Day Fifty: The Smile of Mona Lisa

Bonjour, Paris! I'm sure you are not at all used to two Utah Valley girls waking in your midst...

...lets just cut to the chase, I hope you're ready to get rocked.

While Lydia and I were definitely excited for another jam-packed day of exploring Paris, we were honestly still pretty dead tired from our magical (though sleepless) ferry journey across the English Channel.

We had arranged to meet Kelsey at the glass pyramids of the Louvre at 10am, though when our alarms went off at 8am, Lydia and I were so unexcited about getting up that we actually Facebooked Kelsey, asking her if we could meet her there at noon instead. I wrote her that if we had not heard back from her about this potential change within a half hour that we would stick to the original plan.

So we slept for another divine half hour before we woke up again and I checked my Facebook: no response. Oh well, it was probably better that we get there earlier anyways. So after kissing our pillows goodbye, we groggily rose and got ready for the day pretty quickly.

Just before we left our delightfully private hotel room, Lydia asked me one of my favorite questions of the trip: "Hey Rach, would you mind braiding my hair real quick?" I smiled; I love doing the girl's hair, so I was all for it. But as I started sectioning out Lydia's thick gorgeous hair, a delightful though hit me: I was French-braiding in FRANCE!!! Gahahaha! How delicious!! :)

On the not-so-delicious side of life was when we learned last night that our free-wifi, free-breakfast, private-room hotel really did have a free breakfast...for €8!!! Ridiculous. So instead of paying an arm and a few toes for a French buffet breakfast, we divvied up the last of my apples and the last of Lydia's granola packets and walked over to the metro station. 

Once on the underground, we navigated through a few transition points until we got close to the Louvre. From there we walked into what looked like a massive and heavily ornamented building that spanned the length of a few blocks. As we walked through the gigantic entrance though, we saw that it was was indeed one of the wings of the Louvre we were walking under, but we were led right into a massive courtyard. Sure enough, just like I've seen in such a few movies and pictures, there were the glass pyramids, their ornament being a silver infinity sign on one side. They were a ton bigger than I thought they would be! It was amazing! 

We got there about 15 after 10, so we were worried that Kelsey had been waiting for us forever. There was already an incredibly long mass of people waiting in the ticket line at the base of the pyramid, with signs designating the half hour, hour, and hour and a half points within the line. We weren't really concerned about this at all because our magical 2-Day Museum passes started today, so we got to cut straight to the entrance doors. So far these passes are even better than Disney fast-passes! The other plus was that once we had used them at the Louvre and one other place, we would have paid them off already! Cool eh? 

So we walked to our designated meeting place: between the base of the biggest pyramid and the largest entrance gate from the street. This area of the courtyard was considerably more empty than the rest of the massive courtyard, because the line was on the opposite side of the pyramid, but it still took us about ten minutes before we found her. Fortunately, she had only been there about five minutes, so the whole 'being a little bit late' thing didn't affect either of us. She hadn't seen our Facebook message, so our story had continued on as planned the day before. So, once our posse was complete, we turned to the pyramids, walked to the the museum pass line, and walked into the pyramid and down the escalator. 

As the escalator brought us down, we saw that we were in a huge room with many doors and entrances to the different parts of the museum. Kelsey said that she had talked to a few of the guys at her hostel who had been to the Louvre before, and they had all agreed that the best possible thing to do was to grab a map as soon as you enter and then circle all of the things that you HAVE to see, because it is far too big to see everything, even in a few days. So we found a few maps, and circled a ton of the things we couldn't leave unseen. So we made the painful selection process, charted out a route, and then began in the Egyptian wing. 

Actually, before we made it to the Egyptian wing, we were led downstairs some more where we walked around a corner of the ORIGINAL battered walls of the original Louvre castle. See, the Louvre stands today on top of the corner of what used to be the castle of King Charles VI. Napoleon actually lived in the apartments of the great building, with a whole wing of the Louvre still containing many of the extremely lavish decorations that Napoleon enjoyed. But for some reason, the castle was torn down and the Louvre was constructed instead, so to see these original walls of the castle was a really neat experience!!

Now, we spent 4 hours in the Louvre that day. Four hours, and we didn't see quite half of the museum. Now, while we flew through some rooms, like the ancient wasteland dweller rooms and the Persian wall engravings, we spent a lot of time really soaking in the wings of Greek statues, Egyptian artifacts, and ceiling paintings. We saw SO MUCH! It was such a superb collection, truly the most of the world's finest art and records of the past that exists still today. I saw literally THOUSANDS of artifacts, sculptures, writings, and paintings I saw with my own two eyes, each of them unbelievably priceless. Some of these included the Venus di Milo, Psyche and Eros, the great Babylon gate, many paintings of David, Delecroix, and of course, THE Mona Lisa.

The fact that these artifacts are treated with such great reverence makes me so proud of our race. Sure we're self-serving, trigger-happy, judgmental creatures that solve personal bias conflicts with bombs and we typically only pause to recall the glory of our dead when we can use their stories to glorify ourselves, but museums...museums are different. It shows a love for something beyond ourselves. Seriously, think about it. The fact that enough of us go to such great lengths to collect, preserve, and then reverently display what we consider to be the treasures of ages forever past, we demonstrate that we are capable of acting beyond neanderthol-ish adamistic ideologies. In other words: we show that we really might be worthy of living in something more noble than the cave or hill-hole.

Though we had been in the Louvre for four hours, we were not thrilled about leaving. There was so much that we still could see there! Things that we would probably never have the opportunity to see again! But two things pulled us out of that museum with an ironic hesitant willingness: we were starving and we there was still so much of Paris to go see. 

We were actually starting to get a little bit grumpy from hunger, a state of being that we have scientifically classified as 'Hanger,' and went looking for an affordable place to grab some lunch. We found many corner restraunts, each with a well groomed waiter standing just within the front door. Upon looking at each of the menus just outside the doors, we were not willing to pay the 16 euros for a bowl of even the most delicious of soup. What was interesting, and honestly, slightly frightening, was that each time we walked away from one of these restaurant doors, the waiter standing there would look noticeably upset that we did not come in. Oops. It's okay, the courtesy usually severally diminished anyways as soon as they found out we were American, so the sour face was inevitable. 

Our other problem was that our legs and feet decided to hate us. A lot. I hadn't really realized it until then, but Paris is NOT in favor of public rest areas, or chairs, or even bolted-down benches. Nothing. See, normally we would have taken a few metros or something by this point, but I don't think we sat down once since we arrived near the Louvre, and so we really started to hurt. And grumpy feet do not mix well with Hanger. 

We walked about three or four blocks before we finally found a cute little bakery that sold things in our price range, and smelled ridiculously delicious. The place was tiny, only room enough for about six people to stand inside at once and talk to the three ladies behind the wide glass counters. There were a few people in front of us, and we patiently waited our turn in line. When we got up to the counter though, it seemed as though each of the three ladies were disappointed in us for being American. Oops again I suppose. They all pointed to one lady that they said spoke English, but she shied away and pretended not to hear them at all. So we did a lot of pointing fingers at things through the glass, nodding and shaking heads, and smiling of course, before we walked out incredibly triumphant. 

We went outside, and tried to sit down at a winery just next door, but we got shooed away by one of the tenders there (because no one likes their empty shop seats sat in, duh). We were so tired though that we found a pair of big cement flower beds the next block down, which we were happy to oblige our weary frames to kind of sit on. We were stoked though: a place to sit, and food that tasted even better than it smelled! 

Boy, that meal will be a tough act to beat. I tend to really like the quiches they have everywhere here. That is a solid, delicious, high-protein, and filling meal, for not very much! Oh, it was a sublime crust, with veggies and meat mixed inside. Ambrosia flavored, I swear it. I also indulged in a decadent chocolate dessert I saw in the window, called an Opera. Skip over this bit, Bishop, but I think it had mocha in it, but I made the silly decision to eat it anyway. Sorry about that. 

After we polished off our delicious food, we checked our awesome little map we always kept on hand with our museum passes and picked our route to the Musee d'Orangerie, another fabulous art museum we had heard only good things about. It was probably a couple of miles away through the city and in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. The most direct route took us right along the main river that runs through the heart of Paris. I don't know what it is called, but it is so wonderful to walk by. There are book and art vendors all up and down the sides of that river, and there are tons of bridges that one can cross over along the way. We passed by the lock bridge again and eventually crossed the river to the side the Musee d'Orangerie was on. 

It was very close to the river, so the location was even more beautiful. The building didn't look very big at all, and it wasn't, but it contains tremendous treasures indeed. When we walked in the small entry-way room, there were no paintings anywhere, but we quickly realized that this many-windowed area was just the passage way to either a flight of steps that led underground, or to a skinny little hallway that turned sharply behind a wide wall. 

We decided to journey down first, and we were not disappointed. The basement was very large and warmly decorated with rich wooden floors, charcoal textured walls, and lovely spot lighting for each of the ancient pictures. We were full of gasps and delight as we discovered works of Renoir, Rousseau, Gauguin, Cezenne, Picasso, Matisse, and Derain right in front of our noses! Like, six inches away from our real-world noses! It was an incredible experience. But the experience didn't end there. 

After we had admired the work there for about 45 minutes, we decided to finally go explore whatever that little skinny hallway led to and what that huge wall was concealing. Once we took a brief restroom break (we trusted this rare public restroom FAR more in the lovely museum than we did others) we headed back upstairs to the entry room with many windows for walls. The hallway was indeed very skinny, and we made the sharp turn behind the big wall and walked through a very narrow tunnel entryway, but what we found when we passed through the tunnel was a surprise we didn't expect. The tunnel led to a huge domed room with a vaulted ceiling. All the walls and ceiling were painted white and the wooden floor was not as dark or rich as the floor downstairs. The large room was quite empty, with the exception of a few plain benches and seven or eight other guests. What made the room incredible, though, were the paintings that stretched from floor to ceiling and then stretched nine to twelve feet in length along the walls. There were four or five of such paintings, and we finally understood what we were enveloped in within a few moments: we had found one of the largest collections of Monet's Water Lilly paintings. THE Water Lilies! Oh, I had seen pictures of these, now I realize probably only portions of pictures of these, in textbooks, but I had no idea how big each painting was! They were so beautiful, it felt like you were sitting in a little row boat on a pond of lilies! The cool thing was that each painting looked like it had been done in a different season, different lighting, or different time of day. One was so happy, it reminded me of new spring and fresh smells. Another was dark and looked like a summer evening, still warm with bright stars shining down. A few looked rather bleak actually, like an untouched place in a land that was sad. They were really wonderful to be with for a while. We had no qualms with staying there for about half an hour, just soaking such an opportunity in, before we left. 

We wanted to see a few more things before the sun went down and/or before we got too exhausted to keep exploring. Now that I think about it, we never even once considered NOT going to more exhibits or museums. The idea of sitting down somewhere (which we found during lunch adventures was quite impossible, there were no public benches or seats of any kind) never once really entered our heads once we were full and had water. 

So off we went to another museum of classical works, the Musee d'Orsee. I remember along our way, we decided to go to the other side of the river and go a bit farther away from it as we journeyed the other direction towards Notre Dame. Along this trail, we came upon a wide walkway that was lined on both sides with thick happy green trees! You couldn't easily see anything on either side of the walkway through their leaf-heavy boughs. The sun was beginning to get old, so the leaves were lit up with an amber sort of color. Everything turned a rich gold through the translucent thick leaves. I felt like I was walking in some sort of place that doesn't actually exist on Earth, somewhere where a such a rich warm golden light is common, but never taken for granted. In my hasty bullet-point comments I made of my events of the day in my little black book, I quickly called this place the Autumn Walk, and still I think the name was good.

We eventually reached the Musee d'Orsee, where we found many huge metal sculptures of great animals around it. They were in such wonderful detail I quickly felt to commend the artist in my mind for them! There was an elephant, a big cat, a ram, and a few other things. They were fun to take pictures with :) We then went to enter the Musee d'Orsee, but we found that it had closed already for the day. Bummer. So we decided to head back to Notre Dame and stop by anything along the way that was still open...which we found. 

Though it was very close to closing time, we found on our walk back that the Consierge was still open. This was the place where many people during the days of Marie Antoinette were kept until they were eventually executed by guillotine. You first walked down a flight of stone steps to enter the Consierge, as it was mostly underground. There were many fascinating relics behind glass from both the people that were maintained there and the guards that were stationed there. I remember there was a very big room made of carved stone, full of carved pillars to literally support the weight of the world above the room. This was the general guard room that the soldiers passed through as they changed the guard, entered, and exited. We would have loved to stay longer, but our time was very short. We walked among some of the tiny prison rooms and read as much as we could about the purposes of the rooms and the maintenance of the Consierge. We eventually found the room where Marie Antoinette had stayed, still containing her humble bed, clothing, and meager possessions, before she too was executed by guillotine. By the time we were here for a few minutes, a tour guide came to us and said we had to leave because the site was closed. So we left. 

Finding that the day was drifting into evening upon our re-emergence to the streets of Paris, we decided to walk the remainder of the way back to Notre Dame and get some food at that awesome little street we had discovered the night before. I love that street! It felt so much like the UK again, with it's bustling little shops all smashed tightly together, giving the whole street a mind-boggingly large amount of ethnicity, diversity, and cheap yummy food as you can only get well from hole-in-the-wall-shops. We decided that some pita kebabs took our fancy that night, so we sat in a little greek restaurant and ordered some fresh kebabs. They do this often throughout Europe, but I never cease to be amazed at watching the people carve off slices of juicy meat from the gigantic kebab and put it on the pita they hand me right there. I have no idea what kind of sauce was on it, kind of reminded me of ranch or mayo, but it was fabulous with the toppings on the pita kebab! I loved that meal! Plus, the restaurant allowed for guests only to sit at little tables with the super-Greek looking white-and-blue-tilework tabletops. It was a ton of fun! 

After dinner, we decided to show Kelsey the great crepe shop we had gone to the night before. This time, we each got our own crepe for a like three Euros apiece (not the most fabulous price in the world when you translate that into dollars, but hey, just how many more times will I get to enjoy a real Parisian crepe in Paris? Hmm?). I don't remember what Kelsey got, but I think Lydia got some sort of raspberry and cream while I got the most scrumptious simple piece of sugary heaven: they call it duet chocolate. Basically, while Mr. Sort-of-Grumpy Frenchman makes the crepe on the hot plate right in front of us, just as he flips it over he sprinkles a big handful of white chocolate chips and then another handful of what they call black chocolate chips (that's correct: dark chocolate everybody), lets ebony and ivory work together in scrumptious harmony until they are pretty much inseparable, folds it in half, folds it in half again on the hot plate, and hands it to me in a piece of wax paper. The thing was straight up marbled chocolate in a crepe!!!!!! Happiness in Paris!!!! :) 

Well, let's be real, I feel so lucky that I got to travel through Paris with two awesome girls who were just as easily excited (if not sometimes even more) than I. I realized that if you're going to travel and see truly incredible things, it would be such a tremendous loss if your companion wasn't also searching for a moment of non-faked, genuine serendipity at the turn of just about every corner. To watch such appreciation for such little constant things grow on my companions faces over and over again really made me hold my own moments of joy in such a more precious way. Really, travel with someone who gets excited, because then even crepes can make the whole world seem right. Wait, not tooting my own horn here at all. I just realized that this whole trip would have been so much more of a, of a task if these two girls were just 'whatever' about everything. 'Whatever' about another museum, 'whatever' about some trees, 'whatever' about new food or places or sights or walkways. 'Whatever' is the antithesis of serendipity, and such a life would, in my mind, be utterly bleak. 

So, crepes still warm in our fingertips, the three girls walked out of the fun little shop street and back towards the entryway of Notre Dame. We planned on just sitting back at the ampetheatre seating there, but when we came close to St. Michael's fountain, we noticed that there was a crowd gathering to watch some street dancers. So we crossed the street and went to watch. Sure enough, there were two break dancers who had set out a speaker system and a few hats. They never spoke anything but French to the crowd, so we couldn't understand anything they were saying, but they were really fun to see. As I munched and pretty much drank/inhaled my liquid chocolate (there was almost so much I almost couldn't handle it all!) I watched them do tricks around and with their hats, playing with some of the kids who came to watch, and just do all sorts of crazy maneuvers. 

We watched them for maybe a half hour before they packed up and we left with the crowd. The sun was just hanging on the tops of the nearby buildings, sinking more every second behind them. We knew we didn't want to hang around the center of Paris after dark, and we were truly exhausted after our long day, both physically and emotionally, so we decided to go back to the nearest metro station and go to our hotel for the night. 

On our walk back to the metro station, Kelsey began to ask me a few things about the Mormon church. To be honest, I had wanted to convert and have her baptized ever since I decided I liked her, but I also knew that I liked her enough to not bring up religion after we first met and she learned that Lyd and I were both Mormons. She was familiar with Mormons, as she knew a lot of them from her home in the states, and she said they were nice, but she hadn't really taken the time to learn more about them. As soon as she started asking a few things, I checked myself from the very beginning and promised myself that I wouldn't shove anything extra down her throat, but I made sure her question was fully answered. Her question was about modesty, in a way. In her words "Hey Rachel, can I ask you about Mormons?" "Absolutely," I said "you can ask me anything you want. I can't promise I know the right answer, but I'll do my best." "Why is it that Mormons can't wear sleeveless wedding dresses? I mean, I know you guys wear sleeves and everything to be modest, but there are a lot of Mormon girls at my High School that show up to prom in dresses that have sleeves, but they are really high short sleeves, like they often come up to the top of their arm on their shoulder. But they can't wear dresses like that at all. I don't get it. Why can't you do that?" To be totally honest, I had never once considered that discrepancy. I knew it was good to be as modest as possible, but I hadn't had many personal experiences with why Mormon temple dresses just never were high sleeved. I honestly can't take credit for the answer, which is silly because it was SUPER simple, but it really was put into my head. I think it would have taken me, as embarrassing as it is, quite a bit of time on my own to connect the dots, but Heavenly Father decided to make the moment count and put the answer quickly into my head. "Well, when girls are high school aged and are going to prom, it is important for them to be modest in the way they dress, just because we really respect our bodies. When we get older, usually as we are going on missions or just about to get married though, we do something really special. Have you heard about our temples?" I asked. "Oh yeah, they are gorgeous! I'd love to be married in one of those temples!" She replied. "Well, if someone passes a few interviews with their church leaders, then they are able to go into the temple and something very special happens." "Like a rite of passage or something?" she asked. "Well, I'm actually not sure what happens. See, I've never been through the temple myself yet." "Oh," she said. "But I know that whatever happens during that first time you go through the temple, we are taught very special things and it is a very beautiful sort of worship service." "Cool." She replied, but she still sounded interested, like she wasn't satisfied yet. I told her that when you go through the temple for the first time, you are given some incredibly special clothing to wear under your normal clothes and that these are very sacred. She seemed a bit in awe about this. "What is it for?" she asked. I was stuck here again. I hadn't gone through the temple at all, I had almost zero experience with garments, and I knew pretty much nothing about their symbolism. But once again, something I hadn't ever connected was put in my head and it came out of my mouth. "Well, I believe it's for a few things. First for us to remember that we have made special promises with God, and those promises are reminded to us at all times because we wear the temple garment at all times. Second, because it also reminds us that our bodies are really sacred too, and because we are supposed to always wear them, but to keep them sacred by not letting others see them, we dress modestly." "Oh!" she said, "so the girls who are at prom don't have those clothes yet, but when you get married, you need a dress that will hide them." "Right, that's probably a big part of it, but like I said, I don't have mine yet because I haven't been through the temple yet, but that's what I'm pretty sure of." I told her. Then I chuckled, "Have you heard about what some people call the Mormon's magic underwear?" I asked. "Oh, yeah" she replied. "Yeah, that's how a lot of people talk about our temple garments, but I'm pretty sure they just don't understand what they are." I said. "Right." she returned. 

So anyway, there was my first kind of missionary teaching moment. About temple garments. Which I didn't personally have. Crazy huh? Hope I didn't say anything too out of line. 

Boy, it takes a lot longer to write, let alone read a back and forth conversation like that, even with a bunch of your typical fluff words left out! This conversation really took all of a few minutes and we had finished a bit before we actually got to the metro entrance. But after we finished this talk, I thanked her for asking me and let her know that if she wanted to ask anything else then I was more than happy to try to find her an answer. We got to the metro, said goodbye for the night, and then agreed to meet the next morning at the last place we had heard incredible things about: the cemetary of Pere leCheise. We set a meeting time and then took our separate trains. 

We hopped a few trains (the stations in Paris are all different from each other too, but they are a lot more modern I guess) and finally made it back to our metro/bus station. There was still a little light left by the setting sun, so Lydia and I decided to walk up past our hotel a little ways and see if the kind of eerie business/apartment streets ahead contained a small grocery shop that we could stock up at. We walked a few blocks, but the place became more oddly quiet apartments, so we turned back and went to the apartment. 

Once home, we paid for a few hours of wifi at the front desk (the clock only runs when you are online which is really nice) and went to our room. Boy, did I mention how GREAT it is to have a room to yourself? It is so fabulous having just me and Lydia in one room, just for us, with our very own bathroom and shower too right in the room!!! Oh it's great, I really don't think I'll be taking that for granted again. 

When we got home, Lydia and I started getting ready for bed. We were both pretty darn tired, but you know those moods where you worked out a lot and you're tired after a long but fulfilling day, but you want to do a few more nice things before you end the day? Yeah, it was one of those. Lydia jumped in the shower first while I got on Facebook to see if anyone else from home was on. To my surprise, Nick was. So Nick and I chatted back and forth with each other for a little while. It was great! After a little bit, he got mom and she chatted with me for just a little bit too. She mostly wanted to know details about when we were coming home. I found some of the information I had with me in France and sent that to her, just a date and a general time of when we should land in SLC. Part of me really wasn't stoked at all for that to happen though, so I cut that conversation a little to the point and left it. We talked for a little while longer, telling her a few of my things and letting her know that she could read more about it on my blog (ha) before we all said goodbye and they left facebook. I then tried to Skype Ethan, just to see if he happened to hear the call. Once again to my surprise, he did! It was so good to see him. It was a weekend afternoon and he was in his apartment at Campus Plaza. That was the first time that had happened, because every other time we skyped, he was at his security guard job, and was very sleepy. This time though, he was wide awake, sitting in the sunshine in his apartment. He even took the ipad outside so I could see how sunny it was there in North Court of Campus Plaza. In that moment, I finally felt how far away I was from home. I felt like I had been truly living in another world for two months, and honestly, I really was. But the distance really struck me most as I looked at that dear funny North Court. It had been so long since I had seen it, or seen him in the sunshine, smiling and happy. Suddenly all the tiredness left me. So we talked, for almost my entire wifi time! I don't remember what we talked about at all or if we even talked a lot. I probably did almost all the talking, but that was easily the funnest and happiest conversation we had over skype for my whole trip. I just remember I was on my little green hotel bed in Paris and he was on his bunk bed in Campus Plaza, and remember him just smiling at me, a lot. A lot more than usual. It was a face and a feeling that really felt like a hug, from far away, but much better. I didn't really get it at all, and it would be about a week before I saw his face or heard him like that again, but I'll never forget that special moment in time. 

After Ethan and I were done with our Skype conversation, I went through the rest of my facebook things, responding to just a few little messages and emails that some people were kind enough to send me, I looked through some of my pictures and the comments others had left until my wifi ended shortly thereafter. I closed and plugged in my ipad, got cleaned up in a very warm shower, got ready for bed, and then Lydia and I slept away our final night in Paris.