Wow. I am so exhausted because of everything I did today. I am truly living out my Nana's advice and not relaxing at all on my Easter vacation. I woke up today moderately early and took the initiative to go out to the supermarket and get breakfast for all of us for the morning. It was a bit cold out, but the promise of food made it worth the 5 minute walk. Unfortunately, the store didn't open until 9, and I didn't want to wait out in the cold for 30 minutes, so I walked back to the apartment. It turned out to be a good thing because I was able to get my jacket and figure out what kind of groceries we wanted for breakfast. I left again to go to the supermarket and came back to find three people wanting to make breakfast for us. Breakfast was wonderful and we had eggs, baguette, and brie. Hey, when you're in Paris, you eat French food.
We finally left to go to the city center to visit the Louvre. Luckily, because we are technically EU residents (thank you, visa) we got into the museum for free. It was great. We saw a ton of statues of the Greek/Roman gods and slowly moved into the painting section. We followed the crowd to the Mona Lisa, and were a bit underwhelmed. It's really tiny compared to the Giant picture of the Wedding of Cana and everyone was taking pictures of the Mona Lisa. We couldn't even get close! there was a wall of people a few yards back that were all straining to get a picture of the famous painting without any of the cameras further up getting in the way. We finally left the room and wandered around some more. We walked so far, we went to the other museum that contained the medieval and Egyptian artifacts. It was really cool to see all the sphinxes and even see a statue of King Ramesses II. We actually got bored of the museum rather quickly and decided to leave without checking out the third and final museum.
Outside of the Louvre, we took pictures in front of the glass pyramid and walked around a bit, heading out to the gardens at the entrance to the museum. At this point, we were super hungry, so we ate at one of the cafe's that were scattered around, eating a meat free lunch (Lent) and enjoying the ever changing weather. Seriously, it would be warm and sunny one minute, and windy and cold the next. Ah well, we tried the Crepes here (delicious!) and called another member of our group that went off on his own to see if he wanted to meet up with us. In the distance, we could see the Arc de Triomphe so we headed to the famous structure to meet our friend. It was a lot further away than we thought it would be, so we were able to see a lot of Paris as we walked down the road. At one point we saw the Disney store and stopped by for a little bit of sightseeing. It was pretty cool to see how popular Frozen was even in Paris (yes, I love this movie!) and I was able to see/listen to the French version of "I have a Dream" from the movie Tangled.
Finally, we made it to the Arc and headed through the underground passage to get to the Arc. We met up with Brandon and decided that we wanted to head up to the top of the Arc to see the star shaped roads leading to all corners of Paris from the Arc. Once again, we got in for free because our Visas are super awesome and make us residents of the EU. Walking up the arc wasn't that bad, and when we saw the view of all of Paris spread out before us, it made the entire hike worth it. Soon we left to get back to the ground and meet up with more members of the AIB group. We waited and talked about what we wanted to do later the day and the next day. At 5, Melissa, Nicole and I left to go to the Sacre-Coeur, a basilica in the Montmartre part of Paris. We arrived super early for the 7 pm mass, so we walked around and admired the view of both the church and the city far below it. The basilica happened to be on a hill, so it was a hike to get up to the entrance, but the work was worth it to see the church up close and to see the city far below us.
We walked inside the basilica to take a look around and admired the various statues and mosaics that were set up. Even the stained glass windows were beautiful with the light streaming through the simple designs in glorious rays of golden sunshine. When we were done exploring, we took a seat to wait for the mass to start as we didn't want to be stuck standing the entire time. We still had about an hour to go, so I may have nodded off a few times because even then I was tired. However, when the nuns came around and handed out the schedule for the mass, I perked up and stayed alert. Yes, you heard me...read me...whatever. There were nuns passing out the readings and music. In habits. And they went up to the choir section a few minutes before mass started. When mass actually started, there were like 7 priests and 8 alter servers that came down the aisle to give the mass. the whole mass was beautiful in the French language. I could have sat there all day and listened to them, but the mass eventually ended and we had to leave. Actually, mass was really long, about 2 hours long and our plan to leave by 8:30 to arrive at the apartment by around 9 were shot down in flames.
We called our roommates to make sure that they would have dinner still available (meaning they didn't eat it all) and we learned that they had just gotten back from the supermarket and dinner wouldn't be done for another half hour. The three of us left to take a maze of trams back to where we were staying and arrived at the apartment just in time for the pasta to be done. Our roommates were even so kind to separate the meat from the rest of the meal so Melissa and I wouldn't have to pick it out after the fact. We had a great dinner of pasta and good French wine, just enjoying each others company. It was one of the times that I could almost see the future of how my life would be, tons of friends around a table, enjoying a simple meal and a glass of wine and having an absolute ball while doing it. We even had on "fancy music" to set the mood. It really was a Good Friday, in both of it's meanings.
Tomorrow is an early day and we go to Versailles, Woohoo! I can't wait! Again, no pictures because the bandwidth here isn't great and fights me every time I try to upload them.
Till tomorrow!
Erin Z
What an Easter Holiday! Don't miss a thing.
ReplyDeleteLove ya,
Nana