In the winter when it drizzles

I hate Paris in the springtime

I hate Paris in the fall 

I hate Paris in the summer when it sizzles

I hate Paris in the winter when it drizzles 

I hate Paris 

Oh why, oh why do I hate Paris?
Because my love is there... 

With his slut girlfriend!

This delightful little ditty is the take-off mantra of our heroine, Kate, in the movie French Kiss, a film about a woman who travels to Paris and eventually to the Côte d'Azur to chase after her fiancé who has left her for another (French) woman. She is accompanied by Kevin Kline's character, a Frenchman named Luc who, though slightly shady, wants nothing more than to own his own vineyard and produce his own wine. They, of course, fall in love and live happily ever after in the south of France, kissing out in the vineyards and cultivating wine.

And this is the song that I think of every time I think of Paris.

It's ironic, though, because I really do like Paris. I remembering being simultaneously over- and underwhelmed by Paris when I was there last August, but my Christmas vacation changed my opinion of the city. It is still sprawling and touristy and full of its fair share of snobs, but there is something downright magical about Paris when it snows.

As well as something sorta whimsical

I arrived mid-morning on the 23rd of December, and with its cold temperature and grey skies, Paris was a little less than welcoming. I had grown accustomed to traveling under mediocre conditions, however, so I dragged my duffel bag to my hostel (just a few short minutes from the Place de la République), checked in (only to be told that rooms were closed until 4pm for cleaning), and then embarked on my whirlwind Christmas vacation.

I was planning on seeing a French musical that evening, so I had a fair amount of time to kill before I needed to find the Palais des Sports, where the spectacle was taking place. I decided to start with a walk along the Champs Elysées. Friends had told me that it was well worth the trip for the lights and decorations alone, not to mention the Christmas market, which was sure to put Aix's market to shame. A short metro ride later, I emerged at the Place de la Concorde, which is at the far southeastern end of the Champs. The sky was an even darker color than when I had arrived only a couple hours before and seemed to threaten a terrible snowstorm. As it was, it was only lightly snowing, enough to coat my jacket in a fine layer of snowflakes, but not enough for it to really stick on the ground, and that was enough for me to appreciate.

The path down the street was fascinating. I happened to walk behind a group of about three American families who were traveling together, and amused myself by eavesdropping on their conversation only to finally speak up when I heard that they were from just outside of Boston. They were very pleasant and wished me a Merry Christmas before we parted ways and continued our separate Christmas excursions. It rather shocked me to see how many tourists were in Paris for Christmas. For me, the remainder of my Parisian romanticism was what had drawn me to this location for the holidays, but I couldn't believe that that same notion had enticed everyone around me to flock to the city of lights at the same time.

For one thing, winter is hardly the best time to see Paris. The trees are dead, the skies are dreary, and the streets are treacherously icy. I first noticed this as I was walking along the Christmas market and happened to stray a little off the concrete and onto the sandy portion of the sidewalk, where the snow had turned the sand almost muddy and the cold had solidified the slush (half-melted from the shoes of so many passers-by) into an icy block that caused me to nearly lose my footing. Luckily, that was also starting to melt thanks to the heavy foot traffic, but I knew that this could not bode well for the rest of the journey.

Eventually, I made it past the Christmas market and to the boutiques and "magasins" that were richly decorated for the holidays.

Sephora was perhaps not the most impressive, but its colorful display was certainly among the more festive 

I ducked inside a few stores to escape the snow and do a little window shopping, but soon my body grew tired of the constant freezing and thawing of limbs as I went from heated store to chilly exterior and back again, so I knew it was probably a good time to find a nice restaurant and relax a little for lunch. I chose a moderately priced Italian place on the Champs and ordered some wine and some hearty pasta to warm me up. I sat in a corner on the second floor of the restaurant, which was extraordinarily busy, while sipping my wine and watching the shoppers come and go down below. It was a very calming meal and the perfect thing to energize me for the rest of the day.

After lunch and a brief consultation of the list I had created of things to see and do, I decided it was time to go Christmas shopping. I had previously picked up some gifts for my family in various other locations in France, but I had not yet managed to find something for my dad, who I feel is always the hardest person to shop for because he usually buys all his own gifts and I am never sure if he already has something or not. This time, however, I was well-prepared: I had consulted my father on possible gift ideas and he had given me one specific guideline. I was to go to the Shakespeare and Company bookstore and purchase a book for him.

Shakespeare and Co has a special place in the hearts of the Oliver family. When my dad was younger, it was one of the places he visited during his travels in Europe. He purchased a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and even met the owner of the establishment, George Whitman, who habitually offered weary travelers he deemed worthy a place to rest for the night up above the bookstore. Whitman's daughter Sylvia now runs the store, and was unfortunately nowhere to be found when I visited, but the literary ambiance, I imagine, has stayed the same ever since my dad first visited in the early 1970s. My first visit to the store came during my initial three weeks in Paris, and came as a bit of a surprise. I had known that it was an English-language bookstore, but I had not imagined it as a sort of haven for Anglophones from around the world. I was actually shocked by the lack of French I heard on the premises. After wandering through the store for about 40 minutes, wondering at the sheer number of books squeezed into the tiny shop, I finally stumbled upon the travel section as well as the Lost Generation section. Feeling rather touristy, I did what I had been dying to do since I had applied for admission to the Wellesley-in-Aix program and purchased an inexpensive copy of A Moveable Feast, my favorite work by Ernest Hemingway.

It was this memoir that made the Shakespeare and Company bookstore famous to the literary world. Originally run by Sylvia Beach and located on rue de l'Odéon, the store became a center for literary culture and a frequent haunt of the writers of the Lost Generation, notably Hemingway, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound. The store closed in 1941 due to the German occupation of Paris and never reopened. After Beach's death in 1962, the bookstore owned by George Whitman on the Left Bank of the Seine changed its name from Le Mistral (likely referring to the strong wind that blows through Provence or the poet Frédéric Mistral) to Shakespeare and Co to honor the original store and its owner. Today, it even looks vaguely as the original store once did and is full of delightful nooks and crannies for its visitors to discover. And it has always remained a sort of mythical place to my family, despite the fact that it is not the original establishment.

My second visit to this store came during this vacation, and as mentioned before, I was a lady with a mission. I had to find something that my dad would appreciate that didn't cost too much and that would be unique enough that it would be clear that I had spent some time ruminating over my many options. At first, I considered a work of fiction, feeling that that would provide the most interesting search, but after nearly 45 minutes of staring at shelf after shelf, I felt even more clueless than I had before and decided that I should look amongst the new arrivals for something more unique. Finally, I found it! The perfect book: The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. Eight years previously, my dad had, through a roundabout sort of way, ensured that I received a copy of A Brief History of Time, and that I actually read it as well. Keep in mind that I was 12 at the time, and that quantum mechanics was really only something I had heard about in the movies. Thus, the purchase of Hawking's latest work seemed to me to come full circle, as it were, in multiple situations. My dad loved the book.

Not long after that adventure, it was finally approaching "l'heure" to head out to the Palais des Sports to see Mozart l'Opéra Rock. My former roommate Nicole and I had discovered this musical last spring via 24-Hour Drop, a file drop on the Wellesley server, and had been obsessed ever since. I had been dying to go see it ever since I had heard that it would be returning to Paris and had even bought my ticket before I even knew that I wanted to spend Christmas in Paris. The musical did not fail my expectations. It even cleared up some of the questions I had about some of the song lyrics by, obviously, giving context to the songs, and then went on to further boost my confidence in the French language once I realized that I was having hardly any difficulties understanding what was being said... or sung for that matter. All in all, it was well worth the 80 or 90 euros I spent on sixth row seats, especially since photography sans flash was allowed.

Results?

Awwww yeeaaahhhhh

Salieri, y u so sexy?

It was a thoroughly enjoyable play. It wasn't Art in the grand sense of the word and may or may not stand the test of time, but it was glitzy and glamorous and loud and fun. And that was all that I could really ask for. Surprisingly, it is also considered to be children-friendly. There were many, many people under the age of 16 in the crowd, and they were clearly enjoying the show. A fair number even knew the words to the songs.

My next day in Paris was spent mostly in the Louvre. But before I managed to spend seven hours staring at Renaissance paintings, I spent the early part of the morning walking past Notre Dame and along the Right Bank of the Seine, past l'Hôtel de Ville and a few blocks further to the broad side of the Louvre, which stretches on for quite a while, but doesn't seem to be nearly as long when one is inside.

Notre Dame got in the spirit of things with a pretty, giant tree to decorate the square

This statue, off to the right of the cathedral, was covered in the freshly fallen snow and looked even more  majestic than usual.

The Hôtel de Ville looked particularly impressive with the snow-dusted roofs and the  ice skating  rink out in front. This was also the first time I had ever seen Paris's city hall, and was not disappointed by a lack of grandeur - quite the opposite.

Eventually, though, I made it to the Louvre, about an hour after its opening, and navigated through the halls with richly decorated ceilings, briefly stopping to say hello to Nike of Samothrace, so that I could immerse myself in Renaissance art and thus study for my impending art history exam back in Aix. I wandered the halls of the great museum, staring at masterpieces of the 15th and 16th centuries, analyzing the religious symbols and searching for some hidden meaning in the carefully applied oil and gold leaf. It was tiring, to say the least. Not to mention that I started to feel as though the paintings were trying to convert me. So much religious iconography, so little time.

Eventually, I took a break from the never-ending rooms of Italian painting and went to grab a bite to eat in the food court down below the Louvre. The food was some sort of pseudo-Middle Eastern cuisine that can be found at any food court in America these days, really, and was only slightly better than average for fast, cheap French food, but that said, I devoured my dish and gulped down the accompanying soda as though they constituted my first meal in a week. I also partook of the free Wi-Fi I found while messing around with my iPod. The McDonald's was too far away to get a good signal, but the Apple store, which by my estimations should have been further away than the McDonald's, was broadcasting a lovely signal that allowed me to check my email and inform my friends of my current location in a subterranean multicultural food court underneath one of the world's greatest museums.

Lunch devoured and stomach satisfied, I returned to my painting perusal and came to the sudden and profound conclusion that late Medieval and early Renaissance artists were incapable of painting anything other than an ugly version of baby Jesus.

Baby Jesus should not look like a 35-year-old midget with a receding hairline who is creeping on Virgin Mary, who, it should be noted, appears to have no chin and an impossibly round cranium.

Nor should baby Jesus look like a Japanese representation of a European man with far too many jelly rolls. For someone as pretty and trim as Mary is in this picture, she ought to know how keep her child from obesity.

I fully understand the concept of spiritual beauty in lieu of physical beauty. In fact, I think it can be very powerful when used properly in art. Case in point: Donatello's statue of Mary Magdalene.

She is emaciated, her clothing is in tatters... there is nothing remarkable or beautiful about her physical appearance. And yet, the fact that she seems to be about to pray and is thus demonstrating her devout faith reveals a sort of inner spiritual beauty that makes the statue more powerful than if she were the Greek ideal of beauty. That is something that I can get behind. I don't really understand where all the ugly baby Jesuses are coming from... most people think that babies are adorable (it depends on the day of the week, for me). Perhaps this was the ideal for the period, though, and perhaps I shouldn't be quick to judge.


The Louvre essentially went on to consume the majority of my day. The one other major destination of my day consisted of a trip to Café Divan near the Place de la Bastille. This particular destination came at the recommendation of a friend, who insisted that I just HAD to try to their hot chocolate. Never one to say no to warm, sugary treats, I decided that hot chocolate was the very thing I needed as I relaxed from a long day of being on my feet. I lost my way at first, which I fully blame on the fact that there are far too many streets leading away from the Place de la Bastille, and finally resorted to using my handy dandy map of Parisian arrondissements to navigate the streets of the city. Eventually, I stumbled into the place looking like the lost tourist that I vaguely was and ordered a hot chocolate.


I did not expect what I received. I received a jar of hot milk and warm chocolate syrup that I was to mix on my own to achieve the desired proportions of each. Needless to say, my hot beverage was rich and thoroughly warming and made the perfect companion as I perused through a couple chapters of A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, the book I had chosen to read during travel down time which is a necessary read for any Anglophone who has lived in Provence for any significant amount of time.


And so, that was the first half of my vacation in Paris. Unfortunately, my final and last exam of my entire year abroad is waiting to be studied for, so I must away. Merde!


More Parisian tales shall come soon, but for now...


Peace, love, and Saturday morning exams,
Rachel

A Quick One While I'm Away

Hello friends!

So, good news and bad news.

GOOD NEWS: I'm updating!!! Huzzah!

BAD NEWS: This is a really short update.

I have been really, really, magnificently behind schedule on updating because I've been really, really, magnificently busy as of late. I think it finally trickled through my skull that I am still a university student, and now that classes are nearing their end, I have suddenly realized that, oh, crap, I have a lot of work to do. And, of course, since I am a perfectionist at heart, it has to be as perfect as my current level of French will allow.

Alrighty, but enough excuses. Let me update you on the essentials. Some travelling has been done. I went to Monaco to represent Wellesley at a presentation about attending college in the United States. Monaco is fantastic, really expensive, and full of never-ending hills. There are so many uphill climbs, in fact, that Monaco installed public elevators for people to get around. No friggin' joke.

Why did they think it would be a good idea to put a city on the side of a mountain?

And then, with the Wellesley-in-Aix peeps, I got to see a good bit of the Luberon, which is gorgeous. We drove through Bonnieux, which a lovely hillside village across the valley from the former residence of the Marquis de Sade, ate lunch in Gordes at a five star hotel and restaurant, took a brisk walk through Roussillon, which is one of the most astounding locations in the world, and were privy to a guided tour of the Abbaye de Sénanque, which you might know for being that old-looking abbey with the fields upon fields of lavender surrounding it.

The rooftops of Bonnieux

Potato chips: Gourmet food for visitors of Gordes

Purdy flowers (and my shockingly blue glove) in Roussillon

One of the first good glimpses of the Abbaye de Sénanque

Otherwise, I've been living in Aix, enjoying the company of friends. We've had parties and dinners and movie nights and various activities all throughout Aix just about every weekend, and it's been great! It's fun to see such a mix of Americans, French, Australians, Germans, and so on! One of my favorite activities of late was the "Festival Tous Courts," the annual international short film festival in Aix-en-Provence. My friend Cédric and I went to see the winners of the festival. In all, we saw eight (possibly nine... I might have forgotten one when reviewing them) films, and my favorite was probably "J'attends une femme," an imparting of wisdom from mother to daughter as the mother reaches the end of her pregnancy. The mother shares stories, brutally honest facts and opinions, general advice, and often humorous anecdotes of what it will be like to be born and to grow and to learn and to live as a woman.

Since we are now in the month of December, it is very clearly Christmas season. And France definitely knows  how to celebrate this fact. On Cours Mirabeau, they've got a daily Christmas market with hand-crafted items, cute little souvenirs and knick-knacks, specialties of the region or season (calissons, vin chaud, churros, pretzels, etc.), and a second merry-go-round specifically for the season. Pretty darn cool. I got some Christmas shopping done there, and indulged myself a little bit by purchasing a real, hand-painted Venetian mask. Now, I absolutely have no reason whatsoever to NOT go to Venice, especially since one of my vacations in the spring semester happens to fall on the same dates of the Carnivale de Venezia. So ridiculously excited for Venice.

I'm also excited for spending Christmas in Paris. Everything is settled on that account, which is comforting. This is the first Christmas that I can think of that will be spent away from home, which is particularly upsetting since I have not been home in so long, but I try to not let it get me down too much because, hey, I am spending Christmas in Paris. This is something that I have been dreaming of doing for years, and considering the fact that Paris has been getting a lot of snow recently, it looks like I might even be able to have an actual white Christmas in Paris. How lovely!

Well, I can hear the piles of homework calling, so I think I had better tend to them before they start screaming at me. I promise to continue with the entries about the various cities I've visited, and to tell you all about my holidays once I get through exams.

Peace, love, and chestnuts roasting on an open fire,
Rachel

Ahhh, La France

So I've been in France for a week now. Which means that I have indeed started my study abroad program. Which also means that I am currently in Paris. Which also means that I owe y'all an entry about the city of light and of love.

To be honest, there is way, way too much to share with you.

So let's start with the flight to Paris: not at all as stressful as I was thinking it was going to be. I was mildly terrified by the prospect of flying all the way across the ocean to lands unknown. What if something was wrong with my visa (especially after all the work I went to to get it)? What if they lost my luggage? And what could I expect when I attempted to communicate with the Parisians? Would they instantly recognize my accent as American and insist upon speaking to me in English?

In fact, I did not need to worry about any of that. My visa was fine. My luggage arrived safely. And the Parisians are nothing but helpful and patient when I am speaking to them.

The flight to Paris took about six and a half hours, which is trying on one's nerves when there are small children roaming about the cabin (seriously, parents of the world, it's called a seat belt and a little melatonin), but short enough for a good nap if one had the extraordinary ability to fall asleep on planes. I say "extraordinary" because I cannot fall asleep on planes. So, in general, the flight was about the same amount of time it takes to fly non-stop from Boston to San Diego. The Air France flight attendants were very nice and gave us dinner and breakfast. The dinner menu looked a little something like this:

I enjoyed the "Pâtes orzo au curry et poulet grillé" and the "Pâtes penne à la provençale" along with everything else you see listed there and a little wine to accompany the food. Surprisingly good for airplane food... but perhaps not surprising since it is Air France and France is known for their cuisine. Also, I find it interesting that the word for cheesecake in French is... "cheesecake." Breakfast, on the other hand, was nothing special, so I'm skipping over it.

Our hotel is what is known as an "apart'hotel" because it was designed for people who plan to be vacationing in a certain spot for a lengthy period of time. Named the Citadines Paris Saint-Germain-des-Prés, our particular apart'hotel is right in the heart of Paris, or "le coeur de Paris." One can walk from our residence to la cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris in one direction, or go down to le Musée du Louvre in the other other direction, or simply take a lovely stroll along the Seine. And, in fact, I have done all of these things. Here are some pretty pictures:

The view from my room:

The Venus de Milo, which is, in my opinion, a much better example of feminine beauty than any beanpole of a supermodel walking runway today:

La Victoire de Samothrace (Nike of Samothrace), the most beautiful sculpture ever created in the history of art:

The friggin' ceiling in the Louvre, which, I should remind you, was once a royal residence, so what your seeing here used to be the ceiling for the apartments of French royalty, and these over-the-top ceiling decorations are EVERYWHERE. Honestly, it is worth going to the Louvre just to look at the ceiling:

The interior of Notre Dame, which is really hard to get a good picture of when they don't do a lot to light up the place and the natural light coming in through the stained glass is not super strong:

Detail of the flying buttresses of the cathedral taken from the Square de Jean XXIII:

Oh, yeah, I should definitely mention that all of these photos were taken with my camera by me. It is entirely possible to take epic photos of Paris with a simple digital camera because Paris is that awesome.

Ok, pretty pictures have been shared. So what else have I been up to? Well, let's see... I took a boat ride along the Seine to see some of the best sights in the city from the water, ate dinner on the Eiffel Tower, wandered around le Marais, a neighborhood in Paris which roughly translates to "the Swamp," traversed the Île de la Cité and the Île Saint Louis, where you can find Notre Dame and some of the finest ice cream ("la glace") in Paris, spent an afternoon shopping along Boulevard Saint Germain and Boulevard Saint Michel, explored the Latin Quarter, ate at sidewalk cafés nearly every day, including Les Deux Magots (The Two Figurines... aptly named for the two statues in the restaurant) - an old haunt of Ernest Hemingway and others belonging to the Lost Generation - visited a French bar, got lost in the city with friends while looking for said bar, tried 20 types of cheese and 6 types of wine in the course of four hours or so...

Yeah, I've been exhausted at the end of each day. And there are still two more weeks in Paris! There is still so much to see!

I must be frank with you, though. I did not fall in love with Paris until Friday. It took me nearly a week to fall in love with a city that I have been dying to see since I was quite young.

I think it is because, if I truly want to appreciate a city, I have to explore it on my own. I need to wander the streets and lose myself in a new culture. I need to see the sights and hear the sounds of the city at my own pace. This becomes complicated when so many activities are scheduled and I tour the city in a large tourist group of students. This is a fantastic way to learn about the history of the city, but you essentially only discover the tourist spots, or the places that the tour guide knows and loves. That's all fine and dandy since I've never been to France before, but if I am going to be living in this country for the next nine months, I want to get to know it on my own terms. I want to go to restaurants and shops and be treated like any other resident of France. Now, obviously, that won't always happen because I have an American accent when I speak French, and I am not totally fluent yet, but I want to feel more like a person and less like A Tourist. I mean, it's fine if people can tell right away that I am American, but I am here to absorb a culture and learn a language, and that is harder to do when one is attached to seventeen other Americans who are sightseeing with me.

And I was able to do that on Friday. After my French Civilization crash course, I took off from the Citadines and went exploring. I saw Notre Dame on my own, bought some cookies from a little pâtisserie on the Île Saint Louis, where I conversed with the sales clerk in French. I bought a little ice cream cone from a ice cream stand attached to a Salon de Thé and took my time walking through the streets and taking in the sights of the ancient city around me. No one asked me if I spoke French or English. I was even able to tell a family of tourists how to get to the nearest metro station. I felt totally accomplished as an independent student abroad in a new country.

And so, from that, I slowly began to fall in love with "La Ville de Lumière" and its narrow streets and creamy white stone buildings and tiny balconies adorned with flowers and gold-tipped gates and jazz musicians who set up shop in the middle of a pedestrian bridge:

Oh, and, yes, I have purchased fresh baguettes and a striped shirt in order to better fit in, haha. ^_^

Gros bisous,

Rachel