Weekend in Paris

So I just returned this past Monday from a weekend in Paris. It's still pretty weird for me to be able to say something like that considering it's never such an easy option from the US but here all it required was a 1.5 hr plane ride and a friend who happens to be studying there. It was definitely pretty amazing. We took an extremely early flight (640 am) on Friday, so we were exhausted all day long. It also didn't help our cause that we walked all over the city at first, stopping in parks and gardens to sit and hang out with our friend we were staying with, Kelsey. It was absolutely incredible weather on Friday, probably near 70 degrees and bright sunshine. I even managed to pull of a pretty legit sunburn, which seemed pretty unbelievable at the time. We saw the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, and Luxemborg Gardens on Friday, and all of them were awesome. The Tower is MUCH higher than I expected, and seeing it in person is so much different than ever seeing a picture of it or seeing it in a movie, etc. I couldn't get over it's size, not just height but also how big the base was. For some reason that caught me off guard. Regardless, it was a lot of fun catching up with my friend, eating bread and cheese, and drinking cheap wine out in the parks. It was a nice change of pace from my Italy trip where it was "rush from place to place to place as quickly as you can;" we kinda relaxed a bit more and took in the sights.

We went to the Louvre that night because students get in free on Friday nights, and that museum is HUGE. Way bigger than the Met in NYC. Saw the Mona Lisa (as anyone will tell you, a bit anti-climactic...its really small and crowded around, plus you've seen it so many times you kinda know what you're about to see. That said it was still cool to actually see the real thing) and some older stuff, including the foundations of the original Louvre which was a castle.

We got up early Saturday to try to go to the top of the Eiffel but as we waited in line discovered that the top wasn't open for some reason, so we left and decided to do it Sunday. We got back to our friend's school and discovered that we got a great housing lottery number for our room next year, so that was a morale booster. That afternoon we went to the Rodin museum (full of a lot of his sculptures, including The Thinker) which I really liked, and then the D'Orsay museum, which is probably my favorite so far. It's an old train station turned museum that is full of some later stuff than what we've seen other places, like Impressionism and guys like Van Gogh, Manet and Monet.

For dinner that night we went to this weird little place that had fondue and wine that you drink out of baby bottles. Was definitely interesting to say the least but the steak was good and it was certainly an experience. After that we went to Montmartre, a place where a lot of kids hang out and either listen to some musicians performing or just hang out. It has an amazing view of all of Paris, so that was definitely a unique experience.

Sunday we slept in a bit to finally catch up on some rest, and then went to church at Notre Dame at 1130. Though the mass was all in French except one reading, it was still really cool being there. I never really thought there would be a time when within 2 weeks I was at a mass at both St. Peter's in Rome and Notre Dame in Paris...oh the wonderful things study abroad can do for you. After that we went to the Pompidou museum (got in free again, first Sunday of the month!), which is like MoMA, all modern art. Some modern art, in my opinion, is really really dumb and I just don't get it. Some guys paint entire canvases one color or basically blot random things all over and somehow that ends up in an art museum. Anyway, some stuff was stupid, but there were actually a lot of cool things there pre-1965, including some Picasso and Dali, which I really like. After that we got some amazing gelatto (called Amorino, i would highly recommend it if in Paris) that was somehow better than what I thought was the best in Florence. They had a biscotti flavor that tasted like Teddy Graham's. Incredible. We then got dinner (read: bread, cheese, and peanuts) at Kelsey's friend's apartment and got to bed pretty early because we had an early flight the next day...which ended up being delayed 3 hours and didn't take off till around 12:30. As my mom said, good thing our presentation for our 2 oclock class got moved back.

I have a good friend from school visiting starting tomorrow and staying for 10 or so days. He was doing a cool archaeological abroad program in Egypt, so he's been done for a little while. So that should be pretty cool. On a side note, I finally found out I got a job in NYC this summer, so that is exciting, as it's the one I wanted the most and now I can finally stop worrying about the search.

I've put up some more pictures of my Italy trip, slowly but surely...they'll all get up eventually.

Go Sox,
Pat

Family visit!

After my long week in Italy my family was coming to visit March 27 with Aunt Jane, so I had a lot to look forward to. It was a good thing I rested up before hand because we walked A LOT while they were here all over the city. Its safe to say Aunt Jane knew a lot about the city from her reading and I got to see quite a bit that I might not have without them coming. It was so great to see them and spend time with everyone, and was at a perfect time too--right around the halfway point. Also, I certainly didn't complain about the meals that were paid for...

We did a ton of stuff around my admittedly lax class schedule, so that worked out perfectly. We saw the castle, old town square, Wenceslas square, an old castle and area called Vysehrad, and a small town called Melnik which played host to a church with a basement full of bones from plague victims and a wine tasting cellar where the lights somehow got shut off after about 40 minutes and we were down there in teh pitch black until we found our way out. That was certainly a bizarre day, capped off by this very "interesting" black light theater show. We went to a restaurant where the table had beer taps right on it and I introduced them to some wonderful Czech food that I think they had all had enough of after a week. We went to U Fleku, a famous beer hall here where they brew their own fantastic beer. Its safe to say that it might be tough to go back to Coors Light when I get back to the states.

All in all, we did a ton in the week they were here and saw virtually everything Prague has to offer tourists. Aunt Jane was definitely extremely well prepared for the trip. Basically, though, it was just great to hang out with the fam and see people from home. We could've done a lot less and just sat around and it still would've been fun (though surely not as much).

On a side note, I haven't posted many pictures lately because our Internet has been really slow, but I'll try to continue putting them up a bit at a time. Again that's at www.snapfish.com, email is w.patrick.kerns@gmail.com and password is prague. Ciao for now.