Worlds Beyond Worlds

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It's very strange to finish a vacation in Paris and my return destination is in France. That hit more than anything else that I'm really in Europe and yes, I'll be here for a while.

Warning in advance: this update is going to be long, because I have to fill you in on the whole week since Zack arrived and proposed (aiee!!!) to me. If you want to read highlights, they are as follows: FIANCÉS IN ANGERS. SPRINGTIME IN PARIS. LADIES AT VERSAILLES.

I'll sprinkle the post full of pictures so keep it from being an eyesore. Go get a glass of water and a thick cushion, and thanks for following!

FIANCÉS IN ANGERS

After Saturday and Zachary's perfect proposal, we wandered around Angers and I showed him everything I love about my French town. Thank heaven he wasn't jet-lagged; I think the excitement of the engagement perked us both up a ton. After he got installed in the extra bedroom Mme Bouhet had very generously prepared for him, we went to take a few pictures of ourselves in the park he asked me at, and then we went out for a celebratory dinner at an Italian restaurant.

Zack ordered some sort of fantastic steak with a Gorgonzola sauce, and I ordered what I thought was beef. The waiter seemed surprised. TIP: If your waiter seems surprised in a French restaurant, ask him why. When he brought out Zack's manly, delicious meal, he put a thin plate in front of me that was covered with what appeared to be a pink base. Since he gave Zack two plates, I waited, thinking that he was going to come back with a steaming cut of dead cow on put on top of my plate. But all he came back with was a bowl of English green beans.

This isn't quite what my plate looked like, but this, carpaccio, is what I had ordered. It's a very, very thin cut of beef in lemon juice. Turns out, it's raw. It wasn't bad though, just squishy, and I ate all of it. Zachary felt bad for me, so he ordered me a chocolate mousse for dessert. 

Our poor waiter (and this would be the theme every time Zack and I ate out) wanted so badly for Zack to order everything. In fact, at really nice French restaurants, the waiter has separate menus for men and women, of which the latter has no prices on it. France is still very chivalrous, which is sweet, but Zack's French ends at "hello," "thank you," "sorry," and "good," sort of like everybody that tried to sell me a purse in Chinatown, so I did all the ordering.

In Angers, we saw the cathedral, the castle, stumbled upon an exotic car show (Ferrari, a few race cars, a few antiques) and market place, saw the sun set over the Maine, went out one night with Liana and Amy to celebrate our engagement, watched Winter's Bone (excellent), and ate like crazy, even though Zachary was under the weather for most of his visit, poor guy. While he was here, Liana took some gorgeous pictures of us in the Jardin de Mail.

On Wednesday, after I finished a Phonetics test, we hopped on a train for Paris. We were very excited.

SPRINGTIME IN PARIS

I had reserved us rooms at the Regent Montmartre, a hostel with excellent views of the Sacre-Couer. Even though the hostel had wonderful perks like free maps of Paris, WIFI, breakfast, and a sweet location, hostel life is weird. There were hall bathrooms to deal with, older Middle-Eastern dudes who, when I asked if there were any other girls sleeping in room 21 (other than myself), replied that the dorm was "meexed!" and noisy Swedes running up and down the hall at 5:00 in the morning.

Zachary, who is a man of comforts (and private bathrooms), accommodated pretty well. I was proud of him, and I never had any problems with other hostel stayers, even after he left and I was a solo female (my friend Anna, who met me at the RM, didn't end up in the same dorm I was in).

I know that you know all about the famous attractions in Paris, so here's a list of what we did by day. I'll fill you in on specifics in a sec.

Wednesday evening: Arrived in Paris. Sorted out metro. Saw the Eiffel Tower at dusk. Had dinner (had a fantastic dish called escalope de villiers, some sort of Normandy dish with chicken in a cream sauce with rice. Zack had that old, delicious faithful steak au poivre). Saw Eiffel Tower at night. Got accosted by men from across the Mediterranean to buy 7 Eiffel Tower keychains for a euro. Did not go up the tower; the line was at least 3 hours. Finished by climbing to the top of Montmartre, where the Sacre-Couer is, for a nighttime view of Paris. It was breath-taking. There were lots of people at the top, too, so it felt safe. The big white church was like the moon, and you could see almost all of Paris for miles and miles (well, kilometers and kilometers)

Thursday: Turns out, you can pack a LOT of Paris into one day. We got up early to try to take the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Mistake. The line was just as long. I think I saw some of the same Japanese tourists still huddled by the ticket booth, keeping warm by burning bundles of American dollars.

Instead, we did something that I think was probably a better deal. We went to the Arc de Triomphe, which you can climb to the top (free for me). The view was beautiful. After that-- walked down the Champs-Elysees, had lunch on that famous stretch, saw famous stores, saw lots of Roma (Gypsies), Place de la Concorde, the Obelisk, the Tuilleries Gardens, the Hotel des Invalides/Military Museum, saw the Louvre (these are places we saw from the outside, PS), the Pont Neuf, the Madeleine, the National Assembly, the Pont des Arts, the Notre Dame (I cannot tell you how unimpressed I was with the inside), the Palace of Justice.

That was all from about 9-4 or 5, and then we returned to our neighborhood of Montmartre to take a nap and rest our sausage-like feet. That night, we went out for a SWEET dinner at Chartiers, a restaurant that looks like it did during the belle epoque when it opened in 1896. It can hold 336 people, and if you're solo or a couple, like we were you're seated by other people. We ordered lots of very French food (for me, a pot au feu and baba au rhum for dessert) and Zack convinced me to let him buy a bottle of honest-to-goodness French champagne. I'm not a fan of alcohol, but I had to admit that it'd be a shame to leave France without ever having tried champagne. It was bubbly. 

On the way home, we got off the metro one stop early to see the Moulin Rouge and Pigalle. Hahahahahahamistake. It was cool seeing the Moulin Rouge (from the outside, I promise!), but if Zack and I had tried to walk down the same street individually, I think we would have been heavily solicited, if you catch my drift.

Which reminds me, there's a really annoying thing some street peddlers do at night in Paris. They'd come up to me and try to thrust a rose into my hands. I'm pretty sure that if you accept it, thinking it's a gift, they follow you and demand money. Zachary was very good at keeping them away from me. All in all, though, I felt that Paris was very safe if you avoid the obvious (side alleys and outlying banlieues/projects).

Alrighty. Before I move on to Friday, let me tell you about something that I think was the favorite of both Zack and me this trip. There's a bridge in Paris called the Pont des Arts (and another whose name I forget) that couples in love (and maybe friends, too) put love padlocks on. It's really sweet, and apparently a trend in a couple of famous places in Europe. I think it started in Poland. Anyhow, I just happened to come across a picture of the bridge a day before Zack arrived, and I had a small, silver lock with me. We wrote our initials on it and clipped to the bridge, overlooking the Seine towards the Notre Dame and the Ile de la Cite. It was very sweet, and Zack said that now we'll be in Paris forever. It was very Humphrey Bogart of him.

Friday: Friday was sad, because I had to take Zack back to CDG airport and say goodbye to him. I wish I could tell you that I was an adult about it, or at least that the goodbye was very romantic, but I sniveled like a baby and was a little snappy on the way to the airport. Zackie understood. I wasn't looking forward to returning home to Angers to spend the rest of March, April, May, and June without my fiancé. I'm still not looking forward to his absence, but it helps with a sparkling carat on my left hand.

I had planned to spend the whole day in the Louvre until my girlfriends Anna, Liana, and Amy arrived from Angers because it would be safe and I would be distracted, but I changed my plans on the subway and went to the Musée Cluny, a museum of medieval history built around an ancient Roman bath house. If you know me well enough, you know that I adore history. I made a good choice in going, because I was completely enamored, and especially swept away by the set of Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. I wouldn't have thought tapestries could be so beautiful, personal, and intriguing. 

I highly recommend the Cluny Museum, unless you know that you don't enjoy history. There were also a number of amazing reliquaries, including one that was a statue of Mary holding a baby Jesus, whose stomach was a glass window. Inside was, supposedly, the umbilical cord of Christ. I'm going to suspect that, like me, the Catholic Church has doubted the authenticity of this particular relic, or it wouldn't be in a case in a museum. In any event, it was fascinating and a little disturbing to look at a centuries old umbilical cord.

Post Musée Cluny, I strolled through the Jardin de Luxembourg, the Pantheon, and the Rodin Museum. Saw in these places the tombs of Voltaire, Rousseau, the Curies, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, the Thinker, the Embrace, the Gates of Hell, and beautiful art. I was a bigger fan of the scupltures of Rodin's mistress, Camille Claudel, though I think it's awful that everybody famous in France had a lady (or four) or man on the side.

The Pantheon was everything wrong with the State of France. Spirituality replaced by pride and patriotism, faith replaced by principles, artwork replaced by scaffolding (construction is a long-term thing here). It was housed in what was intended to be a beautiful church, converted in purpose by the leaders of the Revolution. It's still probably the most beautiful building in Paris, but it is very much a tomb, hollow and symbolic.

On the way to the Rodin Museum, I passed a Parisian wedding dress boutique. When I say Parisian, I mean Parisian. I thought "oh man.... that would be so nice." And then I remembered! I'm part of the club, now! So I went in and I flashed my ring, and they gave me a colossal white box with gold trim, vacuumed sealed in plastic. Inside were three books of 2011 Spring collections for brides, one for grooms, and one for bridesmaids. Unfortunately, they were too avant-garde, even for me, but some of them were incredibly beautiful. I might hang them on my walls.

The absolute best part of Friday was when I met Anna, Liana, and Amy at the Louvre. On Fridays, the Louvre is open until 10, and students are free after 6, so we went nuts. I cannot express to you how incredibly, incredibly impressed I was. You could take all the art out of the Louvre, and it would still be the most beautifully decorated palace in the world. Here's a brief list of what we saw in our short 3 hours there. If you want to follow the same path that we did, my drool stains will probably be around for a few more months.

Mona Lisa, Winged Victory of Samothrace, Venus de Milo, fantastic works by my favorite painter, Jacques-Louis David, like the Coronation of Napolean, Madame Récarnier, the Oath of the Horatii, lots of Da Vinci, countless beautiful paintings that have never been featured in my history books, and ancient artifacts that I've been reading about for years and finally got to see in person, like the Seated Scribe and the Tomb of the Etruscan Couple, and the Grande Odelisque. I could be in the Louvre all week, if I could somehow be the only person there. Amy thinks I should paint my ceilings like the Louvre's when I get married. I would if I could scrounge up some Renaissance ceiling-painters looking for work.

                                       

LADIES AT VERSAILLES

I am so sorry that the post is so long. If it makes you feel better, I'm on hour TWO of putting it together. Guess I enjoyed Paris more than I expected, though I vastly prefer living in Angers. After the Louvre, Anna and I went back to the Regent Montmartre to get up super early to head to the Palace of Versailles.

Versailles is, in a word, ornate. If I had two words, the second would be immense. I can't wrap my mind around why the French royals needed so much space. The amount of money they had is boggling. Versailles was beautiful, huge, and lovely, though only a small part of the Palace is open for touring, and much of the original pieces were destroyed or stolen during the Revolution.

Anna was responsible for planning the Versailles trip (for her birthday), and she made sure we caught an early RER line for the palace. The inside was beautiful (and packed full of Japanese tourists, who are quiet, but pushy), with every ceiling and wall absolutely covered with masterpieces of paintings, carvings, and fabric. Every single ceiling looked like the Sistine Chapel (if the Sistine Chapel was for Greek gods and ample bosoms), and there were many, many famous paintings that I hadn't expected to see there, like portraits of royals and the second copy of the Coronation of Napolean by Jaques-Louis David. It was almost two stories tall.

The gardens were lovely, but, I have to admit, boring. French gardens are immaculate and mathematical, but I prefer wild, unruly gardens. Maybe it would have been better in April. We saw the Grand Trianon, the Petite Trianon (decked out by Marie Antoinette), and Marie Antoinette's play hamlet. Unfortunately, my camera died soon after we left the main palace. I think that was good, though, because it allowed me to just enjoy the grounds and soak everything in.

When we were about to leave, we saw a bride and groom getting into rowboats on the Grand Canal with a professional photographer. The bride was wearing a lovely long dress with a white fur stole, and her groom was absolutely adorable, he looked so happy. I thought maybe they were just models, but the way he was smiling convinced me that they were a real couple. I said that I hoped I was that beautiful when I get married, and Liana told me that I would be. She's so sweet. My girlfriends here are being so supportive about my engagement, and it makes the absence of my State-side friends more bearable.

Anna and I left from Versailles straight to Angers, and we bought some chocolate from a Monoprix to ease the trip. I bought one that was labeled KIRSCH, which I thought was a brand. Turns out, it's liquor-flavored paint thinner. You could not eat it and drive a motor vehicle at home. Thank goodness I had bought a back up of milk chocolate. I ate it this morning for breakfast.

Now Clopinette and I are relaxing in bed from a busy weekend, and I'll probably spend the rest of the day in being a home-body, studying for tests this week, wishing Zachary could have stayed another month, and trying to finish my three euro, throat burning chocolate.

I love you! Thank you so much for making it this far, that's very, very generous of your time, and I appreciate it, I really do! Please let me know how you're doing, and I'll keep you in my prayers (and e-mails). All the best,

Leah 

Angers, France