A Stroll Along the Canal St. Martin

Paris has finally realized that it is now spring, so in honor of the sunshine and my dwindling list of academic responsibilities, I took the opportunity to check out a part of Paris I hadn't been to before, along the Canal St. Martin. The canal was created at the beginning of the 19th century because the city had a shortage of water, and took 20 years to construct. It's 4.5 km long, and empties into the Seine. The area around the canal at this time was industrial, with a lot of factories lining the banks. One of them is still up and running! But now they have been converted to shops, cafes, artists' studios and modern apartment buildings. On Sundays the streets bordering the canal are closed to traffic and opened to pedestrians, which makes the area a lot calmer. But they were still tons of people out and about today, lounging in the sun or enjoying their lunches near the water. 

Apparently they shot a scene from "Amelie" on this bridge.

My lunch. An eclair from a place near St. Paul (the metro stop, not the capital of Minnesota), called Eclair de genie, which translates to Eclairs of genius. This is by no means an exaggeration. This one was filled with salty caramel goodness. The chunks you see are peanuts covered by chocolate glaze, and it's hard to tell from the picture but the whole thing was dusted with sparkly silver powder. Whatever category this food falls into, it should have its own spot on the Food Pyramid. 

Two months and 1 day left in Paris and I'm not okay with that.

So yes, I officially only have 8 weeks left in Paris, and considering all the stuff that is going to happen in those weeks, this is not enough time. I still have to take 2 final exams, write 2 research papers and a report on my internship, go on a spring break trip through Denmark and the United Kingdom, and go through all the stages of grief about the end of my year abroad. But also, since my internship is done (as of yesterday) and I'm only taking three classes (one of which will be completely done before spring break) I actually will have a lot of time to get this stuff done. Well, the fun stuff anyway. Not the research papers. 

Anyway, even though I've been in Paris since September (which feels like a lifetime ago), I haven't run out of things to do here, as will be evidenced by the pictures below. For awhile I thought that maybe I had done everything interesting in Paris, but then I realized I didn't really explored the regions just outside of Paris, which I can still get to for free with my metro card. Though this takes a little extra planning time, I love leaving the city because it's less crowded, and food is cheaper. Seriously. Probably 10-20% cheaper. On the Tufts day trip to Reims (photos below) I bought 5 chocolate croissants for €1.80. Yes, you read that right. I would pay that much (or more!) for just one croissant in Paris. Full disclaimer: those chocolate croissants were my dinner that night. No regrets, except for the bout of acid reflux that that decision triggered. On a semi-related note, I also drank my first alcoholic drink at an awesome little bar in the Latin Quarter called le Piano Vache (literal translation: The Piano Cow). It tried a glass of wine, and it was not so awesome. That experience will probably never be repeated. Now I know for sure though that I'm not really missing out on anything spectacular. 

All right, here are the pictures, beginning with my day trip to Versailles, where I went with one of my best friends from Tufts who came all the way from Boston for her spring break. Sorry there aren't a ton of pictures, but I'd already been to Versailles (when I came to France in high school). I hadn't seen the gardens though, so that's what I took pictures of. 

You can't really tell from inside the castle, but Versailles is a really weird place, and I understand now why the peasants got so upset about the goings-on there during the Revolution. The whole thing is basically just several hundred people putting on Disneyland all day, everyday, for only two people. When you're in the castle it has more of a fairytale, Disney princess vibe, but then you get out onto the grounds and all the disturbing parts are revealed, like when you realize the Cinderella castle at Walt Disney world is basically empty. Apparently the flowers in the landscaping were switched out everyday for the benefit of Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette, and don't even get me started on her. Marie, being young and bored and not in love with her husband, built her own peasant village on the grounds of Versailles, and would go out there to live "like a peasant", meaning her romanticized vision of what peasants actually did. Case in point, her servants would wash the sheep every time she wanted to go hang out at the "farm". So I get why the French people were a little peeved. The pictures above and below were taken at Marie-Antoinette's little hideout, named "Le Hameau" (the hamlet.) In the picture above, I am seriously freaked out by the carp in the river. They were nasty. Below, I'm in front of some weird little tower in the Hamlet, which I think was where Marie "made dairy products."

Side note: The grounds at Versailles were massive, and seeing as there was actually an entire village out there, why didn't Marie and Louis hide somewhere out there, instead of an exterior facing room on the ground floor of the palace? I bet that they could have survived until the end of the revolution, or at least a lot longer than they actually did. But, as is evidenced by their ignorance of money management and public relations, they weren't really that bright. Inbreeding and being told you are chosen by God to rule does that, I suppose.

A pretty view of the Temple of Venus. 

I think that this is the little theater Marie-Antoinette built for herself, where she put on place with her servants. Naturally, she always go the leading role.

And here we are at the Opera Garnier, home of the Phantom of the Opera. I went there with Tufts to see La Cerenentola, an Italian opera about Cinderella. 

The main hall/foyer/I don't know what to call it but the ceiling is cool.

We sat in the center in the very top row. The ceiling was done by an artist named Chagall. 

The cathedral at Reims, where the kings of France used to be crowned. It dates back to 1211, and is built on the site where Clovis (the first Christian king to rule Gaul) was baptized by St. Remi in AD 496. Before that, there were some Roman baths there. I visited the town with the Tufts group a couple weekends ago for a day trip. We did a tour of the town and then a tour of a champagne company/factory/cave. 

Just a huge keg and the Champagne house, a company called Pommery that has been around since the mid-1800s. 

The tour mainly focused in the caves, where all the champagne that is distributed to their markets across thew world (their newest market is in Mongolia, go figure) is kept. Each city/country as their own hall full of bottles, which can hold tens, if not hundreds of thousands of bottles. There are 28 million bottles total down there, and the largest bottles hold 9 liters and serve about 80 people. The 9 liter bottles cost 550 euros. I'm not sure if that's a good deal, like buying in bulk at Sam's Club, or not. 

This is where I went on Saturday, the Castle of Fontainebleau. This was Napoleon's favorite of all the castles. It's an interesting place because there are so many different architectural style represented there, and it's where the Renaissance was welcomed into France. It also has really nice gardens, but as France did not yet get the memo that it is supposed to be spring now, we didn't really explore them too much. 

A view of the grounds. If you look among the weeds on the far right side you will see a little bit of white, which is a swan sitting on her nest that I stumbled across while illegally walking on the grass. 

Fontainebleau from far away. Hard to get it all in one picture as it is so sprawling. After taking this picture my friends and I went looking for a place to get lunch, and stumbled across an anglophone bookstore run by a Brit and an American, that was selling Reese's eggs. It was an Easter miracle.