Les oeuvres de Monet

I don't know if I have mentioned this on my blog in the past, but one place I've been wanting to visit since before I even arrived here is Giverny, or home to the famous French impressionist, Claude Monet. I planned to go and do just that on the Monday just gone, when I realised with a sinking feeling that the cost of my train ticket there and the entrance fee to the gardens themselves actually equated to all the money I have left for this month, and tempting though it was (and it was very tempting. I almost went anyway), sensibleness won out. After all, I didn't think it was really very smart to leave myself with only €0.30 in copper coins for the remaining five days of my time here.

So that's another casualty on my bucket list, and the one I am most sad about, without question. I was really looking forward to going and I'm super disappointed that it didn't happen. But these things happen, and I know my mum was jealous that I was going, so maybe she'll come with me to do it one day in the future.

Still, I am an appreciator of Monet and impressionist works, and as it happens, a lot of Monet's most famous works live in various museums right here in Paris. I went and looked at them last week, on my first free day after exams (the only reason I didn't blog it earlier was because I had been planning to do a joint paintings/Giverny post, but as I said, it was not to be). 

I started off at the Musée Marmottan Monet, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

It's home to the largest collection of Monet works in the world as well as paintings by lots of other famous masters, including Manet, David, Gérard and Cézanne.

After that I took the metro over to Concorde, spent a while soaking up some rays in the Tuilieries and then went into the Musée de l'Orangerie which is home to Monet's Water Lilies. You're not technically supposed to take photos, but of course people have and a quick google images search will show you the impressive paintings (of which I think I counted eight, and they're all huge). In fact, one of his paintings from the water lilies series has just sold at Sotheby's in London for £31.7m.

Anway, the paintings were all very interesting to look at and hear more about. It's not quite Giverny, but it will do for now.

Vicky xx

Un weekend des châteaux: #2 - Fontainebleau

As I mentioned in yesterday's post (two in a row! And there'll likely be more this week), one other thing on my bucket list which I have now managed to cross off is the Palace of Fontainebleau, about 55km outside of Paris.

Anne-Marie and I took the transilien from Gare de Lyon (one of the most confusing metro stations I have ever been to, thankyou very much), which took about forty minutes or thereabouts, and then walked from Fontainebleau-Avon to the Château itself, through quite a lot of lovely parkland.

This area is actually home to the Fôret de Fontainebleau, and people come here on droves at the weekends with their bikes to follow the trails. It's home to several endangered European species and used to be a royal hunting park, which I would assume is why the palace was built where it was, essentially as a rather over the top hunting 'lodge'. Although don't quote me on that. It's a bit of a lame description for a château which, along with its park is actually listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The palace is simpler than Versailles but still very grand. The chapel and the throne room (which used to be the King's bedroom but was converted by Napoleon) are two such examples.

The palace's library is also pretty impressive and held a certain amount of appeal to a bookworm like myself!

Despite it's royal heritage, I actually found myself more interested in the château under Napoleon (Bonaparte). His famous uniform is displayed there (and really, I know it's famous that ol' Boney was very short, but seriously, he was short!) as is the room where he abdicated before he was exiled to Elba in 1814 (from where he later escaped). 

It was an another absolutely boiling day though, and I found myself flagging pretty quickly. The park (and its nice shady trees) ended up being much more appealing to me than the château, interesting though it undoubtedly was. I think I would have appreciated it more if I hadn't been to Versailles just the day before, and I think that at times Anne-Marie and I were thinking more of how much our feet hurt than what was in front of us, but it was a very lovely day!

Vicky xx

Un weekend des châteaux: #1 - Le Palais de Versailles

On Saturday, I finally made it to Versailles, with a week to spare!

Well, it sounds like I was cutting it close, but I've honestly been 'saving up' Versailles if you like, mainly because I thought that it would be better to go and see it in the summer when its beautiful gardens should be at their best, but also because I realised, upon doing some idle googling one day, that the light show happens on Saturdays, starting from yesterday, and yesterday being my very last Saturday in Paris, (I know! *sob*), it was the only day that I could do it.

Me and my friend Anne-Marie headed over to the RER station at Musée d'Orsay earlyish on Saturday morning - but if you're going there, note that you can get there on the same ticket and a lot lot quicker if you get the train from Montparnasse to Versailles-Chantier, which we realised on the way back. The walk from the station to the château is a bit longer but it's worth it.

The Versailles website suggests that on the busiest days you start off on the Gardens and make your way into the Château itself later in the day to avoid the worst of the people traffic, and so that's what we did. 

The gardens themselves are very beautiful, and I think that holding off on a visit until summer paid off very nicely. The flowers were in bloom, the fountains were running, and people were out boating on the Grand Canal, and it gave me a very nice holiday feeling, thankyou very much, as opposed to feeling like I was on 'just' a day trip.

It was also sweltering hot - there was not a cloud in the sky until well after 19:00 and all in all I really think the gardens were at their best. 

A (rather pricey) chocolate ice cream later, and we walked leisurely up the Grand Canal towards the Grand and Petit Trianons, and Marie-Antoinette's hamlet. 

This is where you start to understand why the citizens of France started to get a bit disgruntled with their esteemed Royal Family and start a wee revolt. The Grand Trianon was apparently built so that the King could have a little privacy with which to conduct a love affair. 

An excellent use of the peoples taxes, no?

Anyway, the gardens of the Grand Trianon, again, were what struck me the most, and me and Anne-Marie spent ages taking pictures of them.

Marie-Antoinette's hamlet was something else that made me laugh. Of course the woman who supposedly declared, "let them eat cake!" would play pretend and be 'normal' by ordering an entire mini village to be built in her back garden!

It was very lovely though. I could have spent a couple of hours there alone, meandering around and enjoying the sunshine.

After this, we were getting quite hungry, so we stopped off at a restaurant, whose name currently escapes me, for something to eat. Considering we were sitting in the middle of one of the biggest tourist-traps in the whole of Île de France and beyond, the prices were fairly reasonable - €11 or so for a pizza, €8 for a ham omelette with a salad and bread. The ony thing that was noticeably extortionate was the coke. A medium sized one cost Anne-Marie something on the region of €5.60!

Anyway, hunger satisfied we made our way into the château itself. Truly, you can see why Versailles earned the reputation it did. It is dripping in splendor, nearly everything covered in marble and gold leaf and so on. 

Most famous of all, and for good reason, is the Hall of Mirrors, a long gallery adorned with several mirrors (duh), chandeliers and large windows which make the room bright as anything and very very beautiful. 

If I had one complaint to make about the château, it would be this.

Overcrowding.

The amount of people filtering through the Grands Appartements was, at times, slightly alarming. There were people every which way, the temperature in the room was climbing steadily, there wasn't much in the way of seating for those - I'm thinking here of the elderly and not the lazy - who needed it, and at times it was hard to see any of the room in which we were standing for the throng of bodies. It made it quite hard to appreciate what we were seeing. And this was late in the day when there was supposedly 'less' people traffic.

They need to, in my opinion, introduce a system rather like that which they have running at Buckingham Palace in London, where you pay for a ticket which can only be used within a  certain timeframe, thus staggering out the number of visitors. I understand the need to make money from opening the palace up to the public, I do, but Versailles obviously makes so money in a year that I really wouldn't be all that concerned if I limited the number of people who could go through at once. The gardens are more than big enough and nice enough to keep people entertained in the meantime. 

Anyway, my whinging over and done with, I can carry on to the Royal Serenade, which we also paid to see (largely, I admit, to fill the gap in between the closure of the château and it's gardens and the light show in the evening).

Basically, it consisted of a company of actors in period dress, putting on three mini performances throughout the grand apartments.

First, an opera singer and period instrumentalist - I'm completely ignorant about these things, but if I had to guess, I would say it was a lute or something similar.

Second - and my favourite segment, was a display, set to music, of the rituel d'habillage, or the ritual in which courtiers of the day would dress their King and Queen.

And last, a man playing some kind of instrument that reminded me a lot of bagpipes, but which was actually something else.

Anyway, after this an hour wait in the sunshine saw the gardens being reopened for the evening show. Wandering around the gardens, all of the fountains had been turned on. Some were playing to music, some had strobe lights and dry ice, and some put on seven minute 'displays' which were pretty awesome to watch.

The sunset was spectacular, and right before the sun dipped totally below the horizon, the sky was a bright crimson, which reflected in the Grand Canal made a real sight to behold.

And then, the pinnacle of the night - the fireworks. This was what we'd all been waiting for, really, and it didn't disappoint. I would add pictures, but my phone had died by this point and they're all on my camera (and I currently have no laptop to transfer them to, as I sent it back to the UK with my dad for some much needed repairs).

All told, it was a very nice, if very exhausting day, and I'm glad I managed to cross it off my bucket list. It wasn't the only château I went to this weekend - I visited Fontainebleau on Sunday, but I'll post about that separately. 

Speaking of, today is Monday and I leave this week (!!!!!) so I only have 4 more full days to explore. 

Time flies -

Vicky xx

Les Invalides et le fin des examens

This weekend just gone, mon père was out here in Paris with me, and we had a lovely weekend, catching some live music in a bar on Rue Mouffetard and catching some dinner at La Bar a Huitres, which has become my go to place for seafood (to the delight of my dad, who much to my disgust, is a big fan of oysters).

We also headed over to the Musee de l'Armee at l'Hotel des Invalides. My Dad is ex-navy, and with both of us being history buffs, it was ideal for this weekend.

It's actually really interesting. Unlike the Imperial War Museum in London, it covers more than just the two world wars onwards, but also goes back to the time of the Musketeers and the Napoleonic wars. 

When we went on Saturday, we only had time to cover the 1914-1945 section of the exhibition, and to grab a verrrry quick look at Napoleon's tomb, so at some point before I head back to Blighty I hope to take the opportunity today to go back and look around a bit further. 

Well, that's not ostentatious at all!

In other news, my exams are OVER and I went out to dinner at Entrecôte tonight to celebrate. 

It's so nice not to have any more exams hanging over my head. By Monday this week, all of my stress caught up with me at once and I'm currently coughing and sniffling my way through one of the worst colds I've ever had. To be honest, I've been waiting for my body to say 'no! No more!' for a while. In fact, I'm impressed I made it this long without getting ill - in all my time in education, I have never been through a year as tough and as challenging as this one. 

It's been difficult, exceptionally so, and while I'm glad that I chose to come out here this year, I'm not at all sorry to say goodbye to the university element of it. Not even a little bit. Au Revoir Assas, not gonna miss ya.

On a lighter note, I've 8 (full) days left, including today, to enjoy living in Paris without exams hanging over me, and I hope to make the most of them.

Vicky xx

Plus de tourisme...

Paris is, or rather, was, in the midst of a fair heatwave this weekend just gone, and with four of my five exams done and out of the way, I decided to give myself the weekend off before returning to revision for my fifth and final exam on the 18th of this month.

Saturday I spent sunbathing on our balcony (something which I am so thankful we have!) having found out too late that the Queen was at the Marché aux Fleurs, which was being named after her. 

Sunday, though, I made sure to go out, and Palais Garnier - home of the opera here in Paris, is somewhere I've been meaning to go for quite a while now.

I've never actually seen an opera myself, and I tried to get tickets to see La Boheme or Tristan and Isolde, but they were all either sold out or out of my price range, so I'll have to try again at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden when I head back to London for my final year.

That's not to stop you from going inside though - it's a beautiful building, very decadent, and I can imagine that the atmosphere on the night of a performance must really be something.

After this, I went over to Pére Lachaise cemetery, last resting place of many of the late and the great.

It's an absolute maze, inside. If you ever go, you'll definitely be wanting the help of a map - which can be found on this page - and even then, I ended up getting lost several times and several graves I was searching for eluded me entirely. 

Not all of them though. I found Chopin, Edith Piaf, Moliére and Oscar Wilde, to name but a few (and quite handily, I turned up at this last one at the same time as a British tour group, so I stuck around and got to hear a few interesting facts about the rather interesting sculpture that marks the spot).

Also, a word of advice. Don't do as muggins here did, and forget to take a bottle of water with you. The cemetery is massive, and on a hot day, you'll be wanting a drink! D'oh.

The hot weather was unusually thick, though, and so for the past few days we've been treated to lots and lots of thunder and lightening, which I happen to really like but which probably sucks for all the poor people here in Paris who are scared of thunderstorms. I don't think I've ever known such a protracted period of thundery weather - we're now on day three, although I believe it's supposed to let up tomorrow.

Still, at least the temporary lack of sunshine makes it easier to revise. It's hard to focus when all you want to do is go outside and chill (ignoring, of course, that this blog post is quite obviously an exercise in procrastination...)

Vicky xx

Le tennis: Roland Garros!

Anybody been following the French Open? Of course you have, it's the last major before the quintessentially British Wimbledon begins later this month.

Of course, rather conveniently, the French Open happens to be held in Paris. And seeing as I live here...

I love being on my @thirdyearabroad casually just bought tickets for the French Open :) #rolandgarros #excited
— Victoria Goodsell (@9victoriag) March 13, 2014

HOW exciting?

In the light of the exams we've been ploughing through, me and Parisa have been really looking forward to this for a while. We only had a ticket for court one and the other annexed courts, because a) the tickets were quite pricey, and b) they had 'sold out', so we were quite irritated to see on the big screens that there were loads of empty seats in the bigger courts. Still, never mind.

On Sunday morning, we got there quite early expecting it to take ages for us to get through the gate, but it was actually super easy. The gate opened at 10, and we were inside by 10:06, which made things nice and easy. We wandered around exploring for a bit, and had a go in the free photo booth...

We literally only had two seconds to make each face, and I think I panicked a bit, leading to the really stupid expression in the bottom right picture *blush*, but it was a laugh. 

Anyway, by the time we'd finished, it was nearly time for some tennis. We basically situated ourselves in Court One for most of the day, where there were a lot of doubles matches going on - women's, men's and mixed.

The first match was an absolute walkover, two sets played and won (6-0, 6-2) in an hour flat, but then I've also since realised that the winners are seeded first in the women's doubles, so perhaps that's less surprising than it seemed at the time.

After this, Parisa was starting to get a bit hungry, so we went exploring for food. I bought a gaufre for €5, which I didn't think was too bad considering, but I attempted (and later failed) to resist getting a packet of crisps to keep me going. €2.50 for a packet of some thin, fried bits of potatoes is enough to make anybody wince.

Parisa wanted to finish her hot dog, so we hung around outside to see the outcome of Andy Murray's mammoth 5 set match, which had carried on over from the day before. We got our picture taken, and I got accosted by a woman with a TV camera, and when asked about who I thought was likely to win in the match between Djokovic and Tsonga, made some completely inane remark along the lines of, "Djokovic, because he's Djokovic, he always wins!" and sounded like a complete chump in the process.

Which is pretty embarassing, but I was kind of put on the spot. 

And in all fairness, I was right. *smug face*

Back to the tennis, though. What we'd really been waiting for were the matches featuring french players. A few people we know were there earlier in the week (in the pouring rain, sadly for them. We were really lucky and had perfect weather all day), and they said that the best atmosphere was when the french players came on, for what I think are really obvious reasons.

The first match was les français contre les français, but it only lasted ten minutes before one side had to retire. The second match was two french against a mixed nationality team, but they lost 6-3, 6-4. 

So that was that! It was a really good day, and although I felt a tiny bit guilty for not revising, you only do your year abroad once and I wasn't going to miss out on this! :)

I have three more exams to go, but two of them are this week and there's a long gap after that before the next one, which, fingers crossed, should allow me to revise and do some other stuff at the same time. I've still got a lot of stuff to do before I leave - but just 26 days to do it in!

As they say, profitez-en!

Vicky xx