Day 12: Free Day 2

After the crazy marathon which is Study Abroad Boot Camp, it's nice to be able to lean back and just relax for a while. Today, a few classmates and I decided to go to the giant underground mall, Les Halles. Not being much of a shopper I just ambled about, but the real highlight was when we all went and just sat in front of the Centre Pompidou and just watched the street performers for hours. We ended up seeing:

• A group of girls playing chinese music on a violin and some instruments I couldn't recognize
• A man playing one of those huge yodeling horns
• A Unicycler
• Tap Dancers
• Capoeira Dancers
• A man doing crystal juggling (yes, like in Labyrinth)
• and Pigeons

OH And most importantly, MORE SPACE INVADERS

Whoops, not a Space Invader

There we are!

Days 9 and 10: Museum Madness

The Paris Museum Pass has been on of the saving graces of this trip, pricewise. For a fraction of the cost it would take to visit the monuments individually, we've been able to just waltz in to most places. The only downside of this pass is that is has caused the most evil of 6 day marathons through Paris. See, the museum pass works with consecutive days, for 2, 4 or 6 days. We got the 6 day pass and the last 6 days have been utter madness.

Between Versailles and the Arc de Triumph we were already tired, but the last two days were the days that we actually ended up going to the MUSEUMS and despite the distinct lack of many stairs, the amount of walking was monumental.

We started with the Louvre, or at least, we wanted to start with the Louvre, but it turns out it was closed for the morning and would be opening later in the day, so we set to wandering around the gardens of the Tullierie, watching the statues and ending up at the Orangerie, a museum where they have a display of Monet's water lilies. Once again, the Museum Pass saves the day!

Gardens and Statues, oh yeah.

After that we went to the Musee du Quai Branly, or the museum that very few people have ever heard of. It concerns itself mostly with aboriginal art and is quite lovely, but I had to do a presentation on it, so I might be a bit biased.

Also found another Space Invader, which is yes!

After that we finally arrived at the Louvre, which was as expected, very large, very full and wall to wall old paintings. It was rather interesting since our professor was giving u explanations, but it turns out that we needed to pay extra for that. We almost got kicked out right after the end of our lecture.

Monsieur Sassy-hat wouldn't have kicked us out!

All this was one day. The NEXT day we went to the Musee D'Orsay and the Pompidou Center, completing our 2 day romp through art history. The day was generally more uneventful, with the Orsay being under construction, and neither museum allowing us to lecture inside. The professor had to run around and do the lecture 3 times in small groups.

But on the plus side, MORE SPACE INVADERS!

The Pompidou Center was nice, though it didn't have any Magrittes, which I  was hoping for. The view was great though and then afterwards we all sat outside and watched a mime for about an hour. A nice relaxing ending to a frantic week.

Day 1: Arrival at Cité a.k.a How Slow Can You Go?

When traveling, I can get a bit neurotic. Check-in time for the place we were staying at, an international housing complex called Cité Universitaire, was apparently at 2pm and not the 11 I thought it was. As a result I was quite early and at least got to sort out all my stuff before everyone else arrived.

But I didn't realize how weird time could be until everyone got here. Our group consists of 2 professors, 1 boy and 14 girls. The monumental slowness at which people get ready is awe inspiring. I honestly don't know how we're going to get anything done. It took us almost an hour to just get everyone downstairs and ready, and that's with the professor breathing down people's necks. When we decided to go out on our own with about 5 people to buy water, it was obscene how slowly people move.

Notre Dame

Which seems to get only slower when taking pictures. I'm not much a shutterbug, to the side you see one of the 5 pictures I took today on our walk to Notre Dame, but some people just spend hours and hours. This is fine normally, but not when we're a group of 17 that need to stick together with a professor who walk so fast we're worried he might break the sound barrier. We almost lost some people on the Paris Metro (which isn't a very hard thing to do. Paris Metro is very efficient, and therefore very much used and very much busy.) Not to mention the people who got caught behind traffic lights. This does not bode well for the rest of the journey.

If anyone is out there actually reading, be kind to the people in your tour group and don't delay them like this. It's cruel and my feet are still throbbing from the extra standing/walking time they brought upon us.

Of course, I suppose there's always that one picture you just have to take.

Awesome