Catching Up: Paris Week

After a great few days in Normandy, we headed to Paris, where we started to break off into our Abbey ROADcourse groups: I was in the Renaissance art group, so I got to go to some relatively famous churches and art museums in Paris (perhaps you've heard of the Louvre and Musee D'Orsay? :P). Other students on the program chose either a Literature course or a History course, so they focused on other sites in Paris. Another exciting part of Paris Week was that Anthony got to come and tag along to the different sites we visited, and then I got to drag him along (literally, there was quite a lot of metro running to get to some of these places before closing, sorry Anthony) to some sites I'd always wanted to visit but had never had the chance before (Musée Dupuytren and the Catacombs, namely).
It was also much colder than anyone had expected, so I also spent a good part of the week searching for additional layers to add to my wardrobe and ultimately ended up getting sick by the end of the week, which led to a relatively stressful time in Amsterdam trying to find antibiotics (but I'm getting ahead of myself...).

I couldn't take pictures in Musée Dupuytren, which is only open Tuesday - Friday from something like 1 - 3 pm, and is actually on the campus of the University of Rene Descartes, so it's kind of hard to find, but it was really fantastic - it's a medical oddities museum, so it contains a bunch of preserved specimens from the medical school in years past. There's everything from conjoined twins to deformed skeletons to diseased organs to preserved brains here, although it is kind of difficult to go through if you don't have medical and/or French knowledge: everything is labeled in French. The curator of the museum also made sure to inform us that it is not a "freak show" kind of museum, it's definitely more anatomical, and that's important to remember. The other really fascinating part of the museum was that it stores some specimens studied by Paul Broca, the anatomist who discovered that different parts of the brain are responsible for different functions. He's famous primarily for the discovery of Broca's region, the part of the brain that controls speech, and the brain of the patient he studied to discover this region is found in Musée Dupuytren.

Here's some highlights from Paris:

Notre Dame!

More Notre Dame

Even more Notre Dame... notice the saint holding his own head.

Famous tapestry of "The Lady and the Unicorn" in the Cluny Museum

Some modern art in L'Orangerie, one of my favorite museums. We couldn't take pictures of the water lilies, but they were amazing. I think this painting is called "La viande" (the meat).

Renoir in L'Orangerie... one of my favorites.

It was so foggy one day that the top of the Eiffel Tower actually disappeared in the clouds!

Arc de Triumphe!

Sacre Coeur in the snow... who would've thought we'd get to see this?

Glass pyramid at the Louvre on one of our sunnier days.

One of many of Da Vinci's pieces in the Louvre that get overlooked for the Mona Lisa

Winged Victory! Apparently she used to stand at the front of a ship as a figure head.

Venus de Milo! As Dr. Blondin put it, "We've been waiting a thousand years for her drape to drop.":)

Familiar face at the Louvre...

The beautiful Musée D'Orsay, which used to be a train station in Paris and is now a museum with the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist works of art in the world.

Hotel de Ville

"The Thinker" at the Rodin museum/sculpture garden. I loved how this museum was set up: part of the sculptures were in a garden, and some other pieces were in Rodin's former house.

Rodin's "The Burghers of Calais"

Notre Dame again!

Catacombs... it was really eerie to know that 6 million people were transported here when the cemeteries in Paris got too full - the tunnels seemed to go on forever, and we only saw part of the catacombs.

And finally, the beautiful Saint-Chappelle with an incredible amount of stained glass.

And that wraps up Paris! Amsterdam's next :)

Catching Up: Normandy & D Day Beaches

I'll be the first to admit that I've gotten embarrassingly far behind with blogging. The irony of traveling in Europe is that the more interesting things you do, the less time you have to write about them, as it turns out. So today I'm going to try to track back to over a month ago (don't worry, I kept a journal so I'm not totally making everything up), when we went to Normandy, the D Day beaches, and Paris!

To kick off our 23-day travel adventure, we got on a bus headed to Bayeux, France. This is where the famous Bayeux Tapestry is kept, a 230-foot long tapestry recording the Norman conquest of England, and the battles between William the Conqueror and Harold, King of England. It was amazing to walk through and listen to the story being told along with the visual accompaniment; it's an incredibly complicated story that was not only depicted well, but also incredibly preserved.

Afterwards, we went to the Notre Dame of Bayeux, which is a gorgeous Gothic church. Since it's not tourist season yet, it was pretty empty, which was really nice - it's a very different atmosphere from the Notre Dame in Paris.

We had the most amazing dinner of galettes, savory crepes that are famous in the northern part of France, and the next day we headed to the D Day beaches.

 Here's one of the structures that we saw around the beaches - I think it was constructed as a defensive structure.

This is the original beach that the Americans landed on - now people come here as a beach vacation, which is really strange to consider, but it is a beautiful beach.

 To prove my point, here's Taylor and me by a waterfall-y thing on the beaches - it was treacherous trying to get to, but worth it for sure (my hand on my knee is covering up a grass stain from slipping on the rocks... oops).

 After the beaches, we headed to the American cemetery, which is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. It's impossibly huge, and it's crazy to think that so many people lost their lives here because Normandy today is so tranquil. Dave Mackaman also spoke to us about his father, who was involved in the transport of troops to D Day, and the effect the war had on him, which was so powerful. I think it's easy to forget how much war can affect people - it's not just a matter of who died and who survived; there's a lot more to consider about the mentality of people who live through wars. At the cemetery, we went just as the fog was rolling in, which added a much more profound effect to the day.

 After the beaches, we went to another site that has craters remaining from the bombs and artillery used during the war - these craters are massive, and it's even after years of peace. I can't imagine what it must have been like during the war.
Also, as a fun fact, those guys in the picture are in training for the British Air Force - they were there on holiday to visit the beaches, and I thought it was kind of eerie to get a picture of them at the top of one of these craters.

Finally, our last stop was the German cemetery in Normandy - it was so different from the American cemetery. It was a lot more subdued and simplistic, and apparently most of the soldiers mentioned here were actually brought back to Germany and not buried in France. I also thought it was interesting that while the American government pays for the upkeep of the American memorials, the German cemetery is funded by private donations only.

Okay, that's all for Normandy! Next up, Paris.

En Suisse!

This weekend, I made my first venture out of the EU and into Switzerland! I didn't get my passport stamped (which I thought was weird) but I have enough Swiss chocolate to prove I actually went there (but no promises on making it last). Anthony (who came to visit the Abbey last week too!) and I got a 7:30am train (ouch) and spent the day traveling the French/Swiss countryside until we arrived in Lucerne, Switzerland.

In all honesty, Lucerne is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, and definitely one of the most random. I was first surprised by how much German was spoken there -- luckily, Anthony managed to get us around without too much trouble. The accent of Swiss German is different than "real" German though, and they also throw French words into their vocabulary: they say "merci" for thank you and "pardon" for excuse me, which is really odd.

The first day we were there, we just wandered the city -- we went up to the "old town" section of Lucerne across its famed "Covered Bridge" and to an old wall that was used as protection for the city against invaders. Behind the wall was a huge park that had bison (yes, like buffalo) for no apparent reason. We kept walking into a residential neighborhood and found llamas (yes, really) in what looked like someone's backyard. It was bizarre but I loved it.

Bison!

Yep, those are llamas.

A view of the wall from down below.

For dinner, we realized just how expensive food was in Switzerland, so we went to a little Thai takeout place with the hopes of saving some money. While we were there, a girl came in to pick up an order, walked over to us, and asked if we liked chocolate. Naturally, we said yes, and she pulled out a Lindt chocolate bar and gave us this chocolate and said "I just wanted to make someone happy today." She most definitely did :)

The next day, we tried to find a little bakery to get breakfast at and wound up in the middle of an open air market, where we ended up getting some kind of traditional Swiss pastries -- I'm not entirely sure what they were, but they were delicious.

After that, we headed to the dying lion monument, which was carved into the side of a mountain to commemorate the 500 Swiss soldiers that died during the French Revolution and it was amazing.

Right next to the carving is a glacier garden museum which was basically a mix of everything you could possibly imagine in a museum: it had glacial formations and a museum with about 3 million scale models of Lucerne over time. On top of the museum was an old Swiss house that we toured, and after that we went through a hall of mirrors with a middle eastern theme (three times), and then we climbed a watchtower to see over the whole city of Lucerne, which was an amazing view.

The hall of mirrors!

These creepy little gnomes were all over. Why? I have no idea.

After that, we kept wandering to the city churches which are very different from French churches: French churches have a lot of ornate carvings and decorations, while Swiss churches are relatively bare but have amazing altar pieces.

We also went to the history museum, which is called Depot and is literally a storage locker-type place of historical artifacts. It had nothing written on the "exhibits" but we got barcode scanners when we walked in, and we scanned barcodes to have the information about certain objects pop up on our devices.

Finally, for dinner that night we tried to find a cheap fondue place and completely failed -- literally nothing in Switzerland (aside from museums) is cheap. However, we had some delicious tomato fondue for our last night in Switzerland.

After a 10 hour train ride the next day (which was just the tiniest bit hectic since this region of France is just getting back from their ski vacations), I was finally back in Pontlevoy -- just in time to write this blog get ready for finals.

I can't wait for Paris Week -- it's coming up fast!

Amboise and Clos Lucé

Unfortunately I seem to have neglected my blog for too long now, so I'm going to publish this relatively outdated post and then I promise I'll post something new about my last weekend in Switzerland -- finals week is this week, and everything seems to have crept up on me really fast! It's crazy to think that we've already been here for over a month and that three of my classes will be over as of Thursday. It's even crazier to think that after that, I'll be traveling Europe for three weeks starting Saturday before I get back to the Abbey. I officially have tickets to Barcelona for my Vision Quest week and I cannot WAIT to go there. I may or may not be a little bit obsessed with Antoni Gaudí's architecture...

Clos Lucé

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Two weekends ago (I said I was out of date), we went to yet another chateau (believe it or not, they never get old -- honestly). Chateau Amboise belonged to King Francis I, and right next door was the house where Leonardo Da Vinci spent the last few years of his life. Apparently rumor has it that Da Vinci and Francis I were more than friends (if you get my drift...) and they literally had a secret tunnel built between their residences so they could get to each other at all hours (for a glass of wine or something probably... right? :P).

Secret love wine tunnel!

We got to see the bed Da Vinci died in as well as where he's buried, which was so cool. In the basement of Clos Lucé, models of Da Vinci's inventions were also set up on display -- I had no clue he invented so many things (the machine gun and double-hulled boat, for a few examples). We also walked around the gardens surrounding Da Vinci's house, which were kind of stark since it was so cold out, but still pretty cool.

Da Vinci's deathbed

and his grave!

Out in Da Vinci's garden

Interior of Chateau Amboise

Amboise exterior - it was up on top of a hill, so we had a great view of the city!

One of the chairs in Amboise -- apparently the royal court used to travel, so they would take these chairs with them, and the bottom part of the chair doubled as a trunk to take their belongings with them when they would visit other Chateaus!

Some gargoyles outside Amboise

Da Vinci monument in the Amboise gardens

The city of Amboise was also really cute: it was small, but there were plenty of chocolate shops open (and naturally I took full advantage of that).

Okay, that's all for Amboise. Switzerland post coming soon!