What a surreal day. Went to sleep last night at like 10:30, woke up at 3 am; fell asleep in the cab, woke up at the train station; fell asleep on the train, woke up in Pisa; fell asleep on the plane, woke up to a breathtaking view of the French countryside out my window; got off the ghetto plane and onto a ghetto bus (thank you, RyanAir), fell asleep again to the soothing greens and yellows of the autumnal French farmlands and awoke to the jarring industrial factories issuing columns of smoke along the outskirts of the city, which rapidly transformed into the gorgeous Parisian architecture that we all know and love. Talk about disorientation.
The fact that this trip was planned a mere 72 hours ago (and by "planned" I mean flights being bought - I really can't pretend I had any "plan" beyond that, including transportation to or from the airport. I know my goal for this semester was to loosen up but my God, this is getting a little excessive) did not help with the disorientation factor. Especially because my gracious hostess, Arielle, is notoriously hard to reach even in the States, so of course that gets exponentially worse once you cross the Atlantic and leave the world of "can you hear me now? ...good!", so by the time I had to get on the bus from Beauvais to Porte Maillot in Paris, I STILL hadn't managed to get in touch with Arielle to figure out what the hell I do once I get to the train station. I had no address, no map, and absolutely no French. Yikes.
But obviously it all worked out, as I am sitting here alive and happy in a little café after a glorious day of frolicking rather than dead in a Parisian gutter. I managed to get a hold of Ars on the bus and got some vague directions to "find the Metro, take the 1 to Concorde, and meet me by the big ferris wheel." Um, okay?? But with the help of my New Yorker subway intuition (and a few signs with arrows), I managed to get my ass to "the big ferris wheel", which was indeed big, and also in perhaps the most beautiful square in Paris. Good job, Arielle!
And despite our rocky, non-communicative start, Ars jumped into her classic hostess mode - she is so cute and enthusiastic about having someone to show around and was pointing out all the landmarks and history of the streets we passed and within 30 minutes of my arrival, she had already managed to fill me with two forms of chocolate (the most glorified, goo-filled Parisian version of a brownie, called a moilleux chocolat, and a tiny, incredibly expensive box of SUPER high-quality chocolates from Michel Chaudun), teach me the key French phrases I needed to survive here ("I'm sorry, but I really don't speak French", "where is the bathroom", and "I would like..."), and led me directly to the foot of the Eiffel Tower. And this was all four hours before she had a paper due of which she had only two out of six pages written. What a champ.
So after our delicious chocolate picnic in the Champ de Mars, beneath the crisp autumn sun (which, according to Arielle, I must have brought with me, as it had been really gray the previous few weeks), in the shadow of one of the most breathtaking piles of iron in the world, Ars left me to some solo exploring while she dashed back to the library to finish her paper.
I took a leisurely stroll along the Seine towards the Musée d'Orsay, stopping at a cool outdoor photo exhibition hosted by the eccentric nearby Musée du Qaui Branly, and couldn't help wishing Danny was here with me to witness all of this crazy-beautiful stuff. It's amazing how quickly things can change - I've lived so long being a pro at alone-time, having a grand ol' time on my solo strolls through Vienna, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and back home in Florence, but now that I've gotten a taste of that novel experience of having someone around who wants to share everything with you, even if it's just a walk to the grocery store, it's surprisingly hard to go back. It's not that I CAN'T enjoy my alone time anymore; it's just that all of the sudden, it takes some getting used to at first.
But anyway, the Orsay was unbelievable - but god damn this stupid metro strike, because usually on Thursdays the museum is open until 9:45pm, but today it closed at freakin' 5pm so that museum employees would have time to get home before the few remaining forms of transportation shut down for the night, so I ended up with only about an hour and a half to soak up some of the best art in the world. I mean, the sheer number of Degas they have! And the Van Goghs! I swear, the Van Gogh ROOM in the Orsay was about as impressive as the entire Van Gogh MUSEUM in Amsterdam. Going to a really established museum like that always re-ignites my amazement at how truly massive the canon of so-called "masterpieces of art" really is - that one museum can house that many famous works and still have some left over to stock all the rest of the museums in the world never ceases to amaze me.
Right now I am chilling in a little café (in which I conducted my first all-French exchange - woo hoo!) waiting for Ars to finish her paper, and after that, who knows what the night will bring. I'll keep you posted... bisoux!
LATER
I have been having SO MUCH fun hanging out in this café, reading my little art history article in English, listening to the French exchanges at the counter, and eavesdropping on this table full of Spanish girls who I swear keep slipping into Italian. GOAL: fluency in Italian and Spanish by 2010; fluency in Italian, Spanish, and French by 2015. Ready, set, GO!
No comments:
Post a Comment