The Paris adventures continued....

Here is the lovely video I promised you a few posts back. This was created by Savs, Jacob, and I during our camera workshop. It is just a collage of some footage we captured during the week. Hope you enjoy...



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A little over 3 weeks in this lovely city and the transportation system and I still have a rocky relationship. Apparently I just don't know how to check times correctly. Walking to the bus this morning I had this sickening feeling that my timing was off. Today we were going on a class trip to Bonn and had to meet at the Hauptbahnhof at 8:40 so I had to catch a train earlier than normal to get there. As I rounded the corner to where the stop was just in sight, I noticed my train quickly approaching. Ohh no! I think my theme for Germany is "Run, catch that train!!" Unfortunately a red light postponed my sprint and I got there just in time for the doors to shut right as I stepped in front of them. All worked out in the end though, Savs (who get on the train a stop before me) missed that same train so we arrived at the same time and just barely made it to our 8:40 meeting spot. One day we will conquer this German public transportation system and all will be great.

The Bonn trip was a blast. It only took us an hour by train to get there and then we had a full day of activities. To start off we met with a small animation agency that does advertising, medical animations, and whatever other small projects they are approached with. It was neat. They showed us some of their work and talked about what they do. After that we went on a tour of the Post Tower. That was such a neat building. It is this huge 40 story all glass skyscraper. The floors are glass, the sides are glass, and many of the walls were glass. It was neat and the views were awesome! There we were taken on a private tour and shown some films about the building and company. We got to sit in this awesome conference room with the most comfortable chairs! As we watched the short films we enjoyed the comfy chairs while snacking on these tasty fruit gummy bears with cold refreshments. They even had real apple juice, not the bubbly kind. I was happy =)

Some pics of the Post Tower...

those are mail boxes from every country. it was pretty cool.

view off the 30th floor...

another view

Later we met with a man who took us on a walking tour of the city and told us about its history. The weather was amazing! Blue skies and fresh air made for a lovely time.

A neat chuch. We didn't get to go inside =(

here's the group with our lovely tour guide =)

Statue of Beethoven. He was born there...

so back to Paris....

Day 2:

Our day started with a lovely visit to the nearest bakery where we enjoyed a sweet breakfast. It was some sugary goodness! I could really get used to fresh pastries for breakfast. Everything was amazing! Probably really bad for you too, but who cares....we were in Paris enjoying the fresh goodies from a bakery!

The weather was anything but welcoming. The skies were gloomy, the air was crisp, and a light rain showered the streets. It looked like it was going to be a pretty yucky day! What a perfect time to stay indoors. The Louvre turned out to be the perfect destination! We spent the whole day wondering around this massive collection of history (8 hours to be exact!) It was amazing. We covered all but one floor and one little section. I would say we did well! I loved everything about this place. Wait, scratch that…I loved most everything about this place. I could have done without the naked people sculptures and paintings. But luckily there were lots of clothed objects to occupy my amazement.

We started our journey in the sculpture gardens. Wow! I mean, wow! Simply incredible. A room filled with life size marble sculptures of various men and women could only be described as "wow." The detail each masterpiece contained was unbelievable. I kept waiting for one of them to blink as I looked at their faces, or get up and move around. They were so life like. Of course then there was the whole missing arms thing going on for some of them. That tends to put them back to stone. But still, the artists did a spectacular job of capturing life. As I stood there marveling at the craftsmanship of these glorious statues I couldn't help thinking about the time it took to do one of these. Incredible!

The paintings where a sight too! We are talking huge paintings. Like 15 to 30 feet across! I was blown away. It was funny to me that with all these amazing paintings covering the walls, and all these sculptures and other ancient art, the only thing that had signs leading the way to its resting place was the famous Mona Lisa. I just do not understand this painting. It is the only painting in the entire Louvre that gets its own wall, is displayed behind bullet proof glass, and is blocked off so that you cannot come within 15 feet of it. I had always heard that she was basically the smallest painting there so I envisioned her to be smaller than a piece of printer paper. Surprisingly she was much bigger. Of course when you compare it to the 15+ ft paintings I can see what they meant. I still do not understand her popularity though. She is actually quite ugly, looks just like the pictures you see of her, and has no story, just rumors. Perhaps that is what draws people in, the mystery of it all. Who knows! I have even had to do a short research paper over this painting and I still can't figure out her fame. All I know is that there was a swarm of people all crowding around to see this "priceless" piece by Leonardo da Vinci. What makes his ugly woman painting more popular than all the other ugly women paintings. I mean seriously!

For dinner we decided that being in Pairs for a once in a lifetime adventure we should splurge and go to a fancy restaurant. Savs mom did some amazing behind the scenes work and found us a nice little restaurant called Ratatouille (just like the Pixar movie! Except a rat did not fix our meal. At least as far as we know...). It was neat. I have never paid so much for one meal in my life!!! The experience was cool and the food was great but holy cow was it pricey. I had the cheapest meal and mine was 20 euro. That just included my chicken plate and water! Personally I feel that these restaurants are highly overrated, but I guess for a once in a lifetime deal, it was fun. Savs mom did a great job finding that restaurant for us.

To finish up the day, we ventured to the Arc De Triomphe. For some reason it was a lot bigger than I was expecting. We learned about it in our architectural history class a few semesters ago, but I never expected it to be that massive! It was great! To get there you have to follow a tunnel under the road. Once there we decided to climb the slender spiral stair case all the way to the top. The way up wasn't bad, but coming down we went faster so I got pretty dizzy. You've gotta love spiral stair cases =) Once at the top we were able to look out over the city. It was nighttime by now so the city transformed into a beautiful sea of light and color. The Eiffel Tower beautifully lit to one side, a few cathedrals scattered here and there, it was beautiful. It turned out to be the perfect way to end the day.

More coming later....