The Time We Were Hemingway

I had to miss the class walk on the day I went to London, so yesterday (Saturday) Teo repeated the walk for those of us who missed it. It was nice to be in a smaller group of about 12 students, so we all kept together.
The walk was sort of near Odeon, first to a church that was turned into a meeting club during the French Revolution.

 We walked by the University of Paris, Sorbonne, which Teo said is like the second tier after the doctor and engineering schools. He said the universities are super affordable, less than $400, but everyone has to take a huge merit exam that determines which school you go to. It's funny that in the US, our universities have some of the nicest architecture of the city; here, they just blend in.

 The pantheon is around the corner.

The next stop was the church where Clovis and Pascal are buried. It's called Saint-Étienne-du-Mont; we stopped inside but a mass was going on, so we couldn't venture to the back area. However, this church was actually unique from other churches, as it had gorgeous white spiral staircases in the center that reminded me of bone or shell skeletons.

Since we were near Hemingway's house by now, Teo told us that he used to walk down this street and drink and write in the cafés nearby. All 12 of us sat down in one of the cafés (Le Contrescarpe) and a third-party unaffiliated with UCLA (definitely not Teo) bought us all small beers so we could be like Hemingway. 

(Too bad I don't care for beer, so another student finished mine. It was a cool experience so now I can say I drank where Hemingway did.) 

We continued down Rue de Mouffe as the locals say, where all the stores were open for the market for lunch. This is where our walk ended, but several of us stayed around to look at the bakeries and jarred goods and cheese shops and seafood. I got a sandwich jambon from a popular bakery, which was amazing on very chewy and tough bread (but not stale, of course) with a good helping of mayo. 

The desserts looked so perfect and glazed, but I wasn't hungry enough for one. I was experimental, though, and tried some bits of fried dough with powdered sugar, which I thought would be like funnel cake but were more dense and crispy than chewy and soft. I didn't finish them - I didn't like the bland taste nor thick texture.

 In the afternoon, after a little resting time, I went to Pierre Herme to try their macarons - two of them, Jasmine and Chocolate/Passion Fruit, to be exact. Laduree and Pierre Herme are the best macarons in Paris, so you have to have a taste-off to see which you like better. 

The verdict: Pierre Herme! Though I liked Laduree's tea flavored macaron, the textures were better at Pierre Herme. They were slightly chewy with more quantity of creamy filling. The chocolate/passion fruit was my favorite of all (read: about five places) I tried in Paris - a little sour but rich and sweet too, like other fruit/chocolate combos you can get in the US.

 Tonight was our class's formal dinner, so we all went to a restaurant near the Seine by Notre Dame at 7:30. Walking from the metro to the restaurant was a gorgeous scene - the light an hour before sunset was golden. The beams that reflected off the river were blinding as we all walked in our semi-formal attire to fit into a 40-person room.

 After the entree of salad, we got our pre-ordered plat between vegetarian, fish and duck. The duck comes in a huge pot of four servings, bathed in a tasty prune sauce. There were chunks of plum skins and duck skins in the broth, oozing flavor. It was so tender and went well with the great, soft (almost soggy) French fries.

 It was hot in the room with 40 people and no air conditioning, but I still enjoyed the meal. I talked with two girls about how there are so many different personas of Paris when we hear the name. You can think of the Paris that's stated under the designer labels, or the Hemingway idyllic Paris, or the more city-like cosmopolitan Paris that we live in. The connotations when someone says "Paris" are so varied, but I want to understand them all. But I digress.

The chocolate tart dessert came with like a melted vanilla ice cream - some people thought it was too much chocolate but there is no such thing. We ended dinner with the story of how Teo met his wife, to conclude a wonderful night in the city.

The Time Sugar Overwhelmed Me

The countdown begins, as this is my last Thursday here.
Our walk took us around Sacre Coeur, Montmartre,  and the cobblestone streets that lead uphill to the church.

 (Apparently this is a famous corner that a lot of people painted.)

 (Two girls singing and playing accordion.)

 (I just went inside Sacre Coeur for only a few minutes because classmates told me it wasn't as impressive. True, it's not like gothic style, but still pretty. I think I'm done looking at churches, though, because everything just pales in comparison to the Chartres Cathedral.)

(The view! Teo says it's the second best view of Paris, but I like the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame views better.)

 (During our break around noon, I got an ice cream of Creme Brûlée and Pistachio. Not as good as Berthillon.) 

Our walk continued down some wonderful side streets with adorable views of buildings seeming to almost collapse or overlap onto one another. We even saw the cafe where Amelie works in the movie. 

(Van Gogh's house)

Once our group was done with class, I went with a couple girls to Angelina near the Tuileries. It's a place known for its overpriced hot chocolate but it's now the tourist thing to do, so I was weary. I mean, I thought "How much better could hot chocolate get?" But oh my gosh, it was experience. 

First of all, the place is gorgeous like Laduree with gold embellishments to its little tearooms. The waitress didn't even need to ask and just said "Trois chocolat chaud?" I wanted mini croissants to have sustenance for my "lunch" as well. 

The chocolate came in a mini pitcher for us to pour. I'm crying, it was amazing. It was so thick - honestly like melted chocolate with cream. We got little porcelain cups of whipped cream to put on top, too. It was so thick that we could make designs from the melted cream, and dip the flaky croissants into the chocolate. I had no idea hot chocolate could be this good and rich, a little bitter of course but not too much. Just perfect.

The funniest part was the weird sugar rush and food coma it gave us. We were lethargic after just one cup and too bloated to move, yet at the same time we were hyper and talkative because of all the sugar and fat packed into one cup. As I said, I hadn't eaten lunch (just ice cream - oops) and after this I was completely full. I thought Angelina was going to just be a tourist trap for a "Parisian" cafe experience, but it was actually really luxurious.

Also I will add that near the Louvre there are some touristy shops, but I had a great experience in one of them. I asked (in French) if the employee spoke English, and he said "a little" with a laugh. One of the other customers, however, said he spoke both and agreed to translate for us. And so it was, like in movies or something, where I spoke to the customer who spoke to the employee who spoke to the customer who spoke to me. Sometimes I spoke in broken French and sometimes the employee spoke in broken English, but it was a delightful experience and we both thanked the other customer for translating and it was all very amicable. But I digress... 

I'd also planned to go to the Mussee du Louvre today - finally! The two girls had already been, so I went alone, knowing some other people from the program were there (I ran into them twice). This museum is so massive, literally housed in the former palace. 

People told me it takes three days of three hours each to get through the whole thing... I had 2.5 hours to see what I needed, because honestly I can't sit and look at walls for too long. Luckily I was able to get in free because I'm studying in Paris (though it was a complicated process every time I changed galleries to explain that I have an American student ID card but I'm studying here). The staff was really nice and trusted me, somehow - probably because I was speaking polite French unlike the loud selfie-taking tourists. 

I briefly explored the French painting section and sculptures, until I realized essentially everything I wanted to see was in a different branch of the U-shaped museum. A lot of the paintings here are classical as in nude and angelic and regal portraits/scenes, not covered in my modern art class.  

I finally moved over to the other half of the museum to see the famous paintings I knew. Pro tip: if you don't have much time, the Pavillion Denon is really the only area you need to see. 

 (The winged victory statue at the entrance of the staircase.)

(Wonder what this could be...)

 (Oh, it's this. It's as close as we can get. The Mona Lisa is the size of a poster not a piece of paper.)

I was about to leave this area (Italian painters) but I turned down one of the hallways into another room and hit the jackpot by seeing every other painting I wanted to in one single area. 

 (Raft of Medusa, Liberty Leading the People, Napoleon's Coronation, Oath of Horatii) 

Only at the Louvre, called the best museum on earth, can you find Liberty two paintings down from the Medusa. What luck inside the huge monster of a museum. I can't tell you how overwhelming it was to find the Mona Lisa at first, like wandering through mazes of sculptures and jewelry and tapestries. It's enormous. I like the d'Orsay much better because I love the manageable size and the Impressionist collection, which the Louvre doesn't focus on. 

(Venus)

I'd say the best part of the Louvre is the gorgeous venue, a regal place to store these artworks. 

So, to tie this post up in a nice neat bow, today was a very sweet day full of bucket-list things and very overwhelmingly sweet things. The Louvre is over-the-top with its huge collection of artwork and Angelina was overwhelming in its rich chocolate. I was expecting both of these places to be highly overrated, but I actually enjoyed them more than I thought I would, probably because my expectations were low. 

(Bonus pic from our walk - the lamppost says "With love from Paris")

The Time of my Cheese Dessert

On Wednesdays, we go to the market. I got some baby cucumbers, strawberries, a ham bread for breakfast, and a leather purse for myself as a souvenir. One of the stall workers at the market, upon hearing my English, asked where I was from ("England or America?"), then proceeded to say "California or Texas?" I thought it was a stereotype that foreigners group U.S. regions together, but apparently not so much.

 Today was our last formal lecture, during which we talked about the French revolution, reminding me of our trip to Versailles. After my chicken crepe for lunch (I have to eat more of them while I have the chance before I leave soon), we embarked on our walk. We passed by a modern art museum and a park with lots of street art.

 The tour also took us outside the oldest private residence (house) in Paris - that of Nicholas Flamel. Like in Harry Potter.

We walked down many streets, like the rue de Montergeuil, which had many cafes and shops. Our walk ended outside of a gothic church called St. Eustache. I feel like I've seen so many beautiful churches on this trip, and this was no different.  

It was enormous inside, with huge towers holding up the ceiling. I think this was the highest ceiling thus far, I genuinely felt like I was in a giant's church. So impressive.

Since it was drizzly and cloudy today (my favorite weather in Paris), I sat in a cafe with two girls for a bit to soak up the atmosphere and watch the city go by. I had a cafe creme and they had chocolat with whipped cream. I kid you not, their drinks were three inches of hot chocolate and four inches of whipped cream with a straw. It's bliss to sit under a red cafe awning in wicker chairs and watch the grey rain in the streets. 

Soon, I went with a group to the Rodin museum and garden (wow, I initially spelled that "gardin" and had no idea why it was underlined red - French is rubbing off). The metro was insanely jam-packed. At first we thought it was because it was rush hour from work around 5 p.m., but we've travelled at this time before and it wasn't so crowded. In retrospect, maybe it was because of the rain. Anyway, the metros were packed with people like sardines. People would flood out of the doors, leaving no time for us to get on before the doors close. One time, someone got their foot stuck in the automatic doors as they slammed shut, and people had to pry the doors open so his foot wouldn't be like ripped off when the metro took off. Scary. 

The Rodin Museum is under construction, so we could only access the garden and one exhibit for a reduced price. I really enjoyed the garden view, which reminded me of the Vaux le Vicomte architecture because it was yellow and palace-like with a lovely rose garden and cone-shaped tree hedges. It's also seen in "Midnight in Paris."

 We weren't sure whether these were like original sculptures or casts or what, because why would they put "fakes" in a museum but why would they put originals outside? I think we deduced later that they were casts, but like some of the first original casts perhaps. Not sure still, because we thought some of these sculptures are also in other museums and such.

The inside exhibition was not as gorgeous as the garden, but still cool to witness how Rodin created rough edges to see that artist's hand and how he morphed the body. I liked him more after seeing this museum to get a better look at his style. 

After the museum, I rejoined the two girls from the cafe for dinner. I really wanted to try a restaurant with a green awning around the corner from our hotel, called L'Alchimie. Teo had originally recommended it, but then others from our program went and apparently a girl cried because it was so good. We went in with high expectations, though I tried to lower mine so I wouldn't be disappointed.
The menu, first of all, was oddly translated and poetic, like one item that said "with crystallized shallots crushed by blue (bruise) of former days."

This was a special dinner for us, with three courses. I decided to order things I've never had before and we all three got all different things so we could try each other's. For the entree, I had carpaccio of beef in the pesto crumble of parmesan cheese. I was a little nervous to try raw meat, but their dish made it very manageable. I pretended it was like thin ham, and it was so flavorful - covered in oil and garlic and pesto. It was just soaked with that flavor. I also tried the other girl's foie gras and the other's asparagus soup (which was the best - essentially cream and asparagus, reminding me of broccoli and cheddar soup).

 For the plat, I ordered pig's rib with assortment of vegetables. I don't even like pork that much, but this was just so good and hot. In fact, it came out so hot and fresh that by the time I was done, the meat had cooked itself to be dry (but for the majority of my meal, it was perfectly juicy). In the photo below, the vegetables are hidden by a "meadow" as one girl said of herbs, but vegetables lie underneath. I can't even explain the flavor. None of us had even tasted this flavor in our lives. It was like a butter acidic maybe citrus bitter taste that these carrots, zucchini and shallots had been marinating in for so long. They fell apart they were so soft. One girl said it was like a part of her brain was lighting up from tasting this completely new nameless flavor. The best part was the sauce (again, unlike anything I've had) and what I believe are mashed potatoes under the herbs. It was a smooth ball of light yellow, and when I first tasted it, I thought it was pure butter. It tasted like pure butter, in a good way. Wonderful!

 For dessert, I felt that I needed to try a fromage plate while in Paris so I did. It was a brie, a goat cheese and some other type of sharp cheese. While their flavors were very good, especially on the warm rolls they came with, by the end of the meal I felt I needed something sweet to finish it off. So, I was kind of unsatisfied by the whole palette of the meal because I had two meats and cheese - all savory and salty. However, it was my fault for ordering this way. I chose dish by dish instead of a full balanced meal. The two girls got strawberries with cream and basil jelly, and an assortment of sorbets. The mango sorbet had real junks of mango and was very refreshing. The girl with the strawberry basil almost cried because it was good. I liked both their desserts, too, because of their simplicity and light sweetness.

It was a good French meal treat. More expensive than normal of course, but we needed to go here before we left.