Paris, part 1...

So after about 10 hours of sleep that was in no way enough, I got up and ate breakfast with the family, baguette with butter and honey. Soooo good. France really knows how to do bread. I then found myself facing one of the bigger challenges thus far: how to bathe.

In France, bathtubs/showers and toilets are in separate rooms, which is enough of an oddity to me. But they also rarely have dual showers/bathtubs like we do in the U.S. The only shower in the house is in the little annex for the older son and daughter. If I want to use it, I have to walk though the backyard to get there and back. Admittedly, this would be a problem come fall when the weather is cold. This leaves me the bathtub option. Their bathtubs have showerheads attached, but no shower curtain. The basic concept is that you take a bath, and use the showerhead to rinse your hair after washing it. Only, without a shower curtain, it’s a little tricky to not flood the bathroom. (I actually did this the first time I came to France when I was 15. Oops.) I did manage to not make a mess, but the concept of three months of baths is a daunting one.

After I finished packing, I headed to Mme. Chauchat’s house for a placement test in grammar. From there, we headed for Paris, stopping to get our Navigo passes along the way. The Navigo pass that we have is basically a three-month, all-access card that lets us use the buses, trains, and metro in Paris and Versailles whenever we like. And it has definitely already come in handy. Plus, there’s the added psychological benefit of feeling really cool.

We get to our hotel, where Amanda, Charlotte, and I find out we are on the 5ieme etage. The French start numbering from the second floor, and the first floor is considered 0, which put us on the sixth floor of the hotel. All three of us started to freak out, because France does not often have elevators in its hotels, and the stairs definitively got steeper as we climbed (it wasn’t our imaginations, they really did). However, when we came back downstairs, we found out there is in fact an elevator, one that is just big enough to hold all three of us in one trip. Hooray!

The afternoon was spent at the Musee de Cluny, a museum devoted to Romanesque tapestries and art, and finding a good sandwich shop for lunch (not in that order). Once I had my trusty jambon-beurre (ham and butter, sooo good), I was happy enough to traipse along anywhere. Our group has already discovered that food makes just about anything easier to deal with, and at the same time, funnier than it was originally. Like Scott being harassed by an 8-year-old boy for a cigarette and refusing to take no for an answer. We had a late dinner eating at a restaurant near our hotel, with an amazing tarte aux framboises (raspberry tart), crème caramel, and chocolate mousse. And we made friends with the waiter.

This morning we got off to a late start, mainly due to our room of three (who didn’t wake up to our alarms). We visited St. Germain-de-Pres, a famous Romanesque church in the heart of Paris, and the Basilique St. Denis, a cross between Romanesque and Gothic. Cathedrals often took 100-200 years to complete in the Middle Ages, sometimes more, so most of what we’re seeing right now is a mishmash of styles. St. Denis was really cool, as it’s the location for lots of famous tombs of French kings and queens. We got to see those of Louis XIV, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (all in modern tombs), the Merovingian kings such as Clovis and Dagobert, and basically every king of France between the 10th and 18th centuries, ending with Louis XVIII. They also have the mummified heart of Louis XVII (the one who died in prison during the Revolution after his parents were beheaded). It looks like a dried pomegranate pit. And it’s kind of creepy. The afternoon at the Basilica was one of those times that blows your mind, like “I’m standing in front of the bones of a king who lived 1500 years ago and changed the course of French history.” Not unlike how you feel when you contemplate the Internet, but in a different way. Standing in front of those who made the history just makes it seem more real. It’s a lot to take in, and a little intimidating, since the U.S. is too young to claim that sort of thing. But very cool. It just makes my head hurt a little trying to wrap my mind around it.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was kind of lazy, since all of us still have a touch of jetlag (that, and we stayed up late last night). We did get a chance to stop by Monoprix on l’Avenue de l’Opera (the one with the opera house from The Phantom of the Opera – it’s gorgeous and I can’t wait to go there). Monoprix is a lot like Walmart or Target, with just about everything for sale, but it’s probably closest to say that it’s like a step above Target. I finally managed to get an adapter for my computer there, which is good, since I’ve been going crazy for days trying to find one. Now I have access to the world of technology again, and it feels much better. Since we’ve been settling in here, we’ve found that the little things make the transition much easier. Like an adapter for your computer, or an Orangina to get the morning started, or a chocolate mousse after dealing with French customer service in a phone store for an hour (yup, it happened).