Paris Wrap-Up

Now that I've been back to the usual grind for a few days I thought I'd take a few minutes and share the last few days of my Easter adventures!

Sunday morning we started the day by heading back to the Musée d'Orsay to check out the big Manet exhibit. It's the first time there's been such a large collection of Manet's works at d'Orsay since 1983, if I remember correctly. With our Paris Museum Pass not only did we only have to pay  2€ but we scooted right past at least two hours worth of lines--score! The exhibit was really cool, and I especially appreciated how much background and biographical information was presented about Manet and art at the time.

Manet? Yes please!

After the museum we walked (of course we walked, we must have walked miles and miles last weekend!) to the big and beautiful park in front of Les Invalides Hospital, one of the few places in Paris where you are allowed to sit on the grass, and we enjoyed a picnic lunch with a high school friend of Hilary's who is studying in Paris this semester. She came with two other friends so the three of them gave the three of us girls some tips on what we could do with our remaining hours in Paris. Per their suggestion we went around the hospital to see Napolean's tomb in back after we said goodbye. His tomb is a massive dome, covered in gold, which he designed before he died and which they actually built for him after he died. It was fascinating.

A picture from Thursday, Hilary and Leah in front of Les Invalides.
Napoleon's tomb is in the huge gold dome behind the hospital.

We headed to Notre Dame cathedral after that because our Paris passes gave us entry into the towers, but we didn't get privileged access and the line was very long, so sadly we didn't have time to go up in the towers. We did take a walk around the inside of the church to see all the smaller chapels and the stained glass that we couldn't see at the Vigil Mass. Again, stunning. Nothing beat hearing those famous bells ringing as we left the church after the Vigil, but it was still really cool. We then walked some more to the Pantheon and saw where some notables were buried, such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Marie and Pierre Curie, Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas, to name just a few.

I was dying to get some more excercise, and since we'd just missed the last trip up to the top of the dome in the Pantheon Hilary decided to make it up to me by heading out to Montmartre and the Sacre Couer church, which is built on a huge hill and thus has a great view of Paris. Leah was an excellent sport and said she could go for another hike too, so we headed north. There are a lot of stairs to climb to get to the church but despite a little haze the view was amazing, and definitely worth the work!

Paris from the hill in Montmartre

Girls and sunglasses!

After dinner in our apartment (because we had so much pasta left over!) we headed to the Eiffel Tower, once it was sufficiently dark, to spend our last evening in Paris on the lawn in front of France's most recognizable icon. There were so much young people out, drinking wine and playing guitars and singing, that it really felt like a party. The weather was just right and we enjoyed some wine and girl talk. A beautiful way to say goodbye to Paris.

The next morning I woke up unbelievable early (the rest of the group was taking a later train), and surprisingly had no problems getting to the Paris Nord train station (surprising because the night bus was running a little early so I missed and kind of ended up winging it on another bus, and I still can't believe how not panicked I was) and found my train and then I was off, speeding through the Paris countryside! I transferred in Köln (Cologne), Germany, and I had decided not to take the earliest connection but to spend four hours in Köln instead and take a train out at 1:30pm. It was a great decision.

Thanks to a friendly German for taking this one!

First I saw the Kölner Dom, a Roman Catholic church that is one of the world's largest churches and the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe. It's certainly impressive! At first I was disappointed to see a little scaffolding on one of the sides, until I did some research on the church and learned that not only did it take 632 years to build but some part of it is always being repaired (makes me think of Versailles, where every room has been redone at least 10 times). I walked in a little before a Mass was starting, so I figured why not! and sat down. After Mass I wandered around the Altstadt (literally Old City) area before sitting outside a cafe to read and drink a Milchkaffee. There were so many people, and so many Biergartens!

From a bridge across the Rhine River

I loved the feel of the city because it was so different from Berlin. Köln is a big city, but it didn't feel so Americanized. Maybe the weather had something to do with it too, but everything felt just a little slower, and certainly friendlier than France. France was friendly, but I must say, I was so thankful when we crossed the border into Germany because all the train annoucements were in German first again. And in Köln, I was just so thankful to be able to read all the signs again! It definitely showed me how much my German has improved since I got here, because I realized how much I've come to count on my German. In Paris I couldn't use German to help me out, and it felt crippling, because I felt like I couldn't take. The German words kept popping up in my head because German has become my European langauge, which is very cool to me but at the same time didn't really help me in Paris. If only I could learn every language, or at least the major ones! I love knowing that I have the language skills to get around in Berlin, in any city in Germany. It's such an empowering feeling. And it really makes me want to do some smaller trips to other German cities, so we'll just have to see what cities I have time to visit!

I haven't said this recently, so I want to end this post with a simple thank you. Thank you for reading and following my trips, and especially thanks to the people who have been giving me such encouraging and postive feedback recently. It's always nice to know someone's out there reading!