Family Weekend in Paris

First of all, my apologies, I didn’t realize it had been almost a month since my last post!  The last 3 weeks in France were a blur, and I’ve been home for a week, but doing anything productive has been a struggle.  That said, here is a wrap up of the end of my time abroad…

As soon as I got home from London, I had to start mentally preparing for my family to come visit me.  My mom and two sisters, Emily and Laura, flew into Paris on Thursday morning (Thanksgiving), and after class, I took a train from Dijon to meet up with them and at least spend a little bit of time with them on Thanksgiving.  Imagine my surprise when I got to their hotel room around 8 pm and they were ASLEEP.  In the fog of jet-lag, they got up to say hello, and I just ended up going down to the hotel lobby to do homework.  I skipped out on the big dinner planned for our group in Dijon to see my family, but apparently they couldn’t keep their eyes open anymore.  Happy Thanksgiving to you too?

Friday morning, everyone but me was up bright and early, still not quite adjusted to the time difference.  After some coercion, I got up and ready to go on our Cityrama bus tour.  The tour was a perfect introduction to the city for my mom and sisters, who had never been to Paris or to France before.  We drove by sites like the Opéra Garnier, Place de la Concorde, Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and the Louvre plus others, basically all the major monuments.  After the bus tour, we took the metro to Musée Rodin, one of my favorite museums.  It was freezing cold outside, so the outside portion wasn’t as enjoyable as the last time I was there, but I still love all the Rodin sculptures.  From there, we stayed in the 7^th arrondissement and walked to lunch at a restaurant called Au Babylone.  The restaurant was incredibly French (and a little terrifying for my non-French-speaking family members), but they survived.

The Thinker, Musee Rodin

Our next stop was Le Bon Marché, a department store in the 7^th.  My host mom had suggested it as a good place to shop, and I loved it.  It was so much less crowded and less overwhelming than Galeries Lafayette.  In addition to the beautiful clothes and shoes, there is also a Grand Épicerie or food hall, essentially a French Dean & Deluca on steroids.  If I lived in the neighborhood and could afford it, I would do my grocery shopping there.  We left Le Bon Marché without buying anything and it was snowing.  At first, it was a beautiful snow in Paris, but it turned into wet, fat flakes pretty quickly, so we found refuge in a café for coffee, crêpes, and tea.

outside the Grand Palais, looking down the Champs Elysees, toward Place de la Concorde

Since I learned about it before my last trip to Paris, I had been dying to go to the Monet Exposition at the Grand Palais, so after our pit stop at the café, I dragged everyone back across the river to wait in line.  It was possible to pre-order tickets, but as soon as I finally knew when my family would be in Paris, the advance tickets were sold out until January, so we had to wait in line.  My host mom suggested going in the evening, so we worked it out to get there around 5:30 and only ended up having to wait about 50 minutes to get inside (compared to a friend who waited 3 hours).  I love Monet, so the exposition was phenomenal.  It was incredibly crowded and sometimes difficult to get up close to the paintings, but I am so glad I went.  There may not be another time that I’ll get to see that many Monet paintings in the same place (they brought in paintings from France, the U.S., the U.K., Russia, the Netherlands, and other museums).  My sisters were definitely not as enthused, but the theme for the trip was being open-minded, so they put forth effort, although very little, to learn something about Monet. 

Flag on top of the Grand Palais

After Monet, we headed back to the hotel to rest and refresh before trying to find a place for dinner.  I researched in my French guides for some suggestions, but we found out the hard way the necessity of making a reservation.  Luckily, after some walking, we found a place called Royal Madeleine that had an open table for four.  Not going in with very high expectations, we had a delicious dinner.  We ordered a bottle of wine for the table and my sisters were a little shocked when the waiter served them a glass without batting an eye.  The drinking age in France is 18, but if you’re with your parents, drinking wine is no big deal.  They happily partook in this part of the culture, and Laura was pleased to learn that putting your elbows on the table isn’t considered bad manners in France.

Notre Dame de Paris getting ready for Christmas

The first day in Paris for the family was tiring and probably overwhelming, so everyone slept in on Saturday.  We headed to Opéra Garnier first with intentions of taking a tour.  Upon seeing the line and learning that the actual theater was closed for rehearsals, we decided to go find some lunch and make our way over to Notre Dame.  We walked through the gorgeous cathedral but were just a minute too late to climb up to the top.  Feeling as though most of our attempts at seeing things had been a grand failure so far, we tried our luck at getting tickets to the strings concert at Sainte Chapelle (fortunately, our luck turned).  Even though the church wasn’t heated, the concert was amazing.  They played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and some Bach, and the lead violinist was unbelievably talented.  It was even more amazing considering how cold their fingers must have been.  We had to stop at a café across the street afterwards for some hot drinks to try and warm up.  From there, we headed to a delicious dinner at Le Train Bleu, the restaurant inside Gare de Lyon (the train station).

concert in Sainte Chapelle

views from the top of Notre Dame

Sunday we had train tickets to Dijon, but we hurried over to Notre Dame to climb up to the top before we left.  It was an adventure getting through the Sunday crowds at the train station, but we made it with plenty of time and got to Dijon in the early evening.  Everyone was hungry, but it’s impossible to get dinner anytime before 7 or 7:30, so we went and got coffee and crêpes after checking into the hotel.  Emily and I had some homework, so between coffee and dinner we did some work, and then we walked down the street to Gril’ Laure to get some pizza (still delicious even though it wasn’t in Italy).