La vie à Paris

Saturday I got up early and hopped a train to Vernon, jumped on a bus to Giverny, and arrived at Monet's gardens. It was a beautiful day: clear blue sky, 75 degrees, and breezy. It felt so nice to get around the city and just wander around the gardens for the morning. The garden isn't sculpted and elegant like most famous French gardens, rather, everything seems to be overflowing. The late flowers were in full bloom, and a few water lilies still remained on the pond. What was most amazing to me was the clarity of the reflections on the surface of the water. I have never seen such a perfectly mirror-like surface.

Because we arrived early, we were able to wander around at our own pace without crowds rushing us on. After a couple of hours my friends seemed ready to move on, but I was wishing I had brought a book and could just spend the entire day reading in the garden. However, they managed to pull me away and we stopped in a Creperie for lunch. We drank cidre out of tea cups, each ordered a savory crepe, and split two dessert crepes: one raspberry and one nutella.

Later that night, we met up again at a fondue restaurant in Monmartre. It's a tiny hole-in-the-wall place where you literally have to climb over the table to get into your seat if you're sitting against the wall, and they serve wine out of baby bottles. We had a really good time and afterward, we bought a bottle of cheap champagne from the grocery store that's in the movie Amelie, and sat by the Loire (which is a surprisingly popular gathering place at night in the summer) and shared it.

Sunday I went to the Centre Pompidou, the modern art museum with Aurora and Heather. I'm not going to lie, there were quite a few pieces that I just didn't get. Namely, the video of a naked woman holding a chicken upside down by its feet, the dress made out of meat, and the dead bird in a miniature bathtub. But afterward, we walked across Île-Saint-Louis and stopped for ice cream at the famous Berthillon. The weather was beautiful again so the line was incredibly long, but the wait was definitely worth it. I got a giant waffle cone with dark chocolate nougat, gingerbread, and salted caramel. Yum.

In other news, I finally figured out my class schedule! I was starting to worry that I would not be able to complete my French major (it's my second major) because the French course I needed to fulfill a very important requirement conflicted with my Latin class. But today, after about an hour and a half wandering the Sorbonne (the office number does not correspond at all to the floor it's on), I managed to find the Latin office and found their course listings (they don't post these things online here...ughh...) and found two other Latin courses which fit into my schedule and don't conflict with French Lit! Yay! Now I just have to go through the same ordeal and find the actual classroom at a different building in a different part of Paris...joy... But I can't wait to actually start classes on Oct. 5.