Stepping out of the Groove: Oui, Oui...Paris! Day(s) 1-3

We are in Paris!!!!!!! It is so amazing! We have been here for 3 whole days and we have done a TON! I guess I’ll start from the very beginning…

We drove from the Burgundy area of France starting at 6:50 AM. It took about 3 hours driving time to get to Charles De Gaulle aeroport. It took a little while to get our rental car dropped off, find out the city bus beta, wait for the bus, and drive into the city. We got dropped off at the Paris Opera. It is an amazing building! The roof is decorated with golden statues and under each statue is an engraved French word. For example, they have the English translations of choreography, singing (I think), and music. I was in awe.

After we got settled in to our apartment, we decided to get an activity in and go to the catacombs. The walk there took about an hour and we were able to spot Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and the Musée D’Orsay from far away. When we thought we were in the area, we started looking around. My mom spotted a line in front of something and pointed it out. But my dad said the iPad mapping function was indicating differently. So we walked around for about 5 minutes trying to find it. Well, apparently, the iPad was disoriented because that line was for the catacombs! But they closed at five so we still had plenty of time. Well when we got there, the line was gone and the gates were closed. Then we looked at the sign a little closer and realized that the last admission was at 4! We got there at 4:03. So everyone was pretty annoyed. We took the Metro back. And that completed our first partial day in Paris.

The next day, we did three museums: the Rodin museum, Napoleon’s Tomb at the Invalides, and the Musée D’Orsay.

The Rodin museum was all about Augustus Rodin. His most famous work of art is the Thinker. Most of his sculptures are made out of bronze. Some other famous sculptures of his are the Three Shades, and the Gates to Hell. The Gates to Hell consists of most of his sculptures miniaturized on a double-door feature.

Napoleon's Tomb was very... big. It was a fancy trapezoidal design made out of polished stone. The actual sarcophagus was surrounded by colossal angel statues. Each of the angels was holding something: a trumpet, a feather, a lyre, a book. I think that there were twelve of them. You first looked at the tomb from an encompassing balcony above it. But then you could go down to the crypt and look at it close up. This museum also doubled as the Musée L'Armée. There was something like 4 floors of dioramas of French rifles, battles, uniforms, saddles, horses (fake), etc.. In the basement was an exhibit on Charles DeGaulle . The Ch. D.G part of the museum was very dark and hi-tech. what I mean by that is you got a free audio guide that automatically started to play once you got in the area of the film/timeline. Well I don't think it was working as well as intended. Once you reached an area, you had to stay in one place or else your audio guide would go to a different recording. The army section was pretty much just more and more of the same stuff. It was not very interesting to me.

The Musée D'Orsay is located in the old train station. There are many famous masterpieces there such as Starry Night by Van Gogh, Whistler's Mother by Whistler, and a mini replica of the Statue of Liberty. There are also some of Rodin's plaster molds. It was very cool.

I should probably just let you digest that before we give you more material....

-Kenzi