a Friday in Paris

Here's another update that's long past overdue, but with two weeks of spring break upon me I now have no excuse not to catch up on the non-marathon related bits of the weekend in Paris.

For someone who was planning on running 26 miles in the very near future, I sure did wind up doing a lot of walking in the couple days before the race. On Friday morning Vanessa and I took the TGV up from Sainté and arrived in Paris, dropped our bags at the hotel, and promptly set out to take advantage of the beautiful weather.

I had an insatiable falafel craving, so based on a vague memory of a little stand in the Latin Quarter that I'd been to with my UGA friends Nick and Maddie during Fall break, we set out to find it. Turns out it's a chain place called Maoz and not so hole-in-the-wall-y as I had recalled, but at 4.50€ for a giant, delicious falafel sandwich I was happy.

Neither Vanessa nor I had been to the Musée de l'Orangerie, so after lunch we decided to walk (again, what was I thinking...) down the Seine, past the Louvre and through the Jardin des Tuilieries to get there. We crossed over at the Pont des Arts, the footbridge known for the many locks placed there by couples overwhelmed by Paris' romance (top left image above). After a thorough but futile hunt for Vanessa and her boyfriend Peter's lock, we continued past the Louvre and took a leisurely stroll through the gardens. According to the French it was unseasonably hot outside, but with temperatures hovering in the low 70s I thought it was just perfect outside, and all the flowers in bloom seemed to agree.

Once again being a temporary resident of France paid off as we were able to get into the museum for free. The Musée de l'Orangerie houses Monet's eight huge Water Lilies paintings ("Decorations des Nymphéas" in French) in two giant oval rooms, which were surprisingly empty for a Friday afternoon. For whatever reason, the general lack of tourists allowed me to get some great photos of the paintings:

The people in the pictures gives somewhat of an idea of scale, but there's no way to describe how standing in front of these giant panels of color and nature makes you feel. I've mentioned before that I feel somewhat cliché being such a fan of Monet and Impressionism, but there's no denying he made some gorgeous works of art.

During Fall break in October while Brooke and Josh were off gallivanting around London, I went by myself to the Musée Marmottan-Monet and liked it enough to want to go back if time allowed, especially since it would be free with my resident visa. We wound up deciding that me picking up my race number was a bigger priority and set off for the failed Race Expo attempt (see the marathon blog for more details on me being a dumbass), although Vanessa did manage to make it there Sunday morning while I was running. It sounds like the huge basement area where they displayed some of Monet's larger paintings was under restoration, so it's a bummer that Vanessa didn't get to see them.

By this time evening was approaching, so we headed back to the Latin Quarter to track down an Italian restaurant to fulfill my carbo-loading requirement. We got off a couple metro stops early to take the scenic route over the Seine and the Ile de la Cité and passed by Notre-Dame. Of course, as anyone who's been reading my blog up to now knows, I can't just idly pass by a gorgeous cathedral (especially Paris') without stopping to gawk and take a picture or two, and the fading light of sunset made it even more irresistible.

This was the third time I've been to Paris during my year here, and I still haven't been able to climb Notre-Dame's tower to hang out with my future friend Le Stryge (though apparently these days he's blocked off by a fence to prevent jumpers). I probably could have made time on this trip, but the idea of climbing a bunch of stairs with a four-hour race on the looming horizon was considerably less than appealing. One day, perhaps!