Everything's cooler if it happens in Paris

Okay! I packed 4 walks for class into Friday and Saturday so they were both pretty hectic days with a lot of pictures! So I hope you guys enjoy them :)  To begin we started exploring the Jewish quarter.  This building has the star of David above the door, which is pretty cool, but it also has the stone tablets at the top! Look closely, they're kind of hard to see.  There were some other cool buildings too. We saw a Jewish elementary school as well!   But really all Paris architecture looks pretty sweet to me, the only thing that gave the Jewish part away was the Star of David everywhere.

We wandered around the streets some more looking at the sights and eventually ended up at the Musee Cognacq-Jay where for the first time in 20 years I bought a cup of hot chocolate from a vending machine!!  (that's my friend's hand reaching to steal my hot chocolate. That's how cool it was.)  It was the coolest thing ever! And not that it was super good (like 7/11 good) but it was surprisingly good coming from a machine. Plus it was only 50 cents.  So now I look for those machines everywhere, they're so cool!   (Oh and the art work was pretty cool too.)

This is a picture of the museum.  Its funny because all the buildings in Paris kind of look historical and important (because they all are I guess) but it's hard to tell sometimes which places are museums and historical sites that we're supposed to visit and which are just regular homes (I feel like that could potentially produce an embarrassing outcome, but so far it's worked out alright.)  

Here's a picture from the museum that I really liked.  This picture seems pretty ideal to me actually (minus the whole pink, fluffy dress thing) but just chilling by the water reading a book while a boy serenades me. What's not to like about that? :)  

Also there was a ton of places to buy flafels on this walk, but since I bought one yesterday I didn't feel the need to try it again (I'm more of a meat person than potato-thing person) If you don't know what a falafel is then google it...I suck at explaining.

Anyway, the walk was pretty short and ended after the museum, so Ashley, Heather, and I headed to the Latin Quarter to buy some lunch. It's pretty fun when you walk around Paris instead of taking the metro because you get to see how the city connects together.  Plus you feel like an inhabitant of the city instead of a tourist when you do.  I know my way around surprisingly well for only being here 3 weeks.  Heck, I know my way better around Paris than Provo :P That's pretty cool, but also kind of pathetic I guess.

Anyway, we walked along the Seine and crossed in front of Notre Dame where they actually had this super epic break-making festival going on. I was super excited because everyone knows what giant festivals means!  FREE SAMPLES! It was like a mini costco with much less variety but better quality. Actually I think I ate the same sample every time, but the good news is that it was delicious. So no complaints.  Anyway, I asked these guys to teach me how to make my favorite Pain Au Chocolat and that's the look he gave me.

Alright, I totally didn't ask them that, this is just a strange picture of his face I happened to catch on camera. But I really should learn how to make it because it's so delicious I'm going to miss it when I return to the states :/  Sad day.     After we left the festival Heather and I wandered around the Latin Quarter until we found a nice gyro stand and then we went and ate next to the Saint-Michel fountain. 

Walk # 2 for the day

Even though we were both really tired we decided to do another walk today (we're trying to finish so we can have next week free to do what we want)  so we headed out.  It started out with a pretty walk along a bridge crossing the Seine. It was pretty cool because it's actually the only bridge in Paris for cars, metros, and pedestrians. Anyway, we left the bridge and walked down a tree lined path parallel to the river and I really wanted to just go climb a tree and sit over the river. (A tree like this, I mean do you guys see that branch there?! It's perfect for lazing on!!!)  But I figured it wasn't a good idea. Because I was in a skirt :P Plus we wanted to continue the walk, so we did, and at the end of the walkway we found this little guy!  Naturally, France likes to place miniature Statues of Liberty in random places. Here's the first one I saw, and I think I'd make a pretty good national symbol myself, don't you?)

We saw a lot of cool random things walking around. Like this clock that's just chilling on the side of a building. It looked to me just like decoration at first, but I checked it with my ever-present wrist watch and the time was totally accurate! So that's pretty cool, huh? :)       We went to another museum, saw some cool buildings, and visited a huge park! It's called Bois de Boulogne, the largest park in Paris that happens to include things like restaurants, race tracks, lakes, a childrens' zoo, an amusement park, picnic areas, strolling paths, soccer fields, and several museums.  That's my idea of a park! :P

When we finally finished the walk, we were exhausted :/ but we headed over to this restaurant to meet up with our group for a dinner. Our new teacher for the last half of the trip arrived and the old teacher is leaving, so I guess it's a hello/goodbye dinner. Anyway, I guess the meal was pretty french because do you see how much cheese is on my plate in that photo? But it felt sort of asian to me, because we were cooking the food on the table. haha, maybe that's just wishful thinking. But regardless, it was sa fun meal and I loved it. The frying pans were so tiny and adorable I just wanted to take it with me. But considering how much I eat it actually would have been fairly impractical, so I guess it's fine I have normal sized cookwear.

Saturday: right after class ended I headed to the Garden of Luxembourg with Amanda.  And while doing the walk we stumbled upon another miniature Statue of Liberty! Or at least, where a statue was supposed to be, as you can see, it was not there....so...
But see, the French do love to just have it everywhere!  So strange.  But I guess that's not any weirder than the fact that we received the Statue of Liberty from France but now it's kind of America's symbol. Funny how things turn out.

Anyway, it was such a gorgeous morning, so of course there were a ton of people at the park.  A bunch of little boys had these toy boats that they floated across this little fountain thing. (I don't really know what you call it...it's pretty large for a fountain. It's kind of like that Shel Silverstein poem about how he thought it was the largest puddle but turns out it was the smallest lake)

So we kept exploring the park and we saw this cool little grotto thing. You can't actually see how cool it is in this picture but it was a cute one of us so I decided to put it. (I think I put more pictures on facebook) Anyway, it was pretty sweet.  And then we walked around and looked at some white statues in the park. Surprisingly the walk was fairly short once we got started (finding the beginning is always the hardest part of the walks)  and so we decided to meet up with our friends for lunch at our crepe place again.  (I always think of you Mom, Dad, and David when I go!)  Surprisingly the Gardens are next to the Latin Quarter, so we ended up just walking to lunch (another example of getting to see how the city connects :)  )  Lunch was yummy, but dessert crepes are so not filling.  What I need here in Paris is like a Thanksgiving size meal every day. That way I would have energy for walking all day and I wouldn't snack all day!

After lunch Heather and I decided to go to Montmartre. Hooray it's my last walk! Plus it was a cool one, so that's awesome :)  Just check out this view! It was so amazing! And on top of that, we took the stairs up to the top so I'm going to have awesome leg muscles thanks to all this walking! (okay not really, because we don't generally climb that many stairs. but if you count this, plus climbing to the top of Notre Dame, and how I'm going to climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower, I feel like I should get some cool leg muscles out of that..right?)

So this is the basilica at the top, pretty great, right? Sadly you weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but everyone just imagine the pictures I've already posted from the insides of churches, and then make them a couple of times cooler, and that's it!   Next we went to Saint-Pierre's church which was a smaller one right next door. There was a guy playing really beautiful piano inside which I could have sat and listened to all day if I hadn't of been allergic to the church. :/ But it's okay because when we left the church we stumbled upon this guy playing the Harp!  Man I wish I could rock out on the harp like him.  I need to get on that, seriously. Coolest instrument ever.  (Though I still love the violin and piano)
After that we visited another old house turned into a museum, which has housed old painters and what not, such as Renoir. This is a picture I took from the garden. I thought it would be way cool to have me sitting on top of the wall there, above the arch, but I couldn't make it up. So Heather tried to give me a boost and we were still kind of short. So I'm like standing on her shoulder, trying to pull myself up and we're tottering around, and the security guard comes out and starts getting onto us in French.  It was kind of funny but still sad because I didn't get the picture. But he was super nice about it and we just continued the tour.

After the museum we continued walking around the city. We saw a bunch of cool things. A square filled with an open-air market, painters just chilling and painting outside, some guys doing caricatures, etc.  Oh and as we continued our tour we heard the story about this guy to the left. Apparently he got his head cut off by the Romans, but he picked it up and walked until he collapsed at this spot. So they built this lovely statue of him.

And right after that we walked through a playground, where of course we had to stop for a second, because playgrounds are my favorite. And, as you can see, I had been working very hard and clearly deserved a chance to take a load off and play. (Honestly, I wanted a picture on the blue slide, but the little kids were playing there. Sad day)

After the park we walked around and saw some more historical sights and eventually ended up at Moulan Rouge! So cool, right? Except I've never actually seen the movie. Good thing I know the words to the songs though, that's how it works, huh Whitney? :)  Anyway, now I sort of want to watch the movie since I've been here. 
 But that was the end of the walk for that day.  I made it home around 6 and I just spent the night doing nothing! It was great! It was a do-nothing-to-celebrate-finishing-the-walks night :)  No worries, I dominated that.

Sunday was amazing because I got to skype with people and there was a thunderstorm! My first storm in I don't even know how long. But I was in heaven.  I just sat out on my windowsill, writing in my journal, eating a bueno bar, listening to FFX music, and watching the storm. I don't think life could get better than that. There was thunder and lightening and everything. Plus sometimes it would just start pouring. Ah man it made me so happy.  Anyway, that and getting to talk to people was the best part of my Sunday. Oh also I slept for 12 hours, so that wasn't too shabby either :P

Monday: school was cancelled for today. Hooray! A free day! I took the chance to sleep in past 7:30 am (that never happens here) and now I'm caught up in my blogging. Plus it's been raining all morning, and I'm about to go out in the rain! (just to walk to the RER, but still exciting :) ) Some friends and I are going to meet up with the missionaries to play some games because it's P-Day.  It's kind of sad that we're not playing ultimate frisbee like planned, but I think this will still be fun. Maybe I'll even go to the Louvre tonight. Who knows?