Paris, France: September 20-23

Dear Friends and Family,

Since I'm so behind on my blog and am trying to catch up, I'll try and write about Paris all in one post.

Sunday, September 20: Julia Child for a Day:
We decided that we really needed to catch up on our sleep. So we slept in and took a nap later in the day. We also decided that since the Watsons were kind enough to let us sleep in their apartment, we should cook them dinner. I found one of Julia Child's cookbooks in the kitchen and we picked a few recipes: a chicken dish, fried potatoes, and steamed green beans. Also, we had heard from Eva that there are tons of open air markets in Paris, so we headed out to one Eva had mentioned. The open air market was incredible. It was mostly stalls of fruits, vegetables, and fresh meat and fish, but there were also stalls with clothes and jewelry. We bought the things we needed for our dinner, plus some fruit, and I found an incredibly wonderful scarf. When we headed back to the Watsons, we stopped at an award winning bakery named Bechu that is directly across from their apartment. I will not lie, Bechu was probably the best experience I had in Paris. They had incredibly baguettes as well as delicious pastries (which we ended up trying at least one every time we got a baguette). The first pastry we tried was a Macaroon. I had never had a Macaroon before and this was unbelievably good. After our nap, we headed to the see the Eiffel tower, which was a short 10 minute walk from the apartment. We ambled around the area before heading back and cooking dinner. Cooking was lots of fun, but a bit difficult at times since we didn't know the kitchen. Also, we were defeated by the oven when we forgot that temperatures were in Celsius and not Fahrenheit. We didn't burn anything because we thought that the oven was lame and just didn't go up the right temperature. We eventually were able to bake the chicken when Besty came back and helped us. We had a wonderful dinner with the Watsons (John and Besty) with two very nice bottles of red wine.

Monday, September 21: The Louvre:
The plan was to spend the morning in the Louvre and then meet our friend Kelly Staves who is currently in the Stanford Paris program in the afternoon. Betsy was nice enough to give us a plan for walking though the Louvre. This plan was very manageable and we loved it. We started in the historical part of the Louvre, where there are remnants of the old walls, then continued with Winged Victory and the Venus di Milo. We then continued with the Apollo Room, which was ridiculously ornate, then to the Renaissance Rooms (where we saw the Mona Lisa) and to some other sculptures Besty really liked (I liked them too!). However, we loved it so much, that we decided to go find other paintings that we saw in the map that looked cool (like those of Vermeer). But this ended up being a terrible idea because we ended up running all over the Lourve (which is RIDICULOUSLY huge) and by the end of 5 hours, we were exhausted. We walked to the Luxembourg gardens to meet Kelly. But instead of exploring Paris like we had planned, we ended up just eating crepes and talking on a bench. We eventually decided to explore a little in the Latin Quarter and ended up at a bookstore called Shakespeare and Company. Inspired by the art I had seen that day, I bought a used book called "How to Draw." The Watsons wanted to take us out to dinner so we had a wonderful dinner at a Moroccan restaurant. It was so good. After dinner we decided to call it an early night after our 5 hour tour of the Louvre.

Tuesday, September 22:
We got up early and headed to Sainte-Chapelle, a chapel known for its stained glass. However, afterwards I developed a migraine and thus spent most of the rest of the day sleeping.

Wednesday, September 23:
We went to the Musee D'Orsay, which has been my favorite museum so far. There are so many Impressionist paintings in the Museum including those of Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, and Sisley just to name a few. There is this one room that is my favorite that has about 15 paintings by Monet, including a series of four paintings of the same cathedral in different lighting. Anyway, after we finished the tour that Besty had written our for us, we stopped. We walked to Notre Dame and then to the Luxembourg Gardens again to meet Eva for lunch. We bought some sandwiches and ate in the Gardens. After lunch we headed back to the apartment where our friend Sam came (Lee's program wasn't going to start for another week, so he and Sam were going to travel together. Also, Sam was going to be in the Stanford overseas program in Oxford). We talked for a while, ate dinner, and then they accompanied me to my train. Which we ended up having to run to make it. But I did make it and it was an overnight train, so I got to sleep on the train and then wake up in Madrid!

Love,
Rosalie