Weekend Warrior

5-21/22-11

Woohoo, this weekend was fun! Did some sight seeing, a little shopping, a lot of climbing. Yeah, I pretty much did it all. ;] Well, I did enough let's go with that!

Saturday was a visit to Sacre Coeur with Alyshia and Kendra. We climbed some rather crooked steps to see the church and the beautiful view of Paris. We detoured a bit on the way back down to avoid the hagglers and tourist traps, and found some cute shops on the way by. ...And I bought some shoes. This is very out of character for me because I don't like shopping. It's Blair's thing, not mine. But these shoes are adorable and were under the acceptible price limit. So I said what the hey! and got them. Definitely wearing them on Friday for the cocktail party at the end of class.

After shopping, we stopped outside the Moulin Rouge just to say we'd seen it. It's pretty sparkly I'll tell you that. We browsed through the topless history of the joint and marvelled at the pictures of shows in years past. It was interesting, I'll give it that. We brought back our spoils to the dorm before Alyshia and I headed out to find the Pantheon. We got sort of lost once we stepped off the Metro and had to ask some very charming firemen for directions while they were cleaning off their trucks. Things to note: 1. the French don't have huge firetrucks like we do back in America, 2. we asked in French correctly and understood them when they answered us in French as well, and 3. all firemen should be required to wear short shorts and tight shirts when they're washing the equipment.

The Pantheon was awesome. We wandered around in the crypts right before it closed and then took our time appreciating the various paintings and sculptures around the main hall. We were doing our best to piece together what we remembered from history class to tell the stories of the artwork. It was a lot of fun.

Sunday involved a LOT of climbing. I got up early and met up with Grace and Alyshia to go on the gargoyle tour of Notre Dame. That's 387 steps, one way baby. We took tons of pictures of the Paris horizon, a few pictures of us being weird, and I took a video of the church bells ringing out over the city. There's nothing like real church bells to give a girl chills in the morning. Grace and I saw the Great Bell (i.e. F sharp 2) and as we were about to head back down the stairs, we realized the door was open to climb the bell tower. Did we go for it? Heck yes. The three of us climbed to the roof and took pictures of some more Parisian horizon and marveled at the Catholic pidgeons. Once we finally made it to the street level again, our legs were shaking from the workout. But it was an amazing experience!

Grace departed to find a chicken for dinner then and Alyshia and I browsed the local street art. I found a painting for my dear friend Breeann - whom I believe will love it! :D - and had a lovely stroll around the cathedral. Then we mozied over to Denfert-Rocheroeaux and waited for the rest of the group to arrive.

We hopped in line to go tour the Catacombs under the city by 2pm and managed to make it in by 3:30pm. That was definitely creepy, but it was a good experience. See, the tunnels under the city used to be mines - limestone I think. When the cemetaries reached maximum capacity a few centuries ago, it was proposed to exhume the bones and move them to the catacombs under the city. Proper burial rituals were taken for these deceased and placques dating their final placement were put with the neatly arranged bones. What made the experience really memorable was Grace translating all the Bible verses on the walls. Many of the death-related Bible verses were carved into the stone and so reading those texts added to the whole ambiance of the place.

I didn't set the world on fire, but I had a lot of fun. And that's what you need to do on vacation/school trips is have fun. I enjoyed hanging out with friends and appreciating art as well as death. The weekend was very enjoyable for me. :]