Marty in Paris

Martha's been visiting for the past few days, so I've been Paris tour guide once again. We saw the major sights on Wednesday, and I sent to her to see a few on Thursday while I had class, and since then we've done sights of Paris that I haven't yet seen, including the Opera and Versailles.

Thursday night, my French class went on an "educational excursion" to the Opera Garnier, the old amazing Parisian opera house. The ballet was an interpretation of Proust's masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, or Les Intermittances du Coeur. Even though we read an excerpt from the book in class and we read a detailed information packet about which scenes from the book were converted into the ballet, it was still impossible to follow the storyline (assuming there was one). I think a Proust scholar might have enjoyed the experience a bit more. Nonetheless, the dancing was very impressive and powerful. We were seated in the front row of the highest balcony, which was far but we could still see well. Although the ballet is not super-interesting, it was definitely a great experience, especially to see the building itself. I may go back to see Cinderella, since I know I'll be able to follow that storyline.

Friday morning we slept in, since it looked cloudy and rainy, and when we did wake up, the sun had come out! We decided to venture out of Paris to Versailles, only a half-hour train ride away. Versailles was amazing...not much else to say about it. It is gorgeous and over-the-top in every aspect and incredibly well-maintained. It was also a zoo and there were American tourist groups everywhere (we did get to hear some interesting facts by standing next to tour groups). There was also a ton of restoration going on, including in the hall of Mirrors and the outside, which spoiled some picture-taking opportunities. My camera was not good enough to even get the entire castle in a picture, although we tried several times from the gardens. We walked all around the gardens and to some of the outer buildings. None of the fountains were turned on yet, and the statues weren't unveiled yet, so I may have to go back in the spring to see the gardens in all their glory.

Friday night we went out to dinner with Martha's friend Lisa from Hopkins, who we randomly had run into Thursday night on Blvd. St. Germain while looking for a cafe. She's here on the Columbia program, and we went with her and a bunch of kids from her program to a really cute, family-owned French bistro. The service was slow slow slow and the meal lasted 'til midnight, but the food was delicious. I started with a salad with roasted camembert on it, a yummy variation on the chevre chaud standard that I love. I had some sort of fish (loup?) for the main course. No one knew what "loup" was when we saw it on the menu, and we had to ask the waitress if we were going to be served wolf. Luckily no. For dessert I had raspberry and abricot sorbet with whipped cream. Amazing.

This morning Martha and I headed to Saint Chapelle so that Martha could see a church before leaving Paris. Saint Chapelle is famous for its 15-foot stained glass windows, which were amazing. The chapel itself is pretty small, but the windows are worth paying for.

After Saint Chapelle, we wandered onto the right bank and walked by Hotel-de-Ville, where we saw a really neat free exhibition of cartoons of Paris. The expo would have been much better had we understood the French and the jokes about Parisian neighborhoods better, but the art was good and even Martha enjoyed it. Afterwards we crossed the street to a big dept. store where Martha found a Longchamps bag on sale (!) and she and Lisa (from JHU) each got very cute, trendy Parisian bags. We then plopped down at a sidewalk cafe for lunch, which was the perfect, very Parisian way to end our visit, eating croques and quiches on the sidewalk. We ordered chocolate viennois so Martha could finally taste Paris hot chocolate, but our waiter brought us coffee viennois instead. We finally tracked him down and sent them back (although he wasn't convinced they were wrong). He came back with two new ones, and a half-apology. We started drinking them, and realized once again, we had coffee instead of hot chocolate. We gave up on fixing the situation at that point, as the waiter was nowhere to be found. When he finally came to take the money, I showed him my cup of coffee and said very clearly "this is not chocolate, this is coffee." He offered to bring me a new one, and I said we had to leave, but I didn't want to pay for it (5 euros) since I didn't get what I ordered. At that point he completely ignored me, took the money on the table, and gave us change with the coffees included on our bill. Yet anohter example of how the French have never heard of the phrase "the customer is always right." Oh well, makes a good story.