Exibits and Excursions in Paris

2-1-09 (Saturday)
A lovely breakfast of bread and coffee this morning at the hostel, which is becoming very familiar. (Apparently the continental breakfast really does vary by continent.) Then our group left for the Musee Galeree, where we walked through an exhibit of historical fashion dresses “Sous L’Empire Des Crinolines” (1852-1870) The dresses were amazing. They were made for much smaller people a long time ago, but the constructions themselves were so beautiful and ornate. I made about 5 pages of sketches.
Next we visited the Sonia Rykiel exhibit at the Musee du Louvre. It was her fortieth anniversary of designing, and her collection was unbelievable. Not only the quantity of unique designs and clothing lines she has produced, but the way she has continued to reinvent her designs and produce new and crazy (very crazy) things. Extremely cool to see it all, especially when I didn’t know hardly anything about her before hand. The gift shop in this place was also very neat- hip and artsy. I bought a few postcards.
Our next quest was Lunch, and while this should have been a simple quest, it turned into a long misdirectional hunt for a restaurant recommended by Anael (asst. director not on trip with us) We took advantage of our lostness to take some very good pictures though, so it wasn’t all bad. And when pictures we no longer an adequate distraction from our hunger, Gennie stepped up and took the map from Nina and Dana and found the restaurant in about 5 minutes. She has since been designated our official navigational Dodo. (Her initials are GPS- coincidence, I think not) Soooo, we had lunch at La Ferme which has a cute little cow as its logo. I had some awesome carrot soup and a very mini baguette (Paris is sooo expensive, I’ve found that soup is the best and most filling deal)
After lunch we broke up into smaller groups. Gennie, Jeremy, Anna, and I decided to do a self-guided walking tour of Paris instead of going to the department store with the rest - best decision ever.
We started at the Pyramid du le Lourve, which looked wonderful with the late afternoon sun glistening through it. And we tried to use our da Vinci code skills to locate the Roseline, but we were unsuccessful So we settled for funny pictures with the statues instead.
We continued on through the mini Arc du Triumph and though Le Jardin des Tuieries, (Garden of Tulips) up to the oblesque (tall, skinny, Washington monument type thing- Gennie said its called Nelson’s Needle or something like that and it has a twin in London) then we continued walking down Avenue des Champs Elysees toward the Arc du Triumph, but we turned left before it to see the Petit Palais and the Grand Palais (Palais de la Decouverte) and across the seine river to the huge Hotel Des Invalides/ Musee de L’armee. We didn’t go inside these but the buildings themselves were beautiful. We also saw a statue of Winston Churchill.
Next we were off to Le Tour Eiffel!!! (Eiffel Tower) It was a long chilly walk to get there but it was a great finale to the day. We took lots of pictures and tried to create our own people tower (to pay homage of course) and ended up semi-successful with several two-man towers. We wanted to go up inside of it but the lines were about 3 miles long and Paris was also quickly morphing into the arctic tundra (aka really really cold with a crippling breeze- and minus the polar bears of course) so we decided to skip it, but as we were walking to the metro, we turned around to see the whole thing glittering! Sorta like a giant firework- without the threat of explosion. After a few minutes it become a steady light so we headed home.
We went to a pizza place near the hostel for dinner against the warning of Dana, which was a mistake. The pizza was absolutely fantastic, especially after all that walking, but the waiter was very unpleasant and bitter because we wanted to split pizzas instead of order one each. After that we went to the grocery store for wine and bought several bottles for 2.70 Euro each!!! After the initial excitement we quickly learned that Way cheap = way trouble. We drank and played cards in the hotel room for a while then got coaxed into going out to a club with the others. Unfortunately said others decided to order drinks (2 for 5 euro again) at the Monte Charge first “really quick” (no such thing at a bar) and we never made it to the alleged club, but evidently they did at some point, and they took the Monte Charge bartender and waiter with them. (Nikola and Sam.)
Oy ve.

Lauren