Week four--Paris!

Monday--Why can I never remember mondays? I remember two things about this last Monday and that's it. I recall running around to get the biometric photo done, and in the process discovering that there is another office for PKP that I'd never known of before, and I remember going to FHE. I also remember thinking that I had better remember that day so that I could write about it and not say that I had forgotten Monday. Alas. Naturally, I had class as I usually do, and I probably read for it.

Tuesday--Tuesday was a formal hall. I was beginning to panic about my final paper which I wanted to make sure I completed before I had to study for the test portion of the final, and therefore was reluctant to go to the formal hall. But I went anyway because I had signed up. I also had to finish going to the various places that Dr. Kerry assigned that we see and draw. He wanted us to go to 8 different locations throughout the semester and draw a portion of them so that we began to notice the differences between Enlightenment and Romantic architecture. Some of the places that he wanted us to go had nothing to do with either really, but were just interesting and worth going to for that reason alone. I sort of frantically tried to get them all done after class and before dinner so I cycled around the city for a while. I was dreadful at getting from one place to another (Cambridge is a romantic city. In otherwords, it is completely tangled and sporatic in its plan) and had to ask for the help of a man on his bicycle with his young son on a bicycle in front of him how to get from Downing college to Selwyn college. He was going that direction, so he led me part of the way. We stopped at an intersection where there were several other bicyclists waiting. He told me to continue straight and turn here and so on and so forth, and so I intended to do just that. A very collegate looking middle aged gentleman rode a bike in front of me and turned when the man tried to explain how to get to Selwin. As we began to ride, he struck up conversation, and told me he would show me the rest of the way. The ride was short, but he was the inquisitive talkative sort and so we talked for a while outside Selwin college (which is a beautiful little neo-gothic college hidden away behind the major colleges). He was all wit and self-depricating anecdotal stories. After a while, he explained that he worked for the New Yorker as a film critic (we were discussing the horrors of british journalism), and told me that his name was Antony. He left soon thereafter, so it wasn't until that evening at the formal hall that I was speaking with someone else and found out that Antony is Antony Lane and he's apparently quite famous. We were, for some reason, discussing british journalism again (I don't know why that topic came up so many times that day) and I quoted Antony's derision of the whole of British journalism, saying how he would never in a million years work for a british paper in order to prove that British journalism is untrustworthy. The guy across from me asked what this New Yorker journalist's name was, saying that there was only one journalist from that magazine who lived in Cambridge. Turned out to be the same chap. I felt very excited to have met a micro-celebrity.

That dinner was absolutely lovely. It was in the old-library of Pembroke college, thankfully, as the last one was in the marqee in the courtyard and that is simply not as pleasant as a beautiful old neo-classical library with geese and cherubs flying above you. I sat across from a Physics and Philosophy major from Harvard named Phil, who was next to a Middle Eastern Studies major from somewhere (we spoke in Arabic for a while. He had lived in Egypt some time ago and therefore we had pretty much the same accent) and he sat next to my friend Mohammed, who was next to a professor whose name is escaping me. Then on my side of the table was Aaron from BYU and two other people who I have unfortunately forgotten entirely. Ah! I remember. One of them at least was Rob from BYU also who is a History major. The professor tried to speak to me for a little while about BYU and the middle east and Arabic and so forth, but it was simply too loud to hear him all the way across the table. Therefore, I spent a good chunk of the evening trying to defend the vailidity of the state as a "legitimate" organism from Phil who contended that the work of a philosopher (Wolf or something or other) demonstrated pretty effectively that the state is illegitimate. The discussion revolved around the definitions of authority and legitimacy and was pretty entertaining.

After the dinner concluded, I went home and wrote until probably 2 in the morning. I had only until friday to get this final paper finished and I wanted to submit it to Dr. Kerry before hand so he could look it over and let me know what to fix. I discovered that the canadian geese have jam sessions on the lawn at 2 am, and that on clear nights you can see more stars than I had expected. Sleeping was a joy after everything.

Wednesday--Wednesday was panic in earnest day. I had to finish my paper, submit it to Dr. Kerry, finish going to all the necessary locations, do my class readings, and prepare for my supervision meeting with Caroline. Finishing going to all the necessary places took a good chunk of the day after our lecture because about half of them were closed when I arrived. Things have the most unexpected schedules here. I visited the botanical gardens, clare gardens (spectacular!), St. John's College Chapel (the definition of Chapel here in Cambridge is occasionally, in the case of Kings and St. Johns in particular, stretched as far as most-people-would-say-this-is-a-cathedral-because-it-is-so-ridiculously-large-but-it's-technically-not). Needless to say, St. Johns chapel is wonderful. I was glad to have finished everything though, and I finally escaped into the library where I finished writing the first draft of my fabulous paper and sent it to Dr. Kerry by 1 am. He had told me that if I wanted him to review it, I should do so by Wednesday night. So it wasn't technically wednesday, but ah well.

Thursday--so this was an interesting day. the panic continued, naturally, and would until friday at 2.30 when my test was over and the paper turned in. I spent the majority of the morning accomplishing nothing while trying to accomplish everything, which is the mark of finals week it seems. We had our last lecture, finishing up a discussion of Mozart's Don Giovanni, and then I had only a few hours until I would be taking the test. I knew what I had to do to prepare, so that at least helped. Amelia, bless her heart, convinced me that I had to go to Midsummer Night's Dream which was having its last performance which I would have the opportunity of seeing. She had seen it already, but it was the best version of any shakespeare play that she had ever seen and she wanted to see it again. I decided to go because I knew that it would mean staying up 3 hours later, but that I would remember the play not the studying for much longer. It was shakespeare in the park, properly done. So we sat on the ground with digestives (worst name ever for a delicioius cookie) and soda water and watched this play whose backdrop was an overgrown tree, and whose foreground was grass up to the audience edge. There were only 8 or so cast members, though more characters than that by a lot, so they had to do some interesting things to keep the play going when the right characters weren't on stage. It was a really rough and tumble version of MSND with a lot of movement and silliness. The blocking was absolutely fantastic, and the actors had turned the lines into tune with motion so that every escoteric and old-fashioned sentence made sense to the modern mind. The fairies, dressed in scruffy tudor clothing with feathers and things attached, occassionally ran through the audience and laughed at some child while eating the audience member's food. One of them had a particular affinity for nectarines and he ate two of them throughout the course of the show. They acted, I don't know really how to describe it, but really fairy like. At least not human. There was plenty of music and singing and making fun of people throughout the play. Amelia was right, it was fantastic.

Naturally, this meant though that I had to stay up until 2 again so I could do the studying I should have done earlier. When I sat in the King's library at 1.30 am, trying to write a preliminary version of an answer to a possible essay question, I began to deeply question my judgement. But it wasn't time for introspection or mental head-knocking, and I was able to get done most of what I had wanted to. The test the next day was to be 2 hours long exactly, and we were given an idea of what the questions might be like. We were to pick two to answer out of 8. My best bet was to prepare 3 well, and hope that 2 of them would be among the 8. It wasn't as risky as it sounds because there were some major and some more minor topics, and I was fairly certain that he was going to ask about the major ones. When I went to bed, there was still at least one person from my class still studying in the library.

Friday--Dr. Kerry had told me the night before what i should repair about my paper, and so I did that Friday morning as well as going over the topics I had studied so closely again. I was now in the mindset where it is better that you don't talk to me or interrupt me because I was libel to either answer rudely or answer the entirely wrong question. I printed the paper and finished studying in the Union Society chamber then went in to take the test. To my great delight, the two questions I had studied most carefully were on the sheet and I was able to answer them the way I had hoped. The first took me only 35 minutes, so I had most of the time left for the second question. I wrote on the Enlightenment arguments for tolerance, and on how the Enlightenment thinkers conceived of republican government. Both of these topics were not only things I had studied, but things which interested me beyond the scope of the class. I took until the 15 minutes on the essays, then went over them to make sure there were no glaring idiocies, and turned it in with 5 minutes to spare. Then I went straight down to the coffee shop and bought the caramel, chocolate shortbread square that I had previously foresworn. It was time to go to Paris, so i rode my bike back to Kings and finished packing with Amelia and Cherry so we could leave. Our best intention of taking the train then the ferry and the train fell through because of timing and so we were forced to buy the ridiculously expensive Eurostar tickets to get there. the price was definitely cringeworthy, but we were left without choice. There was no other time or day that would work for this, and no other way to get there. We took a taxi to the station, the National express to King's cross, then walked across the street to the Pancras international train station to the Eurostar. By the way, our train pulled in to platform 10 of King's Cross, right across from platform 9. Just saying.

We had to arrive at the Eurostar 45 minutes early and wait to board, which we did quite well. I bought a BLT with Cherry and Amelia, and finally was able to relax for a little while. When we boarded the train, we discovered that there actually were assigned seats after several people crowded around us settled in car 5 and stared quite indignantly until we moved. We were consigned to car 1, which wasn't bad except that it was far from the food car. The ride was only about 2 hours long or something like that, and much of the beginning of it was in the darkness of the chunnel. I kept telling Amelia and Cherry that there were dolphins and jelly fish swimming about above us, and they kept telling me to go to sleep. The train emerged from the tunnel into the French Norman countryside. It looked more like the US in that the houses were no longer brick and people drove on the normal side of the road, but otherwise it was pretty different. It was late afternoon, and the day was turning from bluish white to golden bars splayed across our compartment. I did fall asleep, or something, because I have little recollection of the majority of the ride. Finally, we slowed. The buildings around us were more urban and packed together, as well as "artistically" decorated with some incredibly large graffiti. It was everywhere, and sometimes in places that looked impossible to reach. When the train stopped in a long squeaking roar, we hopped off and squealed a bit about being in Paris then quickly fell into a state of slack-jawed bewilderment.

Everything, naturally, was in french. None of us speak french. We had expected this, but somewhere in my head I think I had hoped it wouldn't be true. There were occasional english signs which helped direct us to the underground, and after an adventure with a fickle ticket machine and an Indian man, we had figured out how to get onto the correct metro to take us to the neighborhood of the church of the sacred heart where we were staying. The metro was painted a sort of bluish green and it lurched to a stop in front of us, throwing its grafitti scarred glass doors open with a bang. We hopped in, squealing a bit more about being on a Parisian metro, and the train quickly took off. There seemed to be an overpopulation of young men of all ethnicities around us, far outweighing women and older men. The train smelled like rust and musty carpet. I loved watching through the glass doors as a the cars in front or behind us turned on the curves, like a toy snake. Amelia and Cherry figured out where we had to disembark and change metros, but we got off a station too early on my insistance. The station name was "Madeleine". I was ecstatic. Finally, people had figured it out. Amelia took my picture under one of the eight signs, and I bought some food from the vending machine. You will never guess what they had in it... that's right, Madeleine bought Madeleines at Madeleine. I still have the package.

We finally arrived at the right neighborhood and rose from the bowels of the earth into a pretty parisian evening directly in front of the paris city hall. It had the enlightenment/revolution motto "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" on the front which was exciting enough in itself. We found the hostel after only a bit of back tracking. It looked really hostelish with flags from every nation hung from the ceiling and walls black walls you were supposed to draw on with chalk. We were nervous about talking to the man at the desk, wanting to address him in French but to actually understand what he said. He was completely chill, of course. Our room was on the 4th floor, which he told us with a bit of embarrassment because they have no elevator. So up we climbed four floors of wooden spiral staircase to our little room. I slept by the window and Amelia and Cherry on the bunk bed. We had a spectacular view of some french sycamores and the side of a prison. We dropped off our stuff quickly and went to find food which none of us had really eaten since that afternoon. It was 10 by then, and we took a long while choosing a place to eat. Finally, we stopped at the Cafe de la Place which looked almost exactly like Mimi's cafe in the US. I had a wonderful little mozzerella and tomato salad, Amelia had french onion soup, and Cherry creme brulee. Unfortunately the cute cafe had two large televisions playing a Lady Gaga concert. I tried to switch sides so I didn't have to watch, but Cherry was too fast for me, so I was left with a view of all the disgustingness. It was truly, truly horrible and disturbing to watch. I tried to avoid it, but finally covered my eyes after one particularly wretched moment and demanded that we leave. by then we had finished eating and were only waiting for the check. I was really frustrated to have had to see that and decidedly opposed to anything Lady Gaga. We went to bed that evening around 12.30 though none of us were certain what time it was because we had seen no clocks and we didn't know if our phones had changed hours automatically or not.


Saturday--I showered around 8 and we left around 9 to see the city. Our first destination was the Louvre. We took the metro to get there, the ever diligent Amelia and Cherry figuring out the best way about it. We had to buy 2 day metro tickets at the cost of 15 euro each, which I headed up because it involved talking to French people. Not really sure how I landed that assignment seeing how good I am at French. When we arrived at the gardens in front of the Louvre, I had to buy a bag to put my stuff in so Amelia didn't have to carry it, as I had forgotten to bring one, and then i bought breakfast because I had not eaten while we were at the hostel. I got a crepe with lemon and sugar. Mmmmm. We walked through the french garden toward the Louvre among all the replicas of classical statues. Cherry was our pusher. If it weren't for her, it is possible we wouldn't have actually arrived at the Louvre itself for several hours. At the Louvre, we stood in a long line that siphoned into the glass pyramid and down into the Museum's depths. We didn't have to buy a ticket because we are students in the UK (yes!) so we were able to go right into the exhibits after security. We first went into the statuary, which I had insisted on because I love statues. They seem so much more personal and emotional than paintings. Unfortunately, with our short time, we had to rush from place to place, but finally we were able to see such wonders as Cupid and Psyche (the single most beautiful sculpture in the world in my humble opinion), winged victory, and the like. In the hall of the Italian painters, Amelia gasped at every turn because she was actually seeing dozens of the paintings in all of her textbooks. There was Caracci and da Vinci and so on. She was so excited it kept Cherry and I, the uninitiated, excited as well. It was incredible how much better da Vinci was than his contemporaries who lined the walls around him. Some of his paintings were simply stunning. We spent a while trying to find the Mona Lisa, which is strange considering how central that painting is to the Louvre. Finally we found it in a side chamber. It has an entire free standing wall to itself, and is hung behind several inches of bulletproof glass. Sure enough, her eyes follow you anywhere you go. We were able to get right up close and take pictures with it, or at least as close as you are allowed. How cool is that!

We had lunch in a cafe on the second or third floor balcony overlooking the central courtyard. I had italian salad again because the one from the night before was so good, but this time it wasn't really anything special. The view though was wonderful and worth the price of the cafe. We could see all of the Louvre, most of the gardens, the obelisk in the distance (which we were right next to when we emerged from the metro. When we first saw the obelisk, the golden plating on the pyramid top shone in reflection of the sunlight like the very eye of God it was supposed to signify) and I don't remember if we could see the Arch d'Triumphe or not, but nonetheless, it was beautiful. We could see the other arch which leads into the Louvre and has the chariot with Minerva flanked by golden angels riding across the top. Amelia took many pictures of that arch. We were able to walk under it which I did several times.

After lunch, we saw the French paintings, most of them from the time of the revolution, including the painting on the cover of Viva la Vida by Coldplay. My favorite painting of that area was the crowning of Napolean. How colorful, detailed, enormous, sparkling. I could really see the allure of the whole Napolean, Josephine, Revolution idea just in that one painting.

We tried to find the section of the museum with Chinese treasures in it for Cherry, but were unsuccessful and eventually left for our next destination--the Notre Dame.

We walked to the Notre Dame so we could spend time along the Seine. The city is shades of white and off-white, towers and spires, street cafes, painting and book vendors, plant and flower shops, and the sparkling river. The day was a perfectly warm afternoon, and the path full of tourists and parisans and cobblestones. We found the Notre Dame on its island in the Seine and waited for a half hour in the line to enter. My, what an incredible cathedral. I went directly into the nave to sit in the pews and simply look. While it was one of the darkest cathedrals I've been in, even with all the electrically lit chandeliers and so forth, it was nonetheless awesome. The stainglass reaches up stories and stories into the air, and the vaults are far enough above you you have to strain your neck to see them. It is still a functioning Catholic Cathedral, and thus has candle trays constantly lit in front of their varioius statues and side chapels. The rose windows of the transcepts are, naturally, the most strikingly beautiful thing about the building. I could hardly believe how large they were and how vibrant their blues and purples. I have to admit that I did quietly sing the song about helping the outcasts from the hunchback of Notre Dame... I couldn't really help it. We circled the cathedral from the South to the North, and left with a handful of coins to an old nun waiting at the door with a small woven bowl. Cherry got a crepe with nutella and bananas which Amelia and I both grew to envy the next day when we wanted one but couldn't find a crepe stand anywhere. Now we were off to the eiffel tower and dinner.

Amelia wanted to get a picture of the cathedral from across the Seine, so we ventured there and stood near a street violinist as she took her pictures. The light was just right now, afternoon again, and i think she was more than happy with them.

We took the metro to Bir Hakeim which is the closest exit to the Eiffel Tower, or the Tour Eiffel in french (It really helped when I figured out that Tour is the word for Tower in French because I had thought before that they were advertising tours...). It is a monsterously large structure, absolutely ridiculously big, but when we left the station it took us a while to find it because we were too enclosed by tall buildings to catch a glimpse. When we did find it, we were quite grateful because we were all getting hungry and I had some inkling of us eating on the tower. Unfortunately, we were told that the restaurants on the tower are prohibitively expensive, so we went to a small cafe instead and sat outside at a table on the sidewalk. I was determined that we do it the french way and eat slowly and enjoy the meal. I got lamb and Amelia and I both had crepes with nutella and icecream for dessert. We really got into crepes on this trip. We ate until Amelia worried that we weren't going to get good pictures of the city from the tower if we didn't go. So we went back to the tower and got into line by the South footing. We decided that we were going to walk to the second story of the tower and from there take the elevator because it would cost less and it had a shorter line. The women at the desk was not having a good day, and was surprisingly rude to us, but we didn't let that change anything. We commenced the climb. I began to count, and it was 328 steps later that we arrived at the first floor. We stayed there for only a short time before we completed the 688 steps to the second floor. This is more than half way up the structure and from it, you can see the whole city. By then the sun had set and we were looking out over the bluish city as the lights began to glimmer on the ground and the river. The city stretched out in every direction going on and on further than we could see. The city of lights. Amelia took many pictures of us and of it and everything. We tried to get to the top, but the line for the ticket to the very top and the line to get into the elevator was so long that we were unlikely to get up before it closed at 10.30. So we stayed on the second floor and wandered around. Amelia was really disappointed we couldn't make it to the top, but there wasn't anything we could do about it. that just means we have something to do the next time we go. :)

Then the lights went on. The lights, the ones that make the tower glow orange, were already on. These lights were different. They're new and they cover the whole of the tower. When they go off, the whole tower sparkles like thousands of paparrazzi hiding in every nook taking hundreds of pictures. The moment it went off, a gasp and shout went up from the people on the tower and the people on the ground. Then the ground seemed to reflect the tower. People on the arch d'Triumphe, the grasses in front of the tower, the people on the seine, all began to take flash photography so the city surrounding the tower sparkled in return. The tall building in the distance reflected the flashing lights, and so they glimmered gloriously.

A large woman with long hair and a long flowing dress walked by sobbing. A couple stood embracing for over ten minutes. Darkening figures milled everywhere, lit by orange and sparkles. It was surreal. We descended the 688 steps much more quickly than we rose, although the normal lights that display the tower shone in our eyes and made the descent somewhat precarious--like the blowout ends of scene changes they sometimes do in movies where the lights overtake the scene until nothing is defined. As we descended, I watched little purple and green glowing creatures being boomeranged into the air by the street hawkers. I don't really know how to describe them, but they made the scene down below that much more peculiar.

My knees began to protest by the time we reached the first floor, though they never got too bad. When we were finally on the ground again, the light show began anew and the whole spectacle repeated itself. We walked back to the metro and took it back to the hostel. At the hostel, Amelia and Cherry needed to shower so I took to sitting on the large window ledge and singing quietly every song I could think of that seemed parisan. I went inside shortly after a guy in the next room stuck his head out, saw me, and offered us rum.

Sunday--This was our final day in paris. We had only two things we really wanted to do: the Arch d'Triumphe and Versilles. We went first to the Arch which sits in the middle of a very large roundabout in the center of Paris. It was designed by Napolean himself, and was first built from wood. Dr. Kerry says that there was a myth that every time the construction paused on the arch, something bad would happen to the new Empire. Now it stands ridiculously tall, and from it radiates all of Paris' major streets. It was designed that way to look and act like light radiating from a source--very Enlightenment, the idea being that light can penetrate all things and that all can be seen from this one vantage point. We were there a half hour before the top opened, so we were second in line to get a ticket to go up. Stairs again, this time spiral and within the interior of one of the arches feet. It seemed like stairs were the major force we had to contend with on this trip. We climbed past various doors and chambers, which I hadn't expected to find within the arch but were there nonetheless. There was even a store and small museum. At the very top we could see all of Paris, in the morning this time instead of at night. I took pictures with the Eiffel tower in the background. The city was much more white now, less golden, and almost silent as it was earlish on a sunday morning and this was Paris afterall. I really liked this Paris.

We then redescended into the bowels of the underground to get to Versilles. We had to take several trains, then a real train, and converse with several people to figure out exactly how to get there. I was exhausted from the previous day and not getting enough sleep, so I slept for most of the journey. Finally, we arrived in time for lunch. We ate a small sidewalk cafe with a mirror on the ceiling. There were no walls on two sides of the cafe, so we sat on the inside but that was really outside. Once again they had a large television, this time playing Katy Perry which is better than Lady Gaga somewhat (everything is better than Gaga). I got an artichoke dish that was really disappointing and not at all what I had anticipated. We got crepes again for dessert, and then headed off to the palace which was only a few hundred yards from where we were. The palace is set behind a long cobblestone courtyard and with the sunlight it was all rather bright and striking. The fence and rooftops of the palace were gilded gold, and glowed quite harshly when looked at. We stood in line in the sunlight for an hour and a half before learning that we didn't need to stand in the line if we wanted the guided Enlish tour which would take us through the private chambers of the king and the opera house. We did just this, having 45 minutes before the tour began, and so we were able to rest for a bit. The tour guide was a small french man in a bright orange shirt and pointy shoes. His english was good, but his accent thick so it was a little difficult to understand him. We wore little hearing boxes which let us hear what he said into the microphone and made it easy to pay attention while not standing close. He led us through into the actual bedchamber of Louis the XVI and the XIV and XVII, as well as their private apartments and where they had meetings for treaties and so forth. Louis the XVI was crazy, having ceremonies for everything. People had to come to see him get out of bed, to get into bed, to get dressed, to eat, it was all about ceremony. The opera house was exactly what I would have wanted an opera house to be. I wished only that I could see the proper people in it, and an opera as well.

We went through the parts open to tourists after that, including the spectacular out of this world hall of mirrors with its views of the garden and the mirrors across from it, and through Louis the XVI's bedchambers. I think it was Louis the XIV who demanded to have his chamber look east so the sun would rise on him as it rose, because he called himself the sun queen. We also saw Marie Antionettes personal rooms, and her amazingly beautiful bedroom. Wow, what a place. You can even see the secret door she escaped through. Finally we went to the gift shop but didn't have time to do more seeing of the very french, very trimmed and cared for gardens than what is apparent through the windows. I would love to come back just for the gardens.

We returned to Paris in a hurry to get our stuff and get on the train back. We made it just in time for our train to England. the bell tolled exactly midnight when we walked through the doors of King's college in Cambridge. Home again.