Holy cow!!! What a week. It’s hard to begin. I can’t believe
this is my life right now. Crazy! Prepare for a long-winded post.
So, the week started on a sad/happy note. We all had to wish
Kristin farewell as our program coordinator as she handed of the position to
Nick. She got a job opportunity that she simply could not turn down, so I am
happy for her in that respect.
Anyways! We left Bonn by private bus to France at 6 AM
Monday morning. Everyone made it on time except for one student who was
fortunate enough to get picked up by the bus down the road. So we were on the
bus for 6 hours until we reach Colmar, France. When we got there, we had lunch
and walked around the town. Colmar was beautiful and quaint. A lot of the
building looked as if they were stuck in a previous time. After this, we went
to the Unterlinden Museum and saw the famous Isenheim Altarpiece. The paintings
were beautiful and some equally grotesque. After the museum, we got back on the
bus to head to Beaune. After 3 more hours, we arrived in Beaune and had a group
dinner. The dinner was good, but the local Burgundy wine was better! After
dinner, a few of us went out to check out a local bar where I tried a local
French Scotch.
The next morning, we toured the Hôtel Dieu in Beaune then left
to Paris. We arrived in Paris around 6 PM and had a group dinner at a Creperie.
We checked into our hotel and called it a night.
On Wednesday morning we went on a bike tour of Paris with
our tour guide and friend, Julien until lunch time, where we split up for
lunch. After the bike tour, Julien helped me go to Western Union to retrieve a
money transfer from back home (Wells Fargo deactivated my card without notice.
They suck). That was actually pretty fun because I got to see a lot of
different back areas and shortcuts in Paris, though we were riding pretty
fast... Haha. Once lunchtime came around, I headed back to the hotel and ate at
a local Italian restaurant. At around 2 PM, we all met back up at the hotel and
walked to a museum of the history of medicine and toured there until 4 PM,
where we had free time until 9 PM. At 9 PM, we met back up at the Eiffel Tower
and went up to the very top. It was absolutely stunning. I cannot justly
describe the experience with mere words. After the tower, a small group of us
went to a pub that was super-hot and humid inside. Needless to say, we did not
stay long. After that we found an underground bar that was cut into the earth.
It went pretty far down and everything inside was stone, so it looked like it
was from Roman ruins or something.
The next day, Thursday, we were supposed to meet up for an
optional walking tour of Montemarte with Julien, but a friend and I accidentally
overslept, so we missed it. So we enjoyed the morning (except for him getting
hit by the biggest bird crap I’ve seen in my life. Hahaha) until we were to
meet up at 3 PM to tour the Louvre. We met the group at the Arc de Triomphe du
Carrousel by the Louvre and all went on the tour from there. The Louvre was
absolutely colossal. I definitely wish to go back some day and see more! So as
we toured the Louvre, Julien taught us many things from sculptures to paintings
to how to determine the authenticity of them. One of the things that he taught
us about was something called a pentimento. A pentimento is an alteration
in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist
has changed his or her mind about how they want the painting to look.
These are in thousands of famous paintings from the Mona Lisa to The Coronation
of Napoleon. But here is the highlight of my trip: John Kyle Cooper and I may
have found two previously undiscovered pentimentos in The Coronation of
Napoleon. We pointed them out to Julien and he just stood there staring at them
for a while. Finally we moved on and finished the amazing tour. After the tour,
a small group of us went up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. The whole thing
was just surreal.
On Friday, we packed up our stuff and stored it to leave.
The group got together and we all went to tour the Palace of Versailles. When
we met up with Julien, he pulled Kyle and I to the side to speak with us. He
told us that he had been up all night researching those pentimentos and said
that they are completely undocumented, but the faces that we found are a direct
matches to the original artist’s sketches. He called this discovery the “holy
grail” of his career. Words cannot express what I felt in that moment... Anyways,
the tour of Versailles was unguided, but it was stunning! The whole thing just exuded
regality. After the palace, we walked around the gardens and got tons of
pictures. After all this, we had a genuine Parisian picnic with Julien where he
brought tons of different cheeses, meats, fresh baguettes, wines, and other
delicacies. It was absolutely phenomenal.
Completely unparalleled by any other meal I have had on the trip. After lunch,
we bid Julien farewell and people parted ways for Spring Break. My group stayed
in Paris one more night. The mother of a girl in my group bought us all a hotel
room, dinner, and bus tickets to the airport. I’m so grateful. We got to relax
in her apartment for a while which had a balcony directly facing the Arc and
the Eiffel Tower. The whole thing felt like a dream.
So Saturday came and we left early in the morning to get to
the airport. When we got there, Claire stuck her credit card in a cash-only
slot of some device and lost it that way, so we had to deal with that (Lol,
happens to the best of us). We flew out from Paris to Dublin around 9:40 AM and
landed at 10:20 AM. From there we got our own private shuttle back to our
hostel for super cheap. From there we walked around Dublin. Kyle and I got to
do a tour of the Guinness Store house, which I completely underestimated! It was so cool! After this we went to
the oldest pub in Dublin.
When Sunday came around, we went on a tour of the
countryside in Ireland. It was absolutely phenomenal. The bus ride was quite
long and we went to The Cliffs of Moher, Ailladie, an ancient cemetery, and a
small town whose name escapes me. After the tour, we got back late at night and
went to the pub from P.S. I Love You.
Well that was just my week in Paris and beginning of Spring
Break! See y’all after break.
Much Love,
MJF
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