Nikki in Firenze: Spring Break: PARIS

On Thursday evening (of a fairly stressful midterms week!), I left for spring break. We flew to Paris (then took a long bus ride and short taxi ride) and got to our hostel late at night. Since I only was able to sleep for 10 minutes the previous night, I was just happy to go straight to sleep, even on the top bunk of an uncomfortable bed and with two strangers also in our tiny room.

In the morning, we made our way over to the Louvre. I had been once before (four years ago) but that was before studying Art History so I was pretty excited about going back. After showing our student visas to get in for free (pretty awesome!), we spent five hours looking at beautiful art. My favorite artists I saw at the Louvre include Rembrandt, Vermeer, Steenwyck, Claude (Lorrain)...and of course I enjoyed seeing work by Leonardo & Michelangelo even though I've been seeing a crazy amount of their work recently.

We spent that evening admiring (and eating dinner near) the Eiffel tower. The next morning, we took a train out to Versailles. It was cold and rainy for most of the day. We didn't walk through the entire palace because Mary mostly wanted to see the hall of mirrors and I had already been there. Plus, even though the whole place is beautiful, the gardens are pretty much my favorite part. We had tea and desserts in the cafe/tea house while we were there. I had earl grey tea and a vanilla/white chocolate eclaire. Mary had a tiny piece of chocolate cake (with pieces of gold on top of it) and citrus tea.

Next we went to Sainte Chapelle and Notre Dame. We waited in line and actually paid money to get into Sainte Chapelle but it turned out to be even more majestic than I was expecting it to be. It's a small church, especially in comparison to Notre Dame, but I would probably go back to Paris just to go back to Sainte Chapelle. Then we went to Centre Pompidou. They had a special exhibition of Mondrian/De Stijl which was awesome. They even had some of Mondrian's tree paintings, which made me really happy to see. We ate dinner near the Pompidou. I got a raspberry julep with my tomato & mozzarella salad (basically the only vegetarian dish Paris has) but it was way too strong so I couldn't even finish it.

On Sunday, we went to the Musée de l'Orangerie. It's a small museum but I'm really glad we went because they have an incredible collection of Renoir's (and a bunch of other awesome artists, too). I love impressionism.

Then I took a train out to Vernon so I could take a bus to Giverny to see Monet's house. When I got to Vernon (an hour away) I was told that Monet's house isn't open in the winter. So I had a terrible time waiting around in Vernon, which was like a ghost town. I was really unhappy when I found out that the next train back to Paris was in over two hours but I did find a cute bakery for coffee and macaroons. The vanilla macaroon was the best of the ones I got. I was so happy to get back to Gare Saint Lazare. That night for dinner, I had french fries and white wine. It wasn't really by choice. Paris hates vegetarians more than any other city I've been to. =/

On Monday, we went up to the 56th floor of a skyscraper to check out a view of Paris from above. Then we went to the station to buy train tickets to Amsterdam and wait around in a freezer of a train station. Even though it was uncomfortably cold, we watched Ratatouille on Mary's tiny ipod nano screen. I'd been wanting to watch it for a while and I loved it.

The Louvre