It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post, so I thought I’d try and sum up the past few weeks. It’s just over a month since the terrorist attacks on Paris, and although it was a horrible night, and a very strange time to be in the city afterwards, life has carried on, and things almost feel normal again.
I’ve been very busy – a trip to Versailles, many museums and monuments visited, and a LOT of delicious food eaten. Versailles was amazing, but I definitely want to return in spring when the gardens are at their peak – I imagine it looks even better when there are leaves on the trees… And I visited the Chateau de Vincennes, which is just outside the Peripherique, and is a little fortified castle with an abbey attached. It was very quiet, and had lots of amazing, centuries old graffiti from when it had been used as a prison!
I finally went inside Notre Dame, one day after French class I just wandered in by myself. It’s beautiful, and very impressive, but I must admit it looks very similar to a lot of other churches I’ve been to, so I was slightly underwhelmed after the years of build-up. Not so with the Arc de Triomphe, which I climbed with an American girl from my French class last week – we got amazing views of Paris, and it’s just an incredibly impressive structure! Despite the cold weather, I’ve been walking around Paris a lot recently, either with friends or by myself, and I’ve discovered that Parisians are strangely lazy, and if you’re out and about before 10AM, you might not walk past any other people, even on the major boulevards. Yesterday (Sunday) I left the apartment at 8AM and took the metro to the Île Saint-Louis, which was absolutely deserted, and just meandered through the little streets, enjoying the peace and quiet and the fresh wind blowing off of the river. Sometimes it’s nice to be outside but not surrounded by hordes of people (note to self, avoid the Christmas market on the Champs Elysees whenever possible).
My French is improving, bit by bit, and I’m finally starting to communicate with people in complete sentences rather than slightly panicked, scattered words. Paris is not that good at Christmas spirit – they have the markets and the lights and things, but it’s more for tourists than locals, and the general atmosphere is just not the same as in the UK – but fear not, in six days I will be home, eating mince pies and sausage rolls and listening to ‘Now That’s What I Call Christmas’ on repeat until the 25th
I’ll report back again on my little Parisian adventures in the new year,
Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année!
