Day Five

Paris

The day started off with breakfast at the hotel: croissants, rolls, and pain au chocolate. The coaches took us to a church near Notre Dame where the choir was going to perform, and the rest of us were free for a while. We (when I say "we" I usually mean between six and ten people from school who did a lot of stuff together) looked around a few shops and then headed for lunch. We found a café that looked relatively inexpensive and sat outside. I had salade de tomates, which was tomatoes with spices and maybe some olive oil; everyone else got a prix fixe meal, with salad, an entrée, and chocolate mousse. Three kids got spaghetti and the other three got steak frites, or a steak with fries. It was great seeing steak frites on the menu, because that's one of the foods in every French textbook. We all got bottled water as well. I was able to astound my friends with my mastery of the French language. One of the guys kept telling the waiter "Gracias," although at the end he finally got it right and said "Merci." Unlike the stereotype, our waiter was nice; he made fun of us a little bit, but we deserved it, and it wasn't mean-spirited. Lunch was 452 francs for seven people, or about nine dollars a person. Not too bad at all.

I believe this is one of the train stations.

Our concert that day was at the Jardin du Luxembourg, another famous thing from French textbooks. In English the name would be "Luxembourg Garden"; the Jardin is a park, apparently the largest public park in Paris. The weather was good; there were people enjoying the day all around us. I don't think anybody expressly came to the park (or anywhere we played) to hear us, but no one seemed bothered by us. People seemed to like the Radetzky March best.

After the concert it was on to the Louvre. I don't recall standing in line for a long time, though I'm not sure how that would be possible, since it was summer. Going into the museum we went down an escalator, and I, for some reason, decided to jump down the last few steps. I then banged my elbow into a sliding-glass door. My director was not amused, though one of my friends was quite, and told me I had leapt "like a gazelle." We did see La Gioconda, otherwise known as the Mona Lisa. I didn't try to fight the crowd to get up really close, but she looks just like every reproduction you've seen. That's probably giving Signore Leonardo short shrift, but to me there are more interesting works of his to look at. Plus, the painting is in a little room all itself that juts into the larger gallery. We saw many huge paintings, canvases as big as the wall in my room, with such detail. One painting was of a square, with preparations for a festival going on in the middle, but in the buildings around the square there were tiny people in the windows. We saw the painting of Napoleon crowning Josephine, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. It would take days to see everything in the Louvre, and we only had a few hours. I would recommend trying to make a plan of what you want to see before you go.

Then it was time for dinner, which was good again, and after that a boat ride on the bateaux-mouches. These are boats on the Seine River; the name means "fly boats," for some reason. It was a good way to get an overview of the city. I really recommend guided tours in a new city, even if you think it makes you look like a goofy tourist. Paris has beautiful architecture, including its bridges. We saw Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and the islands in the Seine. I really enjoyed it; the air helped my hurting head clear. When we got back to the hotel I fell asleep straightaway.

Tomorrow: Notre-Dame de Paris, la tour Eiffel, Sacré Coeur