First off I would like to thank everybody that is reading my posts, I am really grateful that you all are interested enough to read through my rambles. Merci beaucoup!
In this post I am going to be kinda focusing on two aspects of my day and really my trip (all three days) in general. So as the title says, "It's raining, it's pouring..." my first topic will be about the weather that I have experienced so far. Secondly I will be as the Twain quote suggests is talking about my French speaking. Nous allons commencer!
Oh mon Dieu! The weather has been quite awful, it has not stopped raining. I know, I know, I have only been here three days but when you have such long jam packed days as I have been having it seems much longer. It also seems like a much bigger deal that is has been raining. I must say the best thing that I bought for my trip has been my rain coat. The hood is superb and I have stay nice and dry underneath. Now the rain is one thing but even after I travel over 4200 miles I still get Minnesota April weather. Did someone forget to tell mother nature that it's May almost June? The temps here have been in the mid-40's to the low 50's and they plan on staying that way for the upcoming week I believe. The temp is not too bad, since the Parisians don't really where shorts or capris I would stick out like tourist in a sea of fashion forward gurus. And on the subject of sticking out I will turn to my second topic my French.
Right off the bat I am going to say I claim no real proficiency even though I took three years in high school and two semesters in college. It has done me little in terms of being able to hold a conversation or sometimes ask a question. Definitely know enough to get by; however I would like to by the end of my trip be twice as fluent. Now often times I will order food in French and the waiter will respond in English, checking to make sure I knew what I ordered. Now I have tried hard not to stick out visual as a tourist (I don't were a fanny pack and a visor) so they must just know the look of a tourist and see that I am American right away. Goal: try to blend more.
Finally on to what I did today. Now I know that I would have Eiffel Tower pictures for today, however due to the crappy weather my professor rescheduled our group outing for Monday May 27, so hopefully I will have them up for you after that. Anyways, this morning a group of us tried to go and see the Catacombs, but the line was around the block and beyond by the time we got there (only a half an hour after it opened). So instead we went to Musée de l'Armée, the place where Napoleon's tomb is. I think that he had a bit of an ego (check out the pictures below). We also went in to a section of the armory and weapons museum, and that was fairly cool but not my cup of café.
Later that afternoon I had my first lecture from my professor and then a group of us went out to dinner. We traveled to the neighborhood of our first concert in the 4em Arrondissement. However I and two other girls at a little bistro/ cafe down the road where I got an omelette mixte and some weird salad, which I did try. We then went to a very small old church and listen to a very talented man play Chopin and do two encores. I did not appreciate that he kept coming back because it was about 35 degrees in the all stone church.
So it was a fairly uneventful day. But it was wonderful all the same since I was in Paris.
Jusqu'à demain
Bisous- Janice
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The dome where Neapolitan is.
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Yah, that thing was massive and covered in gold.
Napoleon had quite the fancy tomb.
Classic Armor.
My omelette dinner with free bread.
The very cold church where I listen to Chopin music live.
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