Paris and Chantilly

Bonjour!

A week in Paris does the body good after spending last weekend in Berlin. It was such an amazing feeling waking up Monday morning in my (tiny) bed in Paris. My feet were definitely sore from all the walking we did last weekend. Going to a cafe for lunch on Monday I was surprised by how much I missed being able to read a menu- even though I still struggle with some of the French food names it feels so much more comfortable and familiar. 

On Tuesday my art history class went to Musee d'Orsay which might just be one of my favorite museums in the world (or at least the parts of the world I have been to so far). We are going back two more times because it is simply impossible to see all that the museum has to offer in one class period. Walking around the gallery rooms and seeing paintings I recognize excites me probably more than it should but hey, that's what you get for being an art dork I guess. Maybe second to that feeling is seeing a painting I have never studied in a class by an artist I don't know and being able to make the connection to movements or other artists I am familiar with. When class was over I had a bit of time to spend before getting lunch and going to my next class so I walked around the museum for a little, made a stop at the gift store to buy a poster (or two), and then walked back across the river and through the gardens at the Louvre. Not a bad stroll in the park. 

The rest of the week was pretty standard in terms of classes, and our friends came to visit on Thursday which made a great start to the weekend. Kate and Julie came in around 10pm and we met up with some other Badgers for wine and dessert (called the LA Brownie- yummm) at our local Irish pub. On Friday Jessie (roommate who goes to Wisconsin too) and I played tour guide and took Julie and Kate to Notre Dame, the Marais, obviously to get falafel, and then to the Eiffel Tower. We ended a great Parisian day with a trip to none other than Le Refuge des Fondues. 

CEA planned a day trip on Saturday to Chantilly- a town just north of Paris. We went to a beautiful and huge castle there and then a pretty abbey in a smaller town. We had a lot of fun trying to/successfully climbing into small spaces in the abbey- perhaps not what the monks did back in the day, but we found it rather amusing. 

Sunday was rather unexciting- laundry- which took hours longer than it should have. I think I learned my lesson that Sunday is national "do your laundry and walk away leaving your clothes in the dryer for hours so that no one else can clean their clothes" day. After waiting in line for a while in a very cold lavarie and being attacked by two 3-year old kids who wanted to take the book I was reading out of my hands and run out with my laundry bag, I finally arrived back in my apartment with fresh smelling clothes!