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Beaucoup de choses! (Many Things!)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged American Cemetery, Battle of Hastings, Bayeux Tapestry, bones, Camille Saint-Saëns, Catacombs, Champagne, Charles Baudelaire, Cimetière du Montparnasse, Clovis, Gates of Hell, gnomon, Gold Beach, Jean-Paul Saratre, Les Invalides, Marais, Merovingian Dynasty, Napoleon, Normandie, Omaha Beach, Picasso, Pointe du Hoc, Reims, Rodin, Saint Sulpice, Samuel Beckett, Saving Private Ryan, Simone de Beauvoir, skeletons, The Kiss, The Thinker, Vranken-Pommery on March 13, 2009| 1 Comment »

Salut tout le monde!!! Haven’t updated in quite some time, so I shall fill you all in now!

First things first. Just a forewarning, actually: I visited a lot of cemeteries/cathedrals/museums so there will be many pictures of all those! Hopefully you’ll find them interesting 🙂

Two weekends ago, I went to Reims, which is about an hour away from Paris on the TGV. Reims was somewhere I’ve been wanting to go for a long time so it worked out that my program planned a day trip there. I read all about the Cathedral of Reims in my French textbooks for years, so to see it in PERSON was just absolutely incredible. Many French Kings were crowned there and Clovis was baptized there! Any Francophone knows what I’m talking about! And if not, Clovis was the King of the Franks in the 6th century, and is also considered the founder of the Merovingian dynasty (which ruled the Franks for the next 2 centuries). Enough of being a nerd! We also took a tour of a champagne cavern, since Reims is in the Champagne region of France. Here are some pics:

Cathédrale de Reims

the back of the cathedral

Champagne tasting at Vranken-Pommery!

The next day was the first Sunday of the month in March, so all the government-run museums are free! I went to the Musée National Picasso in the Marais district of Paris, and then to the Musée Rodin with Matt, Beth, and Kassie. It was a really good day. It wasn’t too cold and it wasn’t raining! I don’t really have any pictures from the Picasso Museum because they didn’t allow you to take pictures. Bummer. But, I do have PLENTY from the Rodin Museum — and I really loved this museum, so I was happy that we were able to take pictures inside!

Me and The Thinker!

Kassie, Beth, and I all posing with The Three Shades

The Gates of Hell

The Kiss 🙂

Random sculpture that I really liked

In my free time, I’ve checked out a lot of different places. I made a list of everything I want to do/see while I’m here in Paris. I’m totally a list person! So far, I’ve visited Saint Sulpice (the 2nd largest cathedral in Paris after Notre Dame), and if you’ve ever read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, you’ll be familiar with this cathedral, le Cimetière du Montparnasse where many famous people are buried, Les Invalides, where Napoleon’s tomb is, and just the other day I visited Les Catacombes! All these places were very interesting…well, at least they are to me! Haha. I’m really starting to get to know Paris…every district..every metro line. I’m totally loving it. It always feels good when you really start to know a city – inside and out.

Saint Sulpice (with construction)

The gnomon on the floor inside the cathedral

The organ inside Saint Sulpice. It was HUGE!

Cimetière du Monparnasse: Me inside Camille Saint-Saëns' mausoleum. One of my favorite composers!

Beckett's grave

Sartre & de Beauvoir

Baudelaire

Les Invalides by day

Les Invalides by night...from across the Seine

L'Académie Française at night...from across the Seine

Me with Napoleon's Tomb behind me. Such a large tomb for such a tiny man. Hm.

Entrance to the Catacombs: Stop! This here is the empire of death.

the bones are literally right in front of you...

lots and lots of skeletons...

I’ve also taken a few other trips with GSE as well. The most recent trip was this past weekend. We took a train from Gare Saint-Lazare up to Normandie…about a 2 hour ride. Not bad at all. When we first arrived, we went to see la Tapisserie de Bayeux, which tells the story of events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Unfortunately, photography wasn’t permitted in the museum, but I found some Google images of the tapestry that I’ll post. Then we grabbed some lunch at this galette place, which was really good actually. Afterward, we went to some of the D-Day beaches (Gold and Omaha), visited the American Cemetery, where there are about 9,400 soldiers buried, and if you’ve ever seen the movie Saving Private Ryan, the opening scene is filmed in the American Cemetery, and then lastly went to Pointe du Hoc, which was a point of attack during WWII. I had been to Normandy once before when I visited France 4 years ago, but it was nice going back and seeing some more things.