Farewell...

i will miss paris...
the food, the people, walking everywhere, riding the train, how clean the streets are, and the general laid-back atmosphere that you found in most places.

i want to thank Dr. Brigit Cowlishaw & Dr. Brian Cowlishaw for putting this wonderful experience together; and my parents and family for making it come true!

"goodbye to Paris, the city i love
i leave you as your friend
and when i do return someday
please take me in your arms again"

Day 8...

today is our last day in the city of Paris, and, appropriately i believe, we visited Per Lechez Cemetery. the tall, Gothic monuments stretched on as far as the eye could see, and there was a sort of eerie peace in the air, like everything was waiting.
we first passed by the monuments to the millions who died in the Holocaust; there was monuments for Alcatraz, Ravensbruck, and many others. passing by the enormous statues of skeletons, torture victims, and general monuments; i had a chill run down my spine. i can only imagine the horrors that these people must have suffered in the labor camps...and i know that my imagination can never conjure up the real thing.
the next thing we saw was the back wall of the cemetery. it looked like an ordinary wall...except for the large gold plaque in the middle of it. see, this was the wall where the last fighters of the revolution were lined up and shot. the revolutionaries had barricaded themselves in the cemetery,fighting with everything they had against their enemy. finally,the revolutionaries ammo ran out, and this is where they were taken. many people still pay tribute to the wall, honoring the memories of those lost to the battle.
there are many, many graves in the cemetery, and only a few that i can remember. but there are three that stand out the most... Oscar Wilde, Isadora Duncan, and Jim Morrison, to name a few of the famous people who are buried there. i also learned that many of the tombs are family tombs, and that the family members, once dead, would be stacked on top of one another to save money. another interesting fact is that the trees there get an extra boost from all of the rotting corpses...and that boost makes them grow tall and strong enough to break apart the concrete tombstones.

if nothing else...the cemetery has taught me to enjoy being alive and to live my life to the fullest. I'll look like them soon enough... :-)

Day 7...

today we visited some of Paris' lovely parks, starting with the one behind Notre Dame. it is a little bit of a walk, but once you get there, the first thing you see are the roses. bushes of pink, red, and white roses grow along the back fence of the cathedral, and it was here that we read a part of Victor Hugo's famous novel, "the Hunchback of Notre Dame." some may know it from the Disney version, but the actual tale is much darker than the kids tale. in it, Quasimodo, a horribly deformed creature, falls in love with Esmeralda, a flawless beauty. she takes pity on him, and the tale is about them fighting against a world of evil. i won't tell you how it ends...you have to read it yourself!
i learned that that was the way most romantics wrote; all the stories involved a horrible monster of a person falling in love with the fairest maiden in all the land, and most endings are usually tragic; they involve one or both of the lovers dying for each other.
something else i learned about Notre Dame is that the gargoyles that guard the ancient cathedral weren't actually put there until the 19Th century.the story is that the people wanted to tear the cathedral down and use the land for other things, but all the romantics were like 'no, its Gothic and beautiful! we must keep it!' and so, in order to keep the people from tearing it down, the romantics installed the gargoyles on order to make a beautiful cathedral more Gothic.

after the cathedral, we went to Trocadero, a platform that overlooks the Eiffel tower. there were many people there, both Parisians and tourists. i fully understood then what they said about the Parisians being avid people-watchers...for there were many people to watch that day. the sun was warm on our backs, and the breeze was cool, and as i looked over the magnificent tower, i though about my life and if i would ever see this sight again.
my answer is "yes...i will!"

Day 6...

today was a free day, and i went with the group to a couple of good 'ol English bookstores. one of them was the W&H Smith (where i found a couple of Doctor Who books) and the famous Shakespeare and CO. (where i found a book of Victor Hugo poems in English and in French). then i went with Karla and Eryck over to Notre Dame (which translates as "our Lady") to look around. well, since it was Sunday, they were having Mass about the time we got there and so, wanting the experience, Karla and i stayed for Mass. the big cathedral was full of people; some were worshiping, others were just passing through to have a look, but, beyond the people and the chanting, the cathedral had an air of mystery. to me, it felt like the cathedral, although it is hundreds of years old, will never be fully discovered. the gargoyles outside protect the spiritual mystery inside, and none can break that barrier.
something else i learned that day was about Saint Denise (or Dennis). apparently, when he was scheduled to be executed, he wanted to die on holy ground. his executioner, however, said no and Saint Dennis was executed in the square like everyone else. the story goes that after his head had been removed, two angels came down and allowed Saint Dennis to pick up his head and walk over to the church that way he could die on holy ground. now his statue is flanked by two angels, and his head rests comfortably in his hands.

Day 5....

today we visited Carnavalet, or the museum of Paris. this museum holds some of the history of this great city, especially about the revolution. in here i learned that some of the big revolutionaries, such as Robespierre, were held up in the Bastille and were trying to get everyone to sign a petition. well, everyone except Robespierre had signed the paper when the guards attacked the Bastille.
as the battle raged on, one of the revolutionaries committed suicide so he wouldn't be caught; another threw himself out of a window in a suicide attempt but, unfortunately, he survived( although he did hit the pavement hard enough to knock out his eye, and he was eventually executed with his eye hanging out of its socket) and Robespierre showed up with a gunshot wound to the mouth. no one knows if he gave himself the wound in a suicide attempt, or if one of the guards shot him.
Robespierre was captured, along with the man who threw himself out the window and a few others, and they were sent to prison to await their death. in jail, they taped up Robespierre's jaw in order to keep him alive until his execution, and its said that when it was Robespierre's turn for the guillotine, the executioner, in a fit of cruelty, ripped off the tape that held Robespierre's shattered jaw together right before executing him.

afterward, we went to the Musee De OrSay; a museum that housed many famous works by Monet, Van Gogh, and many other impressionistic artists. i discovered while i was walking among so many priceless paintings, that i really wish i could draw.....

day 4...

today we visited the Catacombs, but on our way there we stopped and saw a large water fountain in the middle of the square. it had Egyptian statues and symbols all over it. this was not the first Egyptian style thing i had seen; there were many in the Louvre and all over Paris. when i asked about it, i learned that when napoleon was in power, he went on a trip to Egypt. when he came back, he brought back many Egyptian artifacts...and that started a Egypt frenzy throughout the empire.

anyways, back to the catacombs. when we first go into the building, it looked normal enough, but, when we walked into the next room, i noticed a staircase in the middle of the floor, and, unlike other staircases, it went down instead of up. we had to go down these narrow, winding stairs; down, down,and, right when i thought that the stairs would never end, they did. they ended in a narrow, low corridor that was carved out of the rock. the corridor stretched on into the darkness, and we had no choice but to follow it.
we walked for a ways down this corridor, passing markers, carvings, arches, and the occasional caged off area. finally, about a mile under the city of Paris, we found the door. it was about 6 feet tall, and at the top, there was a warning. it said something along the lines of 'stop! you are about to enter the empire of the dead!' we passed under the doorway, and entered the empire of the dead.
the first thing i noticed was a row of skulls staring at me from a wall of bones. past the skulls, i noticed wall after wall after wall of bones. arm bones and leg bones were piled up high, and the skulls of men long gone were artistically arranged among them. here the bones of both beggar and king were living together in harmony.
i learned that the catacombs were partially built by the Romans as a burial chamber but that during the French revolution they were expanded because all the people who had died were buried very shallowly and whenever it rained the bodies would begin to float to the top. so the french expanded the catacombs to put all the fallen of the revolution under the city so they could use the land for other things. its also said that there are many famous people down there...such as Robespierre and Marie-Antoinette.

as for what i thought about.... being among so many dead has made me greatly appreciate being one of the living. having the faces of men long dead staring into your soul makes you examine yourself and how you will be remembered once you are like those in the catacombs.

and, like it says on the door beneath the mountain. "the way is shut...."

Day 3...

today we went to one of the most famous museums in the world... the Louvre. full of paintings, sculptures, furniture, and people; the Louvre is the home to many famous works, such as the Monna Leisa, the statue Venus De Milo (otherwise known as Aphrodite), and The Scream. it is also home to a collection of Jacques-Louis David paintings. David is author of several political paintings, such as the Oath of the Horatii, which depicts three brothers vowing to defeat their enemies or die, while their mothers, wives and daughters looked on in horror. David is also author of the rape of the Sabine women, which show the Sabine women trying to keep their fathers and brothers from killing their husbands, and their husbands from killing their brothers and fathers. David is also a political painter and is known for his painting The wreck of the Medusa. the painting shows a raft full of starving people who are slowly dying off. in the very very far right corner, yup can see the small outline of a ship sailing away. the story behind the painting is this; the Medusa was sailing with a bunch of aristocrats on board. well, the ship sprang a leak and began sinking into the ocean. the aristocrats decided that they needed to lighten the weight of the ship. since they believed that they were so important, they decided that they would stay on the ship. so, they made several of the crewmen get into a raft that they towed behind the ship. after a while, the aristocrats saw that the ship was still sinking, and they decided that it was the raft that was weighing them down. so the aristocrats on the ship cut the rope tying the raft to them, and they left the seamen on the raft drifting in the middle of the ocean to starve. the painting is painted to look like you are on the raft with the dying men...and David did this to prove a point. the whole purpose of The wreck of the Medusa was to warn the people that the aristocrats were going to cut off the people and leave them adrift in the ocean that is life.

also, i thought about how life must have been back then, and i wondered about the specific things that happened in the lives of the painters that provoked such beautiful, passionate, and insightful paintings. we as a younger generation may not understand why they were created, but i fully believe that if even one painting had been lost (as I'm sure many were) then we would have l0st a piece of the culture that creates and shapes us every day.

Day 2

Today we visited some of the palaces.

First was the Conciergerie & Sainte Chappell. The Conciergerie is a palace/ old prison house...the same prison where Marie Antoinette, Maximilien Robespierre, and several other famous people were held before their public execution. There was a women’s court in the middle of the structure, a place where all the women used to gather and wash clothes, bathe children, and (I’m sure) gossip about the royal family. the whole place was well protected, with spikes lining the roofs so the enemy couldn’t climb up, spikes on the ledges so they wouldn't be able to grab it to climb, and bars all over the windows.  It was a very neat place to see how the jail system used to work.

Next we went through the Sainte Chappell, which is a chapel built for the king and queen. The lower levels were magnificent, with brightly painted ceilings and stained glass windows. The pillars and statues were old and wearing down, but you could still see the beauty behind the years. The statue in the front looked over a large room used for concerts and other events. The actual mass would be held upstairs.

     Up the narrow stairs, we emerged into a room so breathtaking that you had to take a moment to take it all in. the room was huge! With stained glass windows so tall that they seemed to stretch on and on. Each stained window contained two stories; one from the New Testament and one from the Old Testament. They were supposed to show the people how the old verified the new, and how small we all were compared to God in all his might. And it worked! 

   The alter was lavish, all trimmed in gold and with the sacramental (?) alter below it. It’s said that when the sacrament is on the altar, the people are supposed to act as if they were in the presence of Christ himself. This is where the priest would give mass to the king and queen.

The next place we visited was the palace of Versailles. The palace was magnificent! The gate was all gold, and the palace itself was trimmed in gold. This is the residence of Marie-Antoinette, Madame du Pompadour, King Louis XVI, and many other friends of the court. The palace was built during the great famine, and many people were outraged by the splendor used on the rich while the common starved. Finally, a group of women dragging cannons walked from Paris to Versailles in order to bring the King and Queen back to Paris with them. After a little negotiation (and a few threats) they succeeded. Marie-Antoinette went back to Paris with them.

   The palace of Versailles is also home to the famous "hall of mirrors" that was built by King Louie XVI. It is a long hallway with large mirrors that are exactly opposite large windows. I believe there were fourteen in total. 

   The gardens at Versailles stretched on for miles and were intricately done with high shrubs walls, lavish fountains, shrub mazes, exotic flowers, and statues in various poses to guard it all. In order to see it all, we took the “petit Tranon", or small train; a train-like bus that was given to Marie-Antoinette by her husband, King Louie XVI. He told her that since she loved flowers so much, he was offering her a bouquet, the Petite Tranon. It took us past the vast gardens and past a few palaces as well, whose names I have regrettably forgotten.  

    After we rode the petit Tranon, we walked down to Marie-Antoinette's Hamlet. It is a small circle of buildings that were built in 1783 by Richard Mique. It consists of a barn, a fishery, a dairy, a mill, and a farm. They are not working buildings; in fact they are all built in smaller scale than everything else...kind of like large dollhouses.  The reason that spurred her to build these small houses was that she wanted to be closer to nature, and she believed that pretending to be a peasant, because peasants were supposedly "closer" to nature, was the way to do it.

 

as for what I thought about today....I thought that Marie-Antoinette had a lot of problems, true, but I think that maybe her being thrust into that world at such a young age had something to do with it. I also think it was wrong to execute her solely for the rumor that she was sleeping with her son, rather than for the excellent political reasons they could have executed her for.

 

And, on a funnier note, I never thought to mix the girls and guys bathroom into one! That was interesting.... :-)

Day one

 I chose to read "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas, and I believe that my favorite character from the book is Jacopo. I do not know, however, if Jacopo was a real person back in Dumes' time.
      

      I liked Jacopo because, even though he is  a lowly smuggler, he has more loyalty to his friends than anyone else in the book. he stays with Edmond through thick and thin, even when Edmond does not want him. he helps his friends in any way possibile, and loved Edmond with all his heart.and even when everyone abandoned Edmond, Jacopo was still there,refusing to leave.

      how we need more men with that kind of loyalty!!