough
to still be up, Tess)? Well, turns out that internet isn't free here.
Oh no. Not free. In fact, it's like, 12 euros for an hour, 22 euros for regular
24 hour service, 27 for premium 24 hours, and one hundred and eight
euros for seven days.
So I really have no idea when/if I'm going to use the internet.
International flights aren't as bad as I was lead to believe- I slept a lot, and
watched parts of pirates of the caribbean and played a few games and got annoyed
by my family. The Detroit airport is nice.
I'm sooo super hungry now, and I have to get dressed and put on some makeup
before going... sightseeing or something. It's only eleven here. Sweet god.
So, it's now seven in the morning on Wednesday, which is 1:19 at home, and I'd
pay to go online because I bet people are online, but my credit card is in my
parents' room, and everyone else is asleep. I apparently can't stand sleeping
more than six and a half hours after having a three hour nap in the middle of
the day. Dammit.
After I wrote yesterday we went to eat at this darling place called La Tour that
the concierge suggested on rue desaix which was tiny, and run by the nicest
little woman who spoke charming english. Everything was done just so- the decor
was beautiful, when mom and I ordered salmon she exchanged our normal cutlery
for those that you'd use for a fish course, she made sure we had a little glass
bottle of water to pour, and, best of all, the restaurant had phenomenal bread.
After that we wandered back in the general direction of our hotel, which is
literally down the street from the Eiffel Tower, so went to the Champs du Mars
and took a thousand pictures of us and the tower and just the tower and I really
can't explain what it's like to be here after wanting to come here my
entire life. It's so beautiful, even when it's cloudy and freezing.
Then we went to the room where I gave into jet lag and napped because I had
gotten about nine hours of sleep in forty-eight, which is less than what I got
in high school but not by much. We bundled up and went downstairs and talked to
the concierge about visiting Versailles. The concierge, who was named Armel, was
very nice, and spoke english and spanish, which thrilled my dad. He told us how
to take the metro to Versailles (kind of, I'm a bit worried about the
instructions, but luckily my parents are in charge of getting us places and I
get to be the kid and not worry about it. Yaaaay.) We left the hotel and walked
towards the metro to see if we could find it on our own, so we wandered down
there and then kept walking aimlessly. We stopped in a grocery store to buy some
food for the rooms, and it was very cute and they have awesome cereal in France.
So many of them have chocolate in them. They have crunch bar cereal! We got
chocolate-hazelnut flavored cereal and some nutella and Mel got a cool bottle of
coke. We had to buy the grocery bag, and it's adorable. We wandered some more
until we admitted that we were going away from the hotel, which my father
refuses to admit to, and he asked this guy for directions. It was really cute-
the guy was very nice, and this woman was also willing to help. I have yet to
see French rudeness- they don't seem any different from Americans at this point.
We stopped at this boulangerie for dinner, and my parents got french onion soup
(only they advertised it as "onion soup." hee.) and Mel and I got fabulous
chicken sandwiches. The women who worked there weren't the friendliest people on
the planet, but they weren't mean or anything. And there was this adorable cat
that kept running in and out of the shop and it was very friendly and had
gorgeous eyes.
On the way back to the hotel we saw the Eiffel Tour light up. It's normally lit
up an orangish color, but apparently every hour it sparkles with twinkling white
lights for about ten minutes. We took pictures but it didn't quite capture it.
It was beautiful.
We went back to the rooms and hung out and we watched the last two episodes of
House's first season. We were supposed to go to sleep around eleven, but Mel was
super punchy, so we didn't really get to sleep until after midnight, and now
here I am. Awake at seven. Good lord. I don't know when everyone else is going
to wake up.
One of the most striking things about France is how quiet it is. Picture an
American airport. It's loud- announcements, people talking, people moving.
Charles de Gaulle? All but silent. It was eerily quiet. The same goes for the
lobby, restaurants- even the streets. Everything is quiet. But the architecture
makes up for it- it makes the US seem so bleak and stupid. Almost every building
here is beautiful.
It's 20:14 here on Thursday, which is really eight PM, they just use military
time to confuse us. Yesterday we went to Versailles, which is just so beautiful
it's hard to believe. I took a lot of pictures of the exterior, but they were
very worried about the condition of the paintings and walls and stuff, so I
didn't take any inside. It's hard to describe how fabulous it was, or how it
felt to finally be there, after years of reading and studying the people who
lived there. I got to see paintings in person that I had always seen in
textbooks. It was very, very cold outside and very, very hot in the palace. So
hot that when I walked outside I didn't put on my jacket for another ten
minutes. People must have thought I was from like, Alaska or Siberia. We figured
out the metro station and let me just state for the record that the majority of
French people we have encountered have been extremely nice.
After that we took the metro to Notre Dame, which is another place that defies
description. Took a lot of pictures there too- at this point I have over two
hundred, so I really have no idea how I'm going to show them off. Also, they are
really pushing "Hollywoodland" here. I know this because when I was leaving
Versailles and going to the metro station I saw this poster from a distance and
thought idly that it looked very much like Mr Jen Garner, Ben Affleck- and it
was!
So then we went back to the hotel and took naps, and went back out. The lady
concierge (there's this concierge named Armel who is the nicest guy ever, and we
see him everyday and he speaks english and french and spanish and he goes well
out of his way to help us, but he works the day shift) told us to basically go
back to Notre Dame to wander about, which was fun until my feet started hurting
in my boots and we were in this sketchy part of the Latin Quarter. My mom and
sister think it's cool, just like my mom liked Chinatown, but as many of you
know, I am the biggest scaredy cat in the entire world, so we went left and took
more pictures and we went to this Italian place with awesome pizza for dinner,
and the metro is pretty awesome in Paris, and it's so easy to navigate, much
more so than the NYC subway system.
This morning we were going to go the Louvre, but we slept in a bit and by the
time we got to the Louvre it was teeming with people, and while I maintain we
could have enjoyed ourselves anyway, my mom decided we'd go back tomorrow very
early, so we walked to the Opera House. On the way we found this little church
called La Roch, and man, was it ever gorgeous. It was very old, and so
beautiful. The US sucks on the prettiness scale. I took a lot of pictures
because I think some hidden facet of my personality wants to be an architecture
major. And I love stained glass windows. On the way we were in another semi-
sketchy area, and my dad realized someone was following him! To pick his pocket!
So I was terrified. But then we went to the Opera house, and oh my god. I think
I might have liked it better than Versailles (for two reasons: one, Versailles
was undergoing a lot of reconstruction, since it's the offseason, and two, you
could see most of the opera house, and it was fantastically beautiful.) I got
wonderful pictures from there, and I've been collecting this little golden coins
they sell for two euros, and I am a pressed penny aficionado, and this is like a
classier version. So now I have one of France in general, Versailles, Notre
Dame, the opera house, and the church of the Madeleine, which we went to after
we went shopping at apparently the French equivalent of Macy's. In it I bought a
notebook with the kind of paper I learned to write in cursive on, which excites
me to no end. In my french classes they gave us notebooks that they imported
from France, with little boxes with thin lines within them, and it's really hard
to explain if you haven't seen it, but I had to buy the notebook I saw with it,
and then while most of the pens for sale there were like, pilot and bic and
other brands you can get at a store at home, they also had these special pens
that erased their own ink that the french kids always got, and it was very
exciting.
Then, down the Boulevard des Capucines, it turned into the Boulevard of la
Madeleine, and I took lots of pictures. Sure, it would've been better if my name
was spelled that way or they had spelled it my way, but it fact remains. The
church was beautiful, but I only have pictures from the outside, because inside
my camera died. In the gift store thing I bought a little St Madeleine medallion
and when my mom was buying something, the lady working there told her not to
flash all the money she had because pickpockets (!) watch you (!!) and wait for
you outside to pick your pockets (!!!!!!!!!!). while it was stupid of my mom to
be carrying all that cash, we come from Miami. People flash rolls of hundred
dollar bills and no one bats an eye. Here! There! Are! Pickpockets!
We were going to go down to the obelisque, but instead we saw this old church in
the distance, St Augustine. Before we got there, my dad happily stopped at a
cigar store and bought Cuban cigars. St Augustine had definitely seen better
days, but it was still beautiful, but then my parents got worried about some
people who seemed a little too interested in us, and they were afraid of being
robbed, which freaked me the hell out, and my feet were really bothering me,
since I was wearing my boots that I obviously shouldn't wear day after day for
extensive walking. We walked a lot more and finally found a hotel so my dad
could get a doorman to hail a cab for us, since many cabs won't take four people
in a cab, even though they have plenty of rooms. Jerkheads. We went back to the
hotel in another cab, and the cab driver took us through the tunnel where
Princess Diana died (and even knew which pillar she hit, which was kind of
creepy and sad) and my mom went out with my sister get to us some sandwiches and
buy chocolates so that we could stay in and they could go to dinner. That brings
everything up to speed, yay. That only took me forever. My mom wants to do both
a bus tour and one of those dinner cruises on the Seine. We're hoping that one
of these days the weather will clear up a bit so that we can go to the top of
the Eiffel Tower and actually get to see things.
My french still hasn't failed me (except for the moment I forgot gloves and
Armel the concierge caught me. Now I will forever remember that the word for
gloves are 'gants.')
Today we did the Louvre, the Champs Élysées, and the Arc de Triomphe. The sun
came out for the first time today, and we spent most of the time it was shining
in a museum. The Louvre was overwhelming, but we got in the three most famous
pieces: Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa, and Venus de Milo. The two sculptures
were breathtaking, but the Mona Lisa left me cold. I've never been too much of a
fan of the painting based on prints, and while the sfumato made it interesting
in that the eyes followed you, I wasn't interested enough to push to the front
of the crowds to stare at a poster-sized painting. I liked other da Vincis much
better, particularly The Virgin of the Rocks, which was mentioned in the Da
Vinci code. More importantly I got to see a lot of Jacques Louis David
paintings. I was blown away by the actual size and grandeur of the painting he
did of Napoleon's coronation. It was beautiful. We went through as much as we
could before we finished and headed down the Champs Élysées by way of the
Obelisque and a mini arch called Arc du Carrousel, I think. The obelisque, I
think, was taken by Napoleon from Luxor because... Napoleon was a jerk. A
brilliant jerk with a vision, but still a jerk. There are giant Ns carved all
over Paris.
Champs Élysées was a crazy two mile walk that took forever, but we finally got
the Arc du Triomphe, and it was beautiful. Enormous and beautifully carved and
it had the tomb of their unknown soldier and La Marseillais and it rocked.
We went back to the hotel to hang out for a bit before Mom, Mel and I ventured
on a mini walk in the nice neighborhood around the Eiffel Tower. When we came
back we watched an episode of House, and then we went on this boat tour on the
Seine. Mel had the brilliant idea of sitting in the back of the boat, which was
outside, and I damn near died of cold. Then we went back to the hotel to warm up
and changed our reservation at this swanky restaurant to a little bit later so
we could make it. The restaurant was across the Seine in another swanky area (by
the George V hotel) and it was honestly just too classy for the likes of us. And
I wasn't too thrilled with what I ordered, though my mom's food was excellent.
It was astronomically expensive, too.
We have two full days here still, and we're hoping it's going to be clear
tomorrow morning so we can go up the tower and actually get to see stuff. Then
my dad wants to do Les Invalides and Napoleon's tomb, Mom and Mel and me want to
do Pere Lachaise, Mom wants to do the Musée d'Orsay and Montmartre, we all want
to do Sacré-Cœur... we have a whole mess of things to do.
So today it rained all day, which was just sad. We went to the Musée d'Orsay,
which had some fabulous Renoirs and Monets and Manets and Van Goghs and
beautiful, beautiful sculptures. We waited in line forever before going
in. The museum is in what used to be an old train station, and it's still
amazingly beautiful. The French need no reason to make things pretty.
After that we came back to the hotel for a bit, and then while Dad went to the
war museum at Les Invalides, Mel, Mom and I went to Père-Lachaise. We really
sucked at that- we found Jim Morrison's grave, which was a total letdown. I
don't know what, exactly, I was expecting, but whatever it was, it failed to
live up to it. It was surrounded by a fence and had two (two!) guards watching
it. (Can you imagine that conversation? "What do you do?" "I guard Jim
Morrison's grave." "... No, seriously.") The cemetery itself was beautiful, with
all kinds of family crypts with those cool little houses and statues and stained
glass windows. It started seriously raining and blowing right after we left Jim,
so we didn't see anyone else, which kind of ticks me off. I did find out that
apparently in Havana there is a family crypt of ours, and that's where my
father's sister is buried. We have a family crypt! That idea thrills me more
than it should, I think.
We took a cab home and my dad was still out warring it up, so we watched two
episodes of House. Our hotel has been inundated with new guests today, so we
couldn't get the concierge to make a reservations for us for dinner somewhere,
so instead we went to this bistro down the street, where we wound up sitting
next to a couple from California who struck up a conversation with us. They were
there with their four kids and they were spending two weeks in Paris, Geneva and
Milan, the lucky bastards. The father? Was an honest-to-God rocket
scientist. I don't know how many rocket scientists other people know, but
this was the first one I've met, and it's a bit daunting. My father thoroughly
embarrassed me by bragging and then my Mom threw in the ever-popular "You can't
put a price on Gator Football!" story.
Now we're all showering and my mom's going to come over and watch Grand Hotel
with me and Mel in a little bit. Tomorrow's our last day and New Year's eve, and
we plan on seeing Napoleon's tomb, going up the Eiffel Tower, and going to
Montmartre.
So now I'm home, and I've just been putting this off because it's sad that the
trip is over.
The last day we got up real early and went downstairs to try to get reservations
for dinner. When we went to get breakfast at our little boulangerie we found out
that it was closed on Sundays, which was devastating. We had to have breakfast
at the hotel, which was good, but ridiculously expensive. They did have nice
little pots of chocolate, though.
Then we stood in line for a million years to go up the tower. It was cloudy that
morning again, of course, but the view was still breathtaking. I turned out to
be pretty good at identifying monuments from our vantage points, so we have a
lot of pictures that are like Where's Waldo, Paris style. Going up to the very
very top was just insane. You have to take a separate funicular to get to the
tippy-top, and it takes forever, and you have to clear your ears of pressure,
and you get off and you're inside. The wind is so strong outside, and on the
side where the wind is coming from, the wind was strong enough to knock me and
my sister back a few times. And deathly cold. Yuck.
After that we went back to the hotel to get a taxi to Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre.
It was absolutely gorgeous- startlingly white and complex and gorgeous. It was
so unlike the other churches we'd been in, and it was high, high on a hill-
which, in a nice piece of trivia, is called "la butte" which means "the mound,"
so the title of Rufus Wainwright's "Complainte de la Butte" now makes soooo much
more sense. Especially since some Parisians call/called Montmartre La Butte.
Anyway, afterwards we wandered a bit into Montmartre to get lunch, and my dad
found out our waiter was Cuban, and all bets were off. You see, when it's
illegal to go back to your country, all your compatriots become your brothers.
Put any two cubans together (maybe not the youger generations, but the older
generations, definitely) and they will find out within a few minutes that
they're either related or used to be best friends back in Cuba, or had relatives
that were. Anyway, my dad was practically giddy at meeting another Cuban, but
disappointingly, he was from "Castro's Cuba," and therefore wasn't as friendly.
Friendly, but not as much as he should have been to his Cuban brother. He gave
us instructions on how to get to the Moulin Rouge.
However, we took a wrong turn and wound up going down this crazy set of stairs,
and my parents are elderly, so getting lost and having to go up and down stairs
is not exactly the funnest thing ever, so we asked a guy for directions. I think
he was the only guy who spoke only French, so I went over and talked to him. He
was horrified at the idea of us going to that district and told us it
was too sketchy. So we climbed back up to Sacré-Cœur and got a cab to take us
back to the hotel, but to go by the Moulin Rouge.
Totally sketchy area. Red light district, hello. Mom and I took pictures out the
window. My bohemian ideals were wounded.
We had a dinner reservation for eight, so we got ready for dinner. This, I
think, was perhaps the most memorable dinner I've ever had.
The restaurant was about two hundred times too cool for us. It was small and
classy. The walls were lines in a classy way with pictures of celebrities who
had loved it. For instance, where we sat, there was a picture of Kim Basinger
with signatures from her and Alec Baldwin, presumably before they got divorced,
extolling the restaurant. They spoke little English. And the menu was reduced
due to the reduced staff for New Years.
The set price for an entry and a main dish was 82 euros. The entries were pretty
innocuous- salmon things, shrimp things, foie gras (maybe not innocuous, but
kind of expected) and something else. It was the main dishes that were...
painful.
We are simple people. Really. Chicken and steak people. Turkey. Our family
friends, the Hoppes, they eat weird things (to us, and I'm sorry if I offend
you,) like deer and rabbit and duck. For god's sake, Mel doesn't eat seafood and
I'm not wild about steak. We had successfully navigated French cuisine until
that day.
For main courses, they offered lobster, deer, something I can't remember, and
pigeon.
Mel quickly decided she was not hungry and wouldn't eat, to tell the waiter she
was sick. And she looked it. It was decided that my parents would order the
shrimp things (which I would have ordered too, if I had known they were shrimp
and not those massive prawn things sometimes given to me) and lobster. I would
order the salmon and... wait for it... pigeon. The waiter said it tasted like
chicken, and my mother reasoned if it was okay, Mel and I could share. Plus, it
wasn't like they were shooting the pigeons in the street, these pigeons
came from pigeon farms.
I want you all to stop and picture this. I am not an adventurous person at all.
I am possibly even less of an adventurous eater. Monica's family has a running
joke about me eating chicken fingers which I could happily eat for near about
every meal. If I like something at a restaurant, I will order it at the
restaurant over and over again until... well, I die or it makes me sick or
something.
We were all testy in the restaurant- we couldn't leave, because the concierge
had had a really hard time making New Years Eve reservations in the first place,
plus it would have been super rude in such a small place, and thirdly, there was
no where else to eat- but let me tell you, stating at the end of every sentence
"... hello, I just ordered a pigeon," was a great tension diffuser. It fit in
everywhere. Mel: "I don't like anything here." Me: "I ordered a pigeon." ; Dad:
"This is going to be expensive." Me: "I ordered a rat with wings."
Mom and I would up exchanging appetizers- the salmon offered came in two forms:
raw and pebbled into a little pile, and smoked so so thinly cut it tasted raw.
It also came with two little pancakey things they called blinis that were
fandamntastic. I got Mom's four shrimp on top of lentil... stuff.
Then came dinner.
I can't really explain to you what it was like receiving a pigeon. Beheaded, plucked, split open and cooked, on your plate. A pigeon. Something that had no right being on anyone's plate, as far as I was concerned, unless you were dying of hunger. It looked nothing like a chicken.
I bravely cut into it.
The kind of chicken I meat I like it white. This meat was not only dark, it was also rare, because apparently that's how you cook birds that aren't chicken. It was pink pink pink and bloody.
I made Mel take a bite.
"It's not... so bad," she said, gulping down her glass of water and tearing into a piece of bread.
I took a bite.
I won't go into details, but it took a lot not to hurl. I think a lot of it was that it was a pigeon. And disgusting. But I couldn't handle it.
I made my Mom taste it, and she was like, you're right, it's inedible. So we didn't have to eat it.
Two-hundred and sixty-one euros later, we went to the ice cream store across the street and had ice cream.
We went back to the room and chilled. I found episodes of the X-Files on TV in French, and whoever dubbed Dana was absolutely too cute.
Then at midnight we went down to the front of the hotel and watched the Eiffel Tower light up.
We stayed up a bit later to watch more XF and pack, and then we got up the next morning at six to go to the airport.
Which I wouldn't have had to LJ about at all, but then, you know.
Charles de Gaulle is, according to my mom, the largest airport hub in Europe. It's enormous. Our flight was leaving out of a distant gate that was literally twenty minutes away. So we took a bus over there and then we went into the duty free shops.
There was a very nice one with the liquor, perfumes, makeup, and tobacco. We went in there, put on some perfume, went to another store, bought these awesome candies that taste like violets (which my sister and I love) and like roses, which I got, and it's good, even though it takes some getting used to. After a while I hunkered down to wait for my mom to quit shopping so that we could go to our gate.
As a bit of backstory, my family and I compare everyone to stars. Girls we see in line will look like Jen. People from far away will have Bristow ears. And my sister, all the thirty-first, was seeing guys who looked like Sloane.
So when she came over to me and said "There's a guy in there who looks creepily like Sloane," I thought, uh huh. Because the guys were always short, dark-haired, and bespectacled. I expected nothing difference.
Except, um, this time, it was actually Ron Rifkin.
I am not built to meet famous people. I've joked with many of my friends that I'd probably cry if I ever met, like, Jen Garner or Victor Garber. I came very close to crying when I walked past Shakira. I do like strangers. I hate bothering people.
And that's exactly what I did, because I am a bad, bad person. Sigh.
Ran back and got my camera. Searched a bit frantically for my mom so that we could hopefully get a picture with both me and my sister in it, but she was no where to be found.
So, lightheaded and nauseous, I went over to him. And spoke very quickly:
Me: Mr Rifkin?
He: [turns] Yes?
Me: Hi. I'm a big fan of yours from Alias, so I was wondering I could get a picture with you?
He: Sure.
[Mel takes the picture.]
He: Did it come out okay?
Mel: Yes.
Me: Thank you so much!
[we run off, terrified.]
My god, it was horrible. I still get nauseous thinking about it. I mean, it was nice, and it's the first famous person I've ever talked to, and, really, of all the gin joints in all the world, but honestly. If it had been, say, Lena Olin, I don't think I would have had the strength to do anything. Hannah said it was probably lucky that it was Ron Rifkin and not, say, Victor Garber. Because I might have actually called him SpyDaddy him between my tears. And Jen? Forget it.
The flight was excruciating. We got on, and we were delayed like, an hour. The seven hour flight from Detroit to Paris wasn't too bad, but ten hours from Paris to Miami? My god. Never ending. And then customs and passportage and proving we were actually who we were? Took forever. But then we got home! And I had internet! I also received Bri's Christmas card!
So, that was my vacation! Massive pic spam might follow. I have over four hundred pics.
ETA: Sorry about the weirdness of the paragraphs! And lack of accents!
According to my computer, it's 5:03 AM at home, and I just got to Paris a little while ago. Driving in from the airport, France had a disturbing resemblance to New Jersey or New York- all grey and foggy, at least until we got off the highwayish thing and we realized that we were next to the Seine. And then, just barely visible in the fog, there was the Eiffel Tower. My french is sufficient- I had a nice conversation with the guy who got us our taxi-van thing, and I got us into our rooms at the hotel. I slept on the plane, and I just had the best shower of my life and even though we're dying of le
tired, we're roughing it out and going to forge on- probably to see the Eiffel
Tower, which is literally just down the street from our hotel.
Why am I not online and telling this to my LJ (or, for those of you crazy enough
to still be up, Tess)? Well, turns out that internet isn't free here.
Oh no. Not free. In fact, it's like, 12 euros for an hour, 22 euros for regular
24 hour service, 27 for premium 24 hours, and one hundred and eight
euros for seven days.
So I really have no idea when/if I'm going to use the internet.
International flights aren't as bad as I was lead to believe- I slept a lot, and
watched parts of pirates of the caribbean and played a few games and got annoyed
by my family. The Detroit airport is nice.
I'm sooo super hungry now, and I have to get dressed and put on some makeup
before going... sightseeing or something. It's only eleven here. Sweet god.
So, it's now seven in the morning on Wednesday, which is 1:19 at home, and I'd
pay to go online because I bet people are online, but my credit card is in my
parents' room, and everyone else is asleep. I apparently can't stand sleeping
more than six and a half hours after having a three hour nap in the middle of
the day. Dammit.
After I wrote yesterday we went to eat at this darling place called La Tour that
the concierge suggested on rue desaix which was tiny, and run by the nicest
little woman who spoke charming english. Everything was done just so- the decor
was beautiful, when mom and I ordered salmon she exchanged our normal cutlery
for those that you'd use for a fish course, she made sure we had a little glass
bottle of water to pour, and, best of all, the restaurant had phenomenal bread.
After that we wandered back in the general direction of our hotel, which is
literally down the street from the Eiffel Tower, so went to the Champs du Mars
and took a thousand pictures of us and the tower and just the tower and I really
can't explain what it's like to be here after wanting to come here my
entire life. It's so beautiful, even when it's cloudy and freezing.
Then we went to the room where I gave into jet lag and napped because I had
gotten about nine hours of sleep in forty-eight, which is less than what I got
in high school but not by much. We bundled up and went downstairs and talked to
the concierge about visiting Versailles. The concierge, who was named Armel, was
very nice, and spoke english and spanish, which thrilled my dad. He told us how
to take the metro to Versailles (kind of, I'm a bit worried about the
instructions, but luckily my parents are in charge of getting us places and I
get to be the kid and not worry about it. Yaaaay.) We left the hotel and walked
towards the metro to see if we could find it on our own, so we wandered down
there and then kept walking aimlessly. We stopped in a grocery store to buy some
food for the rooms, and it was very cute and they have awesome cereal in France.
So many of them have chocolate in them. They have crunch bar cereal! We got
chocolate-hazelnut flavored cereal and some nutella and Mel got a cool bottle of
coke. We had to buy the grocery bag, and it's adorable. We wandered some more
until we admitted that we were going away from the hotel, which my father
refuses to admit to, and he asked this guy for directions. It was really cute-
the guy was very nice, and this woman was also willing to help. I have yet to
see French rudeness- they don't seem any different from Americans at this point.
We stopped at this boulangerie for dinner, and my parents got french onion soup
(only they advertised it as "onion soup." hee.) and Mel and I got fabulous
chicken sandwiches. The women who worked there weren't the friendliest people on
the planet, but they weren't mean or anything. And there was this adorable cat
that kept running in and out of the shop and it was very friendly and had
gorgeous eyes.
On the way back to the hotel we saw the Eiffel Tour light up. It's normally lit
up an orangish color, but apparently every hour it sparkles with twinkling white
lights for about ten minutes. We took pictures but it didn't quite capture it.
It was beautiful.
We went back to the rooms and hung out and we watched the last two episodes of
House's first season. We were supposed to go to sleep around eleven, but Mel was
super punchy, so we didn't really get to sleep until after midnight, and now
here I am. Awake at seven. Good lord. I don't know when everyone else is going
to wake up.
One of the most striking things about France is how quiet it is. Picture an
American airport. It's loud- announcements, people talking, people moving.
Charles de Gaulle? All but silent. It was eerily quiet. The same goes for the
lobby, restaurants- even the streets. Everything is quiet. But the architecture
makes up for it- it makes the US seem so bleak and stupid. Almost every building
here is beautiful.
It's 20:14 here on Thursday, which is really eight PM, they just use military
time to confuse us. Yesterday we went to Versailles, which is just so beautiful
it's hard to believe. I took a lot of pictures of the exterior, but they were
very worried about the condition of the paintings and walls and stuff, so I
didn't take any inside. It's hard to describe how fabulous it was, or how it
felt to finally be there, after years of reading and studying the people who
lived there. I got to see paintings in person that I had always seen in
textbooks. It was very, very cold outside and very, very hot in the palace. So
hot that when I walked outside I didn't put on my jacket for another ten
minutes. People must have thought I was from like, Alaska or Siberia. We figured
out the metro station and let me just state for the record that the majority of
French people we have encountered have been extremely nice.
After that we took the metro to Notre Dame, which is another place that defies
description. Took a lot of pictures there too- at this point I have over two
hundred, so I really have no idea how I'm going to show them off. Also, they are
really pushing "Hollywoodland" here. I know this because when I was leaving
Versailles and going to the metro station I saw this poster from a distance and
thought idly that it looked very much like Mr Jen Garner, Ben Affleck- and it
was!
So then we went back to the hotel and took naps, and went back out. The lady
concierge (there's this concierge named Armel who is the nicest guy ever, and we
see him everyday and he speaks english and french and spanish and he goes well
out of his way to help us, but he works the day shift) told us to basically go
back to Notre Dame to wander about, which was fun until my feet started hurting
in my boots and we were in this sketchy part of the Latin Quarter. My mom and
sister think it's cool, just like my mom liked Chinatown, but as many of you
know, I am the biggest scaredy cat in the entire world, so we went left and took
more pictures and we went to this Italian place with awesome pizza for dinner,
and the metro is pretty awesome in Paris, and it's so easy to navigate, much
more so than the NYC subway system.
This morning we were going to go the Louvre, but we slept in a bit and by the
time we got to the Louvre it was teeming with people, and while I maintain we
could have enjoyed ourselves anyway, my mom decided we'd go back tomorrow very
early, so we walked to the Opera House. On the way we found this little church
called La Roch, and man, was it ever gorgeous. It was very old, and so
beautiful. The US sucks on the prettiness scale. I took a lot of pictures
because I think some hidden facet of my personality wants to be an architecture
major. And I love stained glass windows. On the way we were in another semi-
sketchy area, and my dad realized someone was following him! To pick his pocket!
So I was terrified. But then we went to the Opera house, and oh my god. I think
I might have liked it better than Versailles (for two reasons: one, Versailles
was undergoing a lot of reconstruction, since it's the offseason, and two, you
could see most of the opera house, and it was fantastically beautiful.) I got
wonderful pictures from there, and I've been collecting this little golden coins
they sell for two euros, and I am a pressed penny aficionado, and this is like a
classier version. So now I have one of France in general, Versailles, Notre
Dame, the opera house, and the church of the Madeleine, which we went to after
we went shopping at apparently the French equivalent of Macy's. In it I bought a
notebook with the kind of paper I learned to write in cursive on, which excites
me to no end. In my french classes they gave us notebooks that they imported
from France, with little boxes with thin lines within them, and it's really hard
to explain if you haven't seen it, but I had to buy the notebook I saw with it,
and then while most of the pens for sale there were like, pilot and bic and
other brands you can get at a store at home, they also had these special pens
that erased their own ink that the french kids always got, and it was very
exciting.
Then, down the Boulevard des Capucines, it turned into the Boulevard of la
Madeleine, and I took lots of pictures. Sure, it would've been better if my name
was spelled that way or they had spelled it my way, but it fact remains. The
church was beautiful, but I only have pictures from the outside, because inside
my camera died. In the gift store thing I bought a little St Madeleine medallion
and when my mom was buying something, the lady working there told her not to
flash all the money she had because pickpockets (!) watch you (!!) and wait for
you outside to pick your pockets (!!!!!!!!!!). while it was stupid of my mom to
be carrying all that cash, we come from Miami. People flash rolls of hundred
dollar bills and no one bats an eye. Here! There! Are! Pickpockets!
We were going to go down to the obelisque, but instead we saw this old church in
the distance, St Augustine. Before we got there, my dad happily stopped at a
cigar store and bought Cuban cigars. St Augustine had definitely seen better
days, but it was still beautiful, but then my parents got worried about some
people who seemed a little too interested in us, and they were afraid of being
robbed, which freaked me the hell out, and my feet were really bothering me,
since I was wearing my boots that I obviously shouldn't wear day after day for
extensive walking. We walked a lot more and finally found a hotel so my dad
could get a doorman to hail a cab for us, since many cabs won't take four people
in a cab, even though they have plenty of rooms. Jerkheads. We went back to the
hotel in another cab, and the cab driver took us through the tunnel where
Princess Diana died (and even knew which pillar she hit, which was kind of
creepy and sad) and my mom went out with my sister get to us some sandwiches and
buy chocolates so that we could stay in and they could go to dinner. That brings
everything up to speed, yay. That only took me forever. My mom wants to do both
a bus tour and one of those dinner cruises on the Seine. We're hoping that one
of these days the weather will clear up a bit so that we can go to the top of
the Eiffel Tower and actually get to see things.
My french still hasn't failed me (except for the moment I forgot gloves and
Armel the concierge caught me. Now I will forever remember that the word for
gloves are 'gants.')
Today we did the Louvre, the Champs Élysées, and the Arc de Triomphe. The sun
came out for the first time today, and we spent most of the time it was shining
in a museum. The Louvre was overwhelming, but we got in the three most famous
pieces: Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa, and Venus de Milo. The two sculptures
were breathtaking, but the Mona Lisa left me cold. I've never been too much of a
fan of the painting based on prints, and while the sfumato made it interesting
in that the eyes followed you, I wasn't interested enough to push to the front
of the crowds to stare at a poster-sized painting. I liked other da Vincis much
better, particularly The Virgin of the Rocks, which was mentioned in the Da
Vinci code. More importantly I got to see a lot of Jacques Louis David
paintings. I was blown away by the actual size and grandeur of the painting he
did of Napoleon's coronation. It was beautiful. We went through as much as we
could before we finished and headed down the Champs Élysées by way of the
Obelisque and a mini arch called Arc du Carrousel, I think. The obelisque, I
think, was taken by Napoleon from Luxor because... Napoleon was a jerk. A
brilliant jerk with a vision, but still a jerk. There are giant Ns carved all
over Paris.
Champs Élysées was a crazy two mile walk that took forever, but we finally got
the Arc du Triomphe, and it was beautiful. Enormous and beautifully carved and
it had the tomb of their unknown soldier and La Marseillais and it rocked.
We went back to the hotel to hang out for a bit before Mom, Mel and I ventured
on a mini walk in the nice neighborhood around the Eiffel Tower. When we came
back we watched an episode of House, and then we went on this boat tour on the
Seine. Mel had the brilliant idea of sitting in the back of the boat, which was
outside, and I damn near died of cold. Then we went back to the hotel to warm up
and changed our reservation at this swanky restaurant to a little bit later so
we could make it. The restaurant was across the Seine in another swanky area (by
the George V hotel) and it was honestly just too classy for the likes of us. And
I wasn't too thrilled with what I ordered, though my mom's food was excellent.
It was astronomically expensive, too.
We have two full days here still, and we're hoping it's going to be clear
tomorrow morning so we can go up the tower and actually get to see stuff. Then
my dad wants to do Les Invalides and Napoleon's tomb, Mom and Mel and me want to
do Pere Lachaise, Mom wants to do the Musée d'Orsay and Montmartre, we all want
to do Sacré-Cœur... we have a whole mess of things to do.
So today it rained all day, which was just sad. We went to the Musée d'Orsay,
which had some fabulous Renoirs and Monets and Manets and Van Goghs and
beautiful, beautiful sculptures. We waited in line forever before going
in. The museum is in what used to be an old train station, and it's still
amazingly beautiful. The French need no reason to make things pretty.
After that we came back to the hotel for a bit, and then while Dad went to the
war museum at Les Invalides, Mel, Mom and I went to Père-Lachaise. We really
sucked at that- we found Jim Morrison's grave, which was a total letdown. I
don't know what, exactly, I was expecting, but whatever it was, it failed to
live up to it. It was surrounded by a fence and had two (two!) guards watching
it. (Can you imagine that conversation? "What do you do?" "I guard Jim
Morrison's grave." "... No, seriously.") The cemetery itself was beautiful, with
all kinds of family crypts with those cool little houses and statues and stained
glass windows. It started seriously raining and blowing right after we left Jim,
so we didn't see anyone else, which kind of ticks me off. I did find out that
apparently in Havana there is a family crypt of ours, and that's where my
father's sister is buried. We have a family crypt! That idea thrills me more
than it should, I think.
We took a cab home and my dad was still out warring it up, so we watched two
episodes of House. Our hotel has been inundated with new guests today, so we
couldn't get the concierge to make a reservations for us for dinner somewhere,
so instead we went to this bistro down the street, where we wound up sitting
next to a couple from California who struck up a conversation with us. They were
there with their four kids and they were spending two weeks in Paris, Geneva and
Milan, the lucky bastards. The father? Was an honest-to-God rocket
scientist. I don't know how many rocket scientists other people know, but
this was the first one I've met, and it's a bit daunting. My father thoroughly
embarrassed me by bragging and then my Mom threw in the ever-popular "You can't
put a price on Gator Football!" story.
Now we're all showering and my mom's going to come over and watch Grand Hotel
with me and Mel in a little bit. Tomorrow's our last day and New Year's eve, and
we plan on seeing Napoleon's tomb, going up the Eiffel Tower, and going to
Montmartre.
So now I'm home, and I've just been putting this off because it's sad that the
trip is over.
The last day we got up real early and went downstairs to try to get reservations
for dinner. When we went to get breakfast at our little boulangerie we found out
that it was closed on Sundays, which was devastating. We had to have breakfast
at the hotel, which was good, but ridiculously expensive. They did have nice
little pots of chocolate, though.
Then we stood in line for a million years to go up the tower. It was cloudy that
morning again, of course, but the view was still breathtaking. I turned out to
be pretty good at identifying monuments from our vantage points, so we have a
lot of pictures that are like Where's Waldo, Paris style. Going up to the very
very top was just insane. You have to take a separate funicular to get to the
tippy-top, and it takes forever, and you have to clear your ears of pressure,
and you get off and you're inside. The wind is so strong outside, and on the
side where the wind is coming from, the wind was strong enough to knock me and
my sister back a few times. And deathly cold. Yuck.
After that we went back to the hotel to get a taxi to Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre.
It was absolutely gorgeous- startlingly white and complex and gorgeous. It was
so unlike the other churches we'd been in, and it was high, high on a hill-
which, in a nice piece of trivia, is called "la butte" which means "the mound,"
so the title of Rufus Wainwright's "Complainte de la Butte" now makes soooo much
more sense. Especially since some Parisians call/called Montmartre La Butte.
Anyway, afterwards we wandered a bit into Montmartre to get lunch, and my dad
found out our waiter was Cuban, and all bets were off. You see, when it's
illegal to go back to your country, all your compatriots become your brothers.
Put any two cubans together (maybe not the youger generations, but the older
generations, definitely) and they will find out within a few minutes that
they're either related or used to be best friends back in Cuba, or had relatives
that were. Anyway, my dad was practically giddy at meeting another Cuban, but
disappointingly, he was from "Castro's Cuba," and therefore wasn't as friendly.
Friendly, but not as much as he should have been to his Cuban brother. He gave
us instructions on how to get to the Moulin Rouge.
However, we took a wrong turn and wound up going down this crazy set of stairs,
and my parents are elderly, so getting lost and having to go up and down stairs
is not exactly the funnest thing ever, so we asked a guy for directions. I think
he was the only guy who spoke only French, so I went over and talked to him. He
was horrified at the idea of us going to that district and told us it
was too sketchy. So we climbed back up to Sacré-Cœur and got a cab to take us
back to the hotel, but to go by the Moulin Rouge.
Totally sketchy area. Red light district, hello. Mom and I took pictures out the
window. My bohemian ideals were wounded.
We had a dinner reservation for eight, so we got ready for dinner. This, I
think, was perhaps the most memorable dinner I've ever had.
The restaurant was about two hundred times too cool for us. It was small and
classy. The walls were lines in a classy way with pictures of celebrities who
had loved it. For instance, where we sat, there was a picture of Kim Basinger
with signatures from her and Alec Baldwin, presumably before they got divorced,
extolling the restaurant. They spoke little English. And the menu was reduced
due to the reduced staff for New Years.
The set price for an entry and a main dish was 82 euros. The entries were pretty
innocuous- salmon things, shrimp things, foie gras (maybe not innocuous, but
kind of expected) and something else. It was the main dishes that were...
painful.
We are simple people. Really. Chicken and steak people. Turkey. Our family
friends, the Hoppes, they eat weird things (to us, and I'm sorry if I offend
you,) like deer and rabbit and duck. For god's sake, Mel doesn't eat seafood and
I'm not wild about steak. We had successfully navigated French cuisine until
that day.
For main courses, they offered lobster, deer, something I can't remember, and
pigeon.
Mel quickly decided she was not hungry and wouldn't eat, to tell the waiter she
was sick. And she looked it. It was decided that my parents would order the
shrimp things (which I would have ordered too, if I had known they were shrimp
and not those massive prawn things sometimes given to me) and lobster. I would
order the salmon and... wait for it... pigeon. The waiter said it tasted like
chicken, and my mother reasoned if it was okay, Mel and I could share. Plus, it
wasn't like they were shooting the pigeons in the street, these pigeons
came from pigeon farms.
I want you all to stop and picture this. I am not an adventurous person at all.
I am possibly even less of an adventurous eater. Monica's family has a running
joke about me eating chicken fingers which I could happily eat for near about
every meal. If I like something at a restaurant, I will order it at the
restaurant over and over again until... well, I die or it makes me sick or
something.
We were all testy in the restaurant- we couldn't leave, because the concierge
had had a really hard time making New Years Eve reservations in the first place,
plus it would have been super rude in such a small place, and thirdly, there was
no where else to eat- but let me tell you, stating at the end of every sentence
"... hello, I just ordered a pigeon," was a great tension diffuser. It fit in
everywhere. Mel: "I don't like anything here." Me: "I ordered a pigeon." ; Dad:
"This is going to be expensive." Me: "I ordered a rat with wings."
Mom and I would up exchanging appetizers- the salmon offered came in two forms:
raw and pebbled into a little pile, and smoked so so thinly cut it tasted raw.
It also came with two little pancakey things they called blinis that were
fandamntastic. I got Mom's four shrimp on top of lentil... stuff.
Then came dinner.
I can't really explain to you what it was like receiving a pigeon. Beheaded, plucked, split open and cooked, on your plate. A pigeon. Something that had no right being on anyone's plate, as far as I was concerned, unless you were dying of hunger. It looked nothing like a chicken.
I bravely cut into it.
The kind of chicken I meat I like it white. This meat was not only dark, it was also rare, because apparently that's how you cook birds that aren't chicken. It was pink pink pink and bloody.
I made Mel take a bite.
"It's not... so bad," she said, gulping down her glass of water and tearing into a piece of bread.
I took a bite.
I won't go into details, but it took a lot not to hurl. I think a lot of it was that it was a pigeon. And disgusting. But I couldn't handle it.
I made my Mom taste it, and she was like, you're right, it's inedible. So we didn't have to eat it.
Two-hundred and sixty-one euros later, we went to the ice cream store across the street and had ice cream.
We went back to the room and chilled. I found episodes of the X-Files on TV in French, and whoever dubbed Dana was absolutely too cute.
Then at midnight we went down to the front of the hotel and watched the Eiffel Tower light up.
We stayed up a bit later to watch more XF and pack, and then we got up the next morning at six to go to the airport.
Which I wouldn't have had to LJ about at all, but then, you know.
Charles de Gaulle is, according to my mom, the largest airport hub in Europe. It's enormous. Our flight was leaving out of a distant gate that was literally twenty minutes away. So we took a bus over there and then we went into the duty free shops.
There was a very nice one with the liquor, perfumes, makeup, and tobacco. We went in there, put on some perfume, went to another store, bought these awesome candies that taste like violets (which my sister and I love) and like roses, which I got, and it's good, even though it takes some getting used to. After a while I hunkered down to wait for my mom to quit shopping so that we could go to our gate.
As a bit of backstory, my family and I compare everyone to stars. Girls we see in line will look like Jen. People from far away will have Bristow ears. And my sister, all the thirty-first, was seeing guys who looked like Sloane.
So when she came over to me and said "There's a guy in there who looks creepily like Sloane," I thought, uh huh. Because the guys were always short, dark-haired, and bespectacled. I expected nothing difference.
Except, um, this time, it was actually Ron Rifkin.
I am not built to meet famous people. I've joked with many of my friends that I'd probably cry if I ever met, like, Jen Garner or Victor Garber. I came very close to crying when I walked past Shakira. I do like strangers. I hate bothering people.
And that's exactly what I did, because I am a bad, bad person. Sigh.
Ran back and got my camera. Searched a bit frantically for my mom so that we could hopefully get a picture with both me and my sister in it, but she was no where to be found.
So, lightheaded and nauseous, I went over to him. And spoke very quickly:
Me: Mr Rifkin?
He: [turns] Yes?
Me: Hi. I'm a big fan of yours from Alias, so I was wondering I could get a picture with you?
He: Sure.
[Mel takes the picture.]
He: Did it come out okay?
Mel: Yes.
Me: Thank you so much!
[we run off, terrified.]
My god, it was horrible. I still get nauseous thinking about it. I mean, it was nice, and it's the first famous person I've ever talked to, and, really, of all the gin joints in all the world, but honestly. If it had been, say, Lena Olin, I don't think I would have had the strength to do anything. Hannah said it was probably lucky that it was Ron Rifkin and not, say, Victor Garber. Because I might have actually called him SpyDaddy him between my tears. And Jen? Forget it.
The flight was excruciating. We got on, and we were delayed like, an hour. The seven hour flight from Detroit to Paris wasn't too bad, but ten hours from Paris to Miami? My god. Never ending. And then customs and passportage and proving we were actually who we were? Took forever. But then we got home! And I had internet! I also received Bri's Christmas card!
So, that was my vacation! Massive pic spam might follow. I have over four hundred pics.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 12:09 am (UTC)I'm with you -- I know I would fall apart if I ever found myself in the precense of Victor or Jen. Ron Rifkin wouldn't flummox me as much, so for the same reason, perhaps it's good you met him first. Now you've got a little star experience. :)
BTW, I love that you called him Mr. Rifkin. I hope if I ever meet a celebrity, I'll be able to hold it together long enough to remember to show him/her that level of respect.
So glad you had a great Paris experience! Welcome home.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 12:39 am (UTC)The trip was fantastic, but it is nice to be home.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 02:04 am (UTC)The whole trip sounded amazing. I can't wait for the pictures.
People must have thought I was from like, Alaska or Siberia. That killed me.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 02:13 am (UTC)My whole family was cracking up at your post, but my brother disapproves of your characterisation of Napoleon. (He worships Napoleon, for reasons that escape me.) And my parents loved the story about the pigeon, as did I. My question is, did you try a snail?
And OMG I totally understand about the awfulness of meeting people. I've been SUCH a wreck when I've met Adrienne, and I can't imagine how I'd be with Shakira. (Adrienne has the charming gift of putting you at your ease immediately, though. ;-) ) But that's awesome!
I'm so glad you had fun, but I still think you should have spent a day in London! Glad you're safely home and that you liked Paris. So -- where next, world traveller? :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 02:30 am (UTC)I want to go to Buenos Aires. Want to come with?
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 12:57 pm (UTC)And it totally hit me last night that I'm going to be 20 this year, and that's absolutely horrifying to me. So I guess I AM a grown-up. Oh dear! :D
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 09:08 pm (UTC)I think that once we got there, stuff would be reasonably cheap -- they had all that crap with the economy a few years ago, didn't they? And we wouldn't have to stay somewhere outrageously expensive.
Hee, I have WAY too much time on my hands, apparently... I've been mulling this over all day!
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 02:58 pm (UTC)I never much liked the Mona Lisa anyway, and the coronation of Napoleon is my second favorite piece in the Louvre. I love David. But talk about a museum that's no fun when it's crowded! I must have gone there a half-dozen times when I was in Poitiers, taking people through, and only once did I enjoy it.
The Middlebury school is right around the corner from La Madeleine, so I know that area rather well. Lovely district. And most of the Latin Quarter is borderline sketchy, so. Nothing new there. ;) I still love it!
Still amazed at the Ron Rifkin story. SO cool.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 07:13 pm (UTC)I'm a seriously nervous person, so I don't like sketchy areas. It was beautiful, though, but almost everything I saw of Paris was.
The Rifkin story amazes me still. I have no idea how it happened.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 07:23 pm (UTC)Liberty Leading the People is pretty neat. There's also a painfully beautiful painting of Ophelia...oh, I can't remember who by. I could probably walk to it if you set me loose in the Louvre, but...
Did you get into the sculpture galleries at all? All the Barye animals!
I mostly like the Latin Quarter for the nifty shopping. There's a shop there that I have several scarves from that I still adore - if I could go back and buy a half-dozen more, I would. And of course, the Musee de Cluny, which is hands-down my favorite museum in the world.
*sigh* I'm all nostalgic now...
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 07:35 pm (UTC)The Ophelia painting with her in the water?
:( I want to go back!
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 08:39 pm (UTC)There's the famous Delacroix Ophelia, and then there's this other one. It's just her face, floating in a sort of mossy green stream. It's muted but also starkly realistic, because she really looks dead and it's an uneasy sort of painting to really look at.
I always want to go back. Sometimes I think half the reason I'm applying to grad school is to justify long research trips to France. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-01-04 05:09 am (UTC)AND YOU MET RON RIFKIN. I'm just like... STILL in disbelief-state.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-04 08:27 am (UTC)