A Whirlwind Tour of Paris

For my first excursion away from London I spent two nights and three days in Paris.  We stayed in a small hostel off Caulaincourt Square near the Moulin Rouge.  The picture to the left shows the serious staircase we had to climb to find the hostel (after being dropped off at the wrong place by our cab driver and wandering around Paris for 2 hours- I guess Caligncourt and Caulaincourt are easy to confuse).  Somehow, in  such a brief period of time, I managed to see TONS of the city and feel completely satisfied with the trip (which I did not think would be possible). My favorite neighborhood was the Latin Quarter, lined with outdoor fruit and vegetable stands and belaungeries ( I had 4 pastries in the span of two hours... See photo above right).  On our first day, we went to the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay.  The Louvre was so much larger than I expected and it was hard to take it all in at once.  We spent about two hours wandering around the massive building and then moved on to the Musee d'Orsay, which was my favorite of the two.  The d'Orsay houses tons of Degas' ballerinas, vibrant works by Van Gogh, Monet and Renior- and it was amazing to finally see some of my favorite works of art in person, which I have previously only seen on slides in Art History classes.  Most of the paintings were much bigger than I had imagined.  The d'Orsay also had a special exhibition going on about the influence that Manet's "Luncheon on the Grass" had on Picasso and his ouevre.  The original Manet was on display, along with a large selection of Picasso's interpretations (including paper cut-outs, sketches, and completed paintings).  

We also managed to see Notre Dame, the Arc d'Triumph (top left), the Eiffel Tower at dusk (top right), and more.  I have never accomplished so much in such a short amount of time and I must say that I loved every minute of it!  When you are in such a culturally rich place for just a weekend, it forces you to make the most of every second- something I need to remember to do for the rest of my time in London.  We took the "Chunnel" back on Sunday, exhausted but full of enough French culture to tide us over for a while.