Photos : Best of

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So with 5 weeks left of my semester in Paris, I've decided to select 20 of the best photos I've taken this semester...which, going by my math, is the equivalent of 20 000 words, or about the same thing as if I wrote up an 80-page novel about my time so far! These pictures bring back some of my favorite memories so far, so enjoy!

(By the way, you can click on these pictures to view them larger.)

1 - Paris Opera

2 - Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

3 - The chocolate shop we passed every day on the way back from IFE, 11e arr.

4 - Fontainebleau market

5 - Class at the Louvre

6 - Pont des Arts

7 - Tour Eiffel, view from Princess Diana Memorial

7 - Alright, this was a tie for #7. I had to include them both.

8 - Barcelona. Pretty self explanatory.

9 - Chocolate Museum. Our album cover.

10 - Café in Barcelona. View of the harbor.

11 - Barcelona Harbor.

12 - Plaça Reial, Barcelona

13 - Centre Pompidou

14 - Dawn. First day of my stage.

15 - Stairs at Montmartre.

16 - Sacré Cœur

17 - Thinking with The Thinker.  Musée Rodin.

18 - Booksellers in Lille.

19 - Printemps.

20 - Soaking up sun along the Seine in spring.

Breakfast at Oscar's

"How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being."

--- Oscar Wilde, Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

It wasn't until I came to Paris that I ever bothered to appreciate the wisdom, frankness, and humor of Oscar Wilde's take on things.  Last week my friends and I re-watched the film "Paris, je t'aime," which has short films telling love stories set in various parts of Paris. For those of you who haven't seen it, the 5-minute film set in Père Lachaise cemetary, which talks about Oscar Wilde, can be viewed here (although I'd highly recommend watching the whole film if you haven't).  After watching it, I was inspired to take a closer look at some of what Oscar had to say, and was surprised I'd so thoroughly overlooked him until now.  To think that someone who lived over a century ago could describe so accurately my own thoughts and feelings is pretty amazing...and really worth reflecting on.

Everything he said is still so relevant! One of his famous quotations, for example, describes perfectly the theme of the classic film When Harry Met Sally: "Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship."  Even in instances when I do disagree with him, I can definitely still see where he's coming from.

In admiration of Oscar Wilde, Sydney and I decided to take a leaf out of Breakfast at Tiffany's, the famous quotation that gives the movie it's name: "Well, when I get it [that feeling] the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!"

Saturday morning, we woke up early and bought churros (a type of Spanish donut we'd been introduced to in Barcelona), and headed to Père Lachaise cemetary, which is within easy walking distance from our foyer. We strolled through the cemetary, soaking up the serene atmposhere, and holding our churros, which wafted a sweet, sugary scent that brought back fond memories of Barcelona, until we came to Oscar Wilde's grave.  There, we took a seat just behind it, and ate our churros while pondering various Oscar Wilde quotes, telling stories and catching up from the week, listening to birds announcing spring's arrival, and enjoying a rare moment of quiet that's hard to find in Paris. It was the most peaceful breakfast I'd had in months.
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That afternoon, on what ended up being the perfect Saturday, Sydney and Dan and I all went for a picnic by the Eiffel Tower. Sunny, in the 70s, great friends, baguette, wine and cheese...what more could you ask for?

Tackling the Tango

I realized I never told the story about this, so even though it happened a long time ago, it's definitely worth telling:

A lot of people you meet have that one thing they're totally obsessed with.  For my friend Sydney, it's ballroom dance.  She loves it to the point where when she couldn't remember the direction she was supposed to turn her head in the Viennese Waltz, she just had to email her ballroom dance instructor back in the States and find out!  So way back in February (about our third weekend in Paris), she convinced Dan and I to go out for a night of what she said would be salsa dancing at this great ballroom she'd found online.  Our lack of ballroom expertise required, of course, practice lessons before heading out to dance, so the whole week before, we held salsa lessons in her room to learn all the basic moves.  Being a relatively fast learner, I felt pretty confident as we headed out for our evening at Le Chalet du Lac de Saint-Mandé.

The place was impossible to find.  We only managed to find it after a 45-minute trek up and down the same road looking for the right street to turn on.  We finally found it at the end of a long, sweeping driveway, looking like a castle from afar! But even after barely finding the place, and walking through sketchy woods to get there, that turned out to be the least of my worries.  As it turned out, it wasn't going to be so much the night of salsa dancing for which we'd so avidly prepared, but instead mostly swing and tango...with maybe two salsa songs thrown in.


The best word to describe the place is pretentious. But there we were, me feeling only slightly out of place as I entered the room full of fancily-dressed middle-aged and older Parisian couples! But it wasn't long before I was asked to dance by men persistent enough not to take no for an answer, even after I insisted that I just didn't know how to dance. But there I was, being led by the hand onto the dance floor, and before I knew it, I was being spun around so fast I lost track of where I was...it felt like I was flying! Well, that was my intimidating introduction to the swing dance.  A really sweet, elegant-looking older man kept asking me to dance throughout the evening, but he quickly realized I didn't have a clue what I was doing out on the dance floor, and patiently led me through all the steps of the swing and the tango. Learning the tango was by far my favorite moment of the evening. He explained all of the steps (in French), not by telling me when to move each foot, etc., but by explaining the attitude I should have...and just said to let my feet follow!

So that wonderful evening inspired my sudden interest in taking ballroom dance lessons, and is the reason why this happened in Barcelona:

Learning the Viennese Waltz along the Barcelona harbor, by the Mediterranean... can you imagine anything more beautiful?

 

Barcelona, the most amazing city I've ever been to....I miss it.

Printemps

Spring has finally sprung in Paris. One thing my co-workers have been telling me is that the trees, like this beautiful one with pink flowers right by the Musée Rodin, are only in bloom for so long, so it's best to enjoy it while it lasts!

Today I came straight back to the office after being at lunch for over an hour, having taken my time and conversed with a few of the other young women from the office.  But upon seeing me headed back to my desk, the man in the office next to mine asked what I was doing back so soon, and why I wasn't out taking a stroll around the quartier.  And it was true -- why miss out on a beautiful, Paris spring day like this one?!?

My beautiful view as I exit the metro on my way to work every morning

The weekend before last my parents were here visiting, and we took advantage of the warm, and unusually cooperative weather on Saturday to see some of Paris's best sights, like these ones.

Notre Dame