We began yesterday with a visit to the Hotel de Talleyrand, which has some historical significance of which I was previously unaware: the Marshall Plan (which essentially outlined the reconstruction of Europe after WWII) was signed in one of the rooms we got to tour! We also met the US’s resident cultural attaché to France. He told us many interesting stories about his experiences learning languages (including Albanian!) and hosting foreign dignitaries. It was especially enlightening to me, since I just took an International Relations class last term, and he discussed many of the concepts we studied.
Next, we went up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, where we had a panoramic view of the city. While there, we got together as a group and shot a brief video for the Honors College for them to use while welcoming new first-years. Everyone was smiling and laughing at us because we sounded a bit odd chanting ‘Hello from Paris and welcome to the Honors College’, but it was fun and it had a fantastic background of the Eiffel Tower! More on the tower later…
In the afternoon, we went on an “Ex-Patriot”-themed walking tour. We strolled through central Paris and learned about Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company bookshop (the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport is named after her), Hemingway, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. They all lived in the ex-pat community in Paris after WWI, when a lot of people were disenchanted with the US and politics in general. Hemingway briefly talks about this community in Paris in his novel, The Sun Also Rises. I adored learning about this time period, and it somehow felt appropriate when the wind picked up and it started raining.
Once our tour ended, our guide recommended a restaurant nearby for dinner, and we were very glad we tried it! It was a cute Mediterranean restaurant – cozy and embellished but not gaudy, with excellent food. Also, it was a great people watching spot, especially once it got quite stormy and everyone was bustling toward their destinations. We lingered here and got a few desserts to share, among them Turkish delight (made famous by Lewis Carroll in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe) and baklava. It was decided that the Turkish delight was good, but not sell-out-your-family-to-the-ice-queen good, and the baklava was excellent.
By the time we started to feel obligated to leave – although you will never be
asked to leave or even brought a check without asking for it in France – the rain had stopped, and there was a break in the clouds. The effect was very pleasant; the rain made the pavement shine, the air was heady with petrichor, and everything was bathed in a warm light. Any scene we looked upon could’ve been a masterpiece in the Louvre. As we walked through a nearby park (we were slightly disappointed to discover that we had to pay to go on the swings, and the kiosk where we could pay had already closed), we decided to head in the general direction of the Eiffel Tower.
Going to the top of the tower was on our bucket lists, so after a few pictures near its base, we purchased ‘sommet’ tickets i.e. passes that would let us go all the way up. We timed our visit perfectly: the sun was into the Golden Hour by the time we arrived at the tower, and as we waited in line, 10pm struck, and the whole tower lit up and glittered as it does every hour at night. Then, once we took the elevator to the second floor, the sun was sinking behind the clouds and the sky looked like it was on fire. We watched the sun set over Paris, and I get goose bumps even as I write this just thinking about it. There’s nothing quite like it. We then took the next
lift up to the highest point on the tower, and the sky was black but the city shone like thousands of topaz gems. We could see every site we visited since arriving in Paris, and the experience took my breath away.
It was a very surreal collection of moments – being surrounded by close friends, ascending into the heavens even as the sun descended and night cloaked one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I’ll cherish last night forever.
Today was comparatively much less eventful, which was a welcome break. This morning we went to Notre Dame (alas, no hunchbacks in the bell tower) and did another walking tour of some lesser-known sites around Paris. Contrary to yesterday, it rained all day today, which made our outings slightly less fun, although our same guide was just as happy and energetic as he was during our sunny tours, and we all admired his enthusiasm. This afternoon, we all did laundry, withdrew cash from the ATM, and worked on our final projects for the two classes we’re taking here in France.
