Hurray! My exams are over and I can get back to normal life once more. January is not even over yet and I can safely say that it has been the longest, most stressful and most tedious month of my entire year abroad so far. Revising for exams in another language is hard. And I am extremely thankful that the way my exam timetable panned out means that I have this week off because I am also exhausted. The Christmas holidays were not all that long ago, really, but any rest and rejuvenation I brought back with me from that fortnight at home has, without a doubt, long since been destroyed.
Next week, my second semester modules will start, along with two from last semester that, rather to my dismay, I have to carry on with, and I am planning to learn a lesson or two from the misery that has been revising for these exams to make sure that in the summer I am markedly less miserable!
Luckily, just a few hours after the end of my last exam, my mum and my brother arrived in Paris to stay with me for the weekend. My younger brother, Sam, has never been to Paris before, so we did a lot of the old tourist favourites, which are definitely more exciting to re-visit when you're with someone for whom it's all new and exciting.
I would make exhibit A the Eiffel Tower, but for one thing, our trip there on Saturday was actually the first time I've made it to Paris' most famous landmark since I moved here almost 5 months ago, and for another thing, I've not actually been here in any case since a Year 9 school trip, 7 years or so ago. We didn't go up - Sam will be back in Paris in March on a college trip, and he will go up then. I'll go up again when my mum, aunt and grandma make a Paris stopover in May.
Of course, the main reason we hopped over to the Eiffel Tower in the first place is because my Mum has always said that Paris is a place that ought to be explored by river, and so she'd booked us on a short river cruise which took us up past Place de la Concorde, the Louvre and Notre Dame, effectively covering all the major sites - and she was right, Paris does look a lot different by water, so it is definitely worth doing if at all possible.
And - bonus - we got given a lovely hot crêpe all smothered in Nutella to eat on the way around.
What followed this was an awful lot of walking. Sam wanted to see a lot of stuff while he was here, and so what we ended up doing was getting the metro to Charles de Gaulle - Étoile, which is immediately in front of the Arc de Triomphe.
So we went over to the Arc, did that, walked all the way down the Champs-Élysées, through Place de la Concorde and the Jardin des Tuileries and up to the Louvre - again, we didn't go in because Sam will when he comes over on his college trip, but we did however spend an inordinate amount of time trying to take photos like this one...
Anyway - once we'd done that, we walked from the Louvre, along the Seine, crossed over the Pont des Arts [the bridge which is covered all over in padlocks], and then walked down towards l'île de la cite, where we grabbed some lunch and went into Notre Dame Cathedral.
Mum wanted to see Galeries Lafayette, so we took the metro there next and went to the rooftop viewing terrace, before deciding that the last stop on our list should be Montmartre, because I wanted to see the Sacré-Cœur again, and because Mum wanted to see Moulin Rouge.
We actually got really lucky with the Sacré-Cœur, because we managed to time our entrance perfectly with the nuns coming out to sing. I'm completely unknowledgeable about these things, and I have no idea what they were singing, but it sounded beautiful and was very peaceful to listen to.. oh, and also, the view from the top of the hill was gorgeous :)
And here's the Moulin Rouge...
Not much else to say about that really.
We added it all up, anyway, and we reckon that we managed to walk about 16.6km which (I think?) is about 10 miles, so it's really not surprising that I woke up yesterday morning with muscles stiffer than a board!
We had to think about their train on Sunday, so we only did the Catacombs (third time lucky!!!) as opposed to a completely full day like Saturday was.
And I thought it was so worth it.
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| 'Stop! Here is the empire of the dead' |
It was really quite creepy seeing all the bones piled up - it is the largest necropolis in the world, apparently, and they reckon the remains of more than 6 million Parisians are down there, including several notable people such as Robespierre.
With the audio guide, you actually find out quite about about Paris' history. For instance, it was created because a local cemetery, which had been in use nearly 10 centuries was a major health risk - the milk in nearby houses would go off in less than a day (which really gives me such an unpleasant image of what the smell must have been like)!
So that was my weekend! I finally got to the Catacombs, I did a lot of walking and exploring, and thanks to Mum, my fridge is now well stocked up with Cheddar Cheese and other British essentials! ;)
I'm going to use this week off mainly to sleep and catch up on some well deserved (in my opinion) chillin', but it would be a waste for me not to use the time to go out and do a little more exploring, so at the very least I will be going to the Cartier exhibition at the Grand Palais!
Vicky xx
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