So, this will be my last post from Paris! So much has happened, it's hard to believe we'll be leaving tomorrow for Caen. While part of me isn't ready to leave the fairytale that Paris has been, my wallet is feeling incredibly stretched as it is, and has to last me through my trip around the UK after the program ends. So hopefully the little luxuries of Paris can be forgone for the relative affordability of Caen, and all the great (read: program-funded!) trips we'll get to go on there.
Yesterday, we got a tour of Versailles, the grandiose castle built by Louis XIV. Again, we were reminded just how valuable the special access the program affords us is, as we were ushered through quiet back passageways past the crowded hallways flooded with tourists. Our guide took us back into the opera house constructed for royal eyes only. Much smaller than Opera Garnier in Paris, but still just as ornate. Everything was gold-encrusted and lined with velvet and silk, practically dripping in opulence. That was the theme in Versailles, everything designed to show-off, with over-the-top decor and custom-built furniture.
Professor Freixes even paid for us to get into the gardens, which I think were my favorite parts. They're huge and lush and vibrant, so even when they are filled with visitors you never feel that they are cramped. I walked along the water with Matt, discussing our travel pasts and futures and watching miniature sailboats skim the surface. I couldn't imagine actually living here... watching the king wake up every day, eating lunch in the vast gardens, playing cricket on one of the greens. That's one of the strangest thing about these tours we take, delving into relics of the past and feeling them around you, preserved, as though you've jumped back in time.
One of the most disconcerting tours we went on was last week, when we managed to get reservations to see the famous catacombs. These were possibly one of my favorite destinations so far. The line wrapped around the building, and I heard that the average wait time was three hours. (Thank god for reservations; we only waited for thirty.) To get in, you descend a 19 m stone staircase straight down, so narrow that your shoulders almost touch the walls beside you. They eventually dump you out into another claustrophobic hall with dripping ceilings that eventually opened up into rooms filled with neatly stacked skulls and bones of hundreds of thousands of people. It was incredible, overwhelming, and eerie all at once. All these people, all these lives, reduced to a pile of bones.Some landed there after the plague, some from overflowing cemeteries throughout the centuries. I thought it was amazing, and I walked along marveling at the gravity of it all, until it was time to climb back up an even tighter stairwell and into sunlight.
Of course, being the humorous man he is, Professor Gonzalo ended that tour of death at one of Paris' most popular shops, La Durée, to munch on their world-famous macaroons. A delicious end to a delightful, if death-filled day. We moved from the palace to the crypt, and now it's time for me to move on to finishing my midterms... Oy vey. Until next time!
Yesterday, we got a tour of Versailles, the grandiose castle built by Louis XIV. Again, we were reminded just how valuable the special access the program affords us is, as we were ushered through quiet back passageways past the crowded hallways flooded with tourists. Our guide took us back into the opera house constructed for royal eyes only. Much smaller than Opera Garnier in Paris, but still just as ornate. Everything was gold-encrusted and lined with velvet and silk, practically dripping in opulence. That was the theme in Versailles, everything designed to show-off, with over-the-top decor and custom-built furniture.
Professor Freixes even paid for us to get into the gardens, which I think were my favorite parts. They're huge and lush and vibrant, so even when they are filled with visitors you never feel that they are cramped. I walked along the water with Matt, discussing our travel pasts and futures and watching miniature sailboats skim the surface. I couldn't imagine actually living here... watching the king wake up every day, eating lunch in the vast gardens, playing cricket on one of the greens. That's one of the strangest thing about these tours we take, delving into relics of the past and feeling them around you, preserved, as though you've jumped back in time.
One of the most disconcerting tours we went on was last week, when we managed to get reservations to see the famous catacombs. These were possibly one of my favorite destinations so far. The line wrapped around the building, and I heard that the average wait time was three hours. (Thank god for reservations; we only waited for thirty.) To get in, you descend a 19 m stone staircase straight down, so narrow that your shoulders almost touch the walls beside you. They eventually dump you out into another claustrophobic hall with dripping ceilings that eventually opened up into rooms filled with neatly stacked skulls and bones of hundreds of thousands of people. It was incredible, overwhelming, and eerie all at once. All these people, all these lives, reduced to a pile of bones.Some landed there after the plague, some from overflowing cemeteries throughout the centuries. I thought it was amazing, and I walked along marveling at the gravity of it all, until it was time to climb back up an even tighter stairwell and into sunlight.
Of course, being the humorous man he is, Professor Gonzalo ended that tour of death at one of Paris' most popular shops, La Durée, to munch on their world-famous macaroons. A delicious end to a delightful, if death-filled day. We moved from the palace to the crypt, and now it's time for me to move on to finishing my midterms... Oy vey. Until next time!