Walking to Church in Paris

We walked the bright sidewalk on our way to the Métro
Passing a café overflowing with tables, strangers in sunglasses
Crumbling pastries and drinking tiny white cups of espresso
They saw us through their beards and hats and brown jackets
Watched me in my white blouse and tweed skirt
And my sister and her polka-dotted dress
Waiting for the crosswalk, we glanced both ways for hurried buses
Flailing taxis, confusing foreign drivers
And strode across the road
Meeting the white pavement on the other side
We turned toward the tiles of the underground
And started down the stairs,
Stuck with old black gum,
Littered with cigarette butts,
A crumpled napkin blowing east
Shirtless, mad and bearded, someone brown and weathered
Climbing the short staircase we were just coming down
"Jolies filles Françaises,"
He half-muttered, half-shouted at me, and SLAP
And my arm was pink,
And I held my breath,
And I hurried down.

Catching up...

I am home now, as you must have deduced, so I will just finish up my trip stuff and have done with it. :)

The next day in Paris we visited Saint Chapelle, which is a beautiful church with exquisite floor to ceiling stained glass windows and jeweled light bouncing off of everything. I liked the Basilica best of all of them, but I think this one came in second. After we left the church, we took the subway to the Rodin gardens, which were more coifed than Monet's, but beautiful and gold and green in the summer. Madelyn and I ran around taking pictures and stuff and then we went home in a taxi. That night, I stayed up really late talking to our family and then went to bed.

The next day, we got up and got ready and went to church!!!! On the way though, something scary happened: we were walking down the stairs to the metro and there was this shirtless, grimy hobo hanging around. As I went down the stairs, he blew in my face, said something about pretty French girls (which is ironic) and slapped me, HARD, on the arm! Madelyn even heard the sound! After that, we hurried off to the subway and then we eventually found church. It was so nice to be in a familiar environment! We went to an English sunday school session and then the meeting was afterward. We could only get one set of headphones, so Madelyn and I switched off for the different talks. After church, we rode the subway to the Tuileries and ate a picnic on a bench there. Madelyn spilled the chips, so we fed them to the pigeons, which was fun. :) After we ate, we went back home and slept and Skyped and stuff. I was up really late talking to our family, and after that, packing. Madelyn took all these funny pictures of me that I didn't see until the next day, when I downloaded my camera pictures onto the laptop.

The next morning, we got up around 5:30 and got ready and then Madelyn, Grandma and I walked to the Austerlitz Bridge for a last look at the city. It was cool; we could see Notre Dame from there. After that, we went back to the hotel and had breakfast. Madelyn and I went shopping one last time at the train station stores, and then we came back and met the taxi, which took us to the airport.

You've all been on planes, so I won't go into the flight, but after 20 hours or so, we were back in Newport Beach and then the next morning, we drove home to Rancho Mirage! Once we were home, we gave our family the presents we got them. Shortly after, we were packing for a trip to Brian Head, which I returned from last night.

At last.

More still...

On Friday, we went to Giverny at last! Madelyn and I woke up pretty late, so we didn't get going until 10 or so. Then we rode to the train station, and barely made our train headed to Vernon, the nearest stop to Giverny. When we got on the train, nearly all the seats were full, so Madelyn and I sat on the stairs for a while until a nice girl a bit further down the train pointed out 2 empty seats to us. When we got to Vernon, we took a cab to get to the house and gardens, and before going in, we sat on a bench and ate some food together for brunch.
Next, we bought our tickets for the museum and went in. You go through a gift shop first, which was Monet's actual studio in his day, and then you step out into the most beautiful garden.
Ever.
I'm not kidding. If I have never been sincere in my life, this one thing I mean: Monet's garden is beautiful. It was everything I planned on it being when I was eight years old and first wanted to go there. We walked through the main garden for a while first, and then we headed down the subterranean passage (generously donated by the Annenbergs) to the water gardens. I never thought they could look so much like the paintings do, although one can tell that he painted the ones at the Orangerie at dusk, when the light is more purple and grey. We were there in the afternoon. Well...I won't cover it in words, I guess. You can see the pictures for yourself. We went back to the main garden afterward, and then went to the gift shop, where we bought a few things. (Okay, cut me some slack. Monet is my favorite painter ever and I couldn't stand not getting one gorgeous thing in a shop chock full of Monet paraphernilia.) After some confusion, we got a cab back to Vernon and rode our train back to Paris.
After we came back from Giverny, we rode the metro home and just relaxed for a bit in our rooms before we decided to go to the Eiffel tower. We wanted to get there late, so it would be dark and lit when we went. We were going to leave the hotel at 9:30, but then Grandpa took a really long time at the front desk doing something, so we weren't even on the metro until 10:00 or so. Then it took us about half an hour to get there, plus there were lines. To make this brief, we weren't at the second level of the tower until about 11:30. Grandma and Grandpa were pretty tired, but Madelyn and I still wanted to ride to the top. So we waited in a big fat line. Behind us in the line were a boy and his girlfriend. He was all excited about going up, but she was being the worst Debbie Downer I have ever seen in my life. They had this really stupid argument and I just wanted to turn around and tell her to be optimistic. It was pretty sad. Anyway, we went to the top and took a lot of fun pictures, which you can see on my album here, and then we rode back down. When we got ready to go home, though, we saw that the RER was closed!! Can you beleive it? It actually closes! Anyway, after that we took a cab home, where we had scriptures and prayer and then we went to bed. :)
I will start a new post for the next day.

The Next Day in Paris...

I slept horribly on the night train that time around, but eventually we woke up and got off in Paris. The day was half over by then, so once we got to our hotel (admittedly, with some confusion) we sat around together and decided what to do. Eventually we decided to go to the Musee D'Orsay and then either the Arc D'Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower. So we took the subway and then went to the D'Orsay, which was AWESOME!!!
There are so many impressionist paintings there it would make your head spin. They have an entire room full of Monet paintings, which was so beautiful. :) Plus there were all these gorgeous Van Goghs and Renoirs. And there was one awesome Klimt! It made me really happy. Once we were done with that, we went to dinner at a restaurant nearby.
The photos are now at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/somethingemily8/FranceAndItaly2009

Okay... it is the next day, and I am back on, so I just thought I'd edit this post rather than start a new one, because I just randomly posted about Giverny and the Eiffel Tower. So anyway, after the D'Orsay we went to a cafe nearby for lunch or dinner or whatever it was. They had really good sandwiches; we all ordered clubs. After that, we decided to go to the Arc d'Triompe at Champs-Elysees (I know these all have accents and such, but I just don't feel like putting in symbols). When we got there, we couldn't figure out how to get to the underground passage to the other side of the street. Just Madelyn and I were going to go, since obviously Grandma and Grandpa couldn't do all the stairs it takes to go up inside. Anyway, Madelyn and I spent about 15 minutes running around in the subway beneath Champs-Elysees. Then we finally found the entrance to the top. We came up from underneath and took a few pictures and then we went to the top. There were a million stairs, so once we got there, we were pretty out of breath. We took lots of pictures, bought a thing, and then went back down.
Once we were back on the ground again, we walked around the Arch, taking pictures and trying to figure out where Grandma and Grandpa were waiting for us, since suddednly, all the street corners looked the same. We saw them, and then we went down and then back up outside. We couldn't find them again at this point, so we just started walking around the Etoile, and then it started to rain, hard! Madelyn got her umbrella out and then we saw them and ran toward them, getting wet extremely fast. Once we were all together, we ran down the steps of the metro, where we bought some tickets and then rode the train home. At our stop, Gare de Lyon, it was still raining, but I decided not to use an umbrella just because... you know, we don't have rain at home. A bit later, I think we all had some food together and then we went to sleep, after Skyping the family.