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
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