Day 7: Flowers in Versailles

One of the things I've noticed the most about Paris, and France in general it seems, is that they really love flowers. This is lovely because it means that even in a large city like Paris there are always green spaces with flowers or even trees. And PUBLIC Green Spaces, lovely little parks where they welcome you to come in and sit around, and since the weather so far has been lovely, nothing like the constant humid-hot of Florida, most people have been taking advantage of the green spaces.

But the lovely little green spaces, hidden parks and open flowers of Paris have NOTHING on the garden's of Versailles. The gardens at Versailles are the image of opulence and carefully tended gardens. The flowers are beautifully in bloom and the lanes are lined with perfectly sculpted topiaries. The people love it, and the bees love it more, but these bees seem quite pleased with just the flowers and don't really bother with the guests at the garden.

But then again, no one was wearing this dress outside.

Between the flowers and the lovely sculptures, it's no surprise that people would come from far and wide to the palace of the Sun King to come and see his palace and his gardens. They really are something wild.

Wild Like a Dragon maybe?

Day 6: Short Advice

Not feeling very well today so I had to cut a lot of the tours short, but the only think I have to say is that once again our professors evil idea of getting us up early has saved us a LOT of time in queues.

Also, go see St Chappelle. It's lovely. But go early, the line gets BEASTLY if you're even there at opening. We were there at 9ish and got in pretty much instantly, but otherwise you'd be waiting for hoooours.

St Chappelle photo from Flicker. [Link]

Day 5: Medieval Statues

The days have been rather hectic between the crazy pace that our professor has us going at, plus the actual socialization I've managed to do (I know, a write socializing, call the presses), but as I look through my pictures I try to put them together to see what I focused on that day.

Today, we went to Notre Dame, THE Notre Dame seeing as there are apparently a whole bunch of OTHER Notre Dame's that aren't the one that your thinking of. And as I looked through the pictures, I immediately noticed what was the thing I liked the most about the church.

Welcome to Notre Dame

The statues.

The statues in Notre Dame range from the funny, to the awe inspiring to the WTF, and here is a small collection of the ones I enjoyed the most.

Just look at the badass on the right

This was on the doorway. Welcoming, no? 

Ravens!

St Denise, First Bishop, Saint McHeadless. He's everywhere

Lobster. Need I say more?

Is it an eagle? A lIon? A gryffin? The lack of nose disturbs me.

He looks like he just saw something horrible, like a riot, or a flasher.

Thinker Gargoyle

YAY Elephants. They can't all be monsters

Surprised Eagle!

And my favorite, Om Nom Nommy.

Day 4: Paris Food

A big part of why I decided to come to Paris was the food. Paris has long been synonymous with cooking and cuisine and being a lover of food, I knew that I just had to get my hands on something traditionally french. Luckily, I'd been suggested a place and it was the first free day we've had in Study abroad Boot Camp so far.

My adventure, however, had many casualties.

It was tragic. Deliciously, deliciously tragic.

Day 3: Not Paris: Provins

This late post is brought to you by Study Abroad Boot Camp: Exhausting Students since 2011 :D

Yeah, so far my ideal for everyday blogging has been broken to bits by the fact the our professor is trying to kill us. I think he's well on his way to succeeding, but nonetheless, the city that we visited, Provins was quite lovely. The city is full of little quaint houses. The streets are narrow cobblestones, lovely to look at but not very fun to walk on, especially not for a few hours, but the nicest thing is all the flower gardens and roses. Flowers, roses to be specific, seem to be one of the calling points of the little town seeing as there are only a bazillion of them around, not to mention all the stores selling rose things, which truly makes it a "ville fleurie" or flowery village.




The medieval city which was once the center of trade, a crossroads where many vendors would come and sell their wares in bi-annual fairs. it's now a living breathing museum exhibit, with all the old buildings preserved and untouched by any modern touches thanks to the fact that it was abandoned sometime during the 13th century.

Perhaps because it was filled with creepers?

The long history, plus the fact that they have one of the few ancient refrigerators (a long system of cool underground tunnels) enabled them to get the title of Unesco World Heritage site and prevent anything new being added to the city. But it's rather fascinating because you can certainly see the new stuff trying. On the edges of the town are square modern buildings , that my teacher not so affectionate dubbed "lego buildings", trying to encroach in on the unsuspecting provincial town.

Which is where this comes in handy

The wall was built apparently because at one point one of the rulers of the city decided to play both sides of the political game and ended up not knowing who was here to say hello and hand him a fruit basket, or say hello and stab him. Since this is one of those things that are rather important to know, the wall seemed like a prudent way to keep everyone out with a resounding F.U.

Doesn't stop the tourist nowadays though, so HA.

Day 2: Skipping a Letter Between P and R

Above you can see the queue for the Eiffel Tower's elevator 45 minutes before the place even opens. I have no idea how long this line actually is all I know is that we skipped it.

Of course, we skipped it by taking the 674 steps all the way up to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower so this method may not be for everyone. I'm in about as good a shape as a writer/nerd can be without focusing heavily on it, which means that while I was not huffing and puffing until about step 500, my calves felt as if they were being chewed by bulldogs around step 300. 

Our whole group made it to the top, however, despite having some agoraphobes and nerdy old me included into the count. The view upstairs is completely worth it, especially for a first timer in the city of light. The view stretches out for miles and you can see most of the other famous Paris monuments such as the Arc de Triomphe and and the Louvre quite easily.

Also, going down the steps is a million times easier than going up them. 

If it's the only item on your itinerary, I highly recommend taking the stairs up. The view from inside is quite different than the elevator and you get to really feel how much metal and engineering went into it when you're stepping up through the heart (or feet, I guess). If you have other things to do that day, as we did, then you may want to further consider it. We ended up exhausted by 3pm.

Also, another thing to consider is the queue, of course. The above picture was taken super early, but I took a series of pictures upon our descent of what PARTS of the queue looks like around 11am. 

After seeing that line, it becomes a bit more apparent why our professor made us trudge up the stairs in order to avoid the letter between P and R.

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