L'âme de Paris (The Spirit of Paris)

Today marks my fourth day in Paris.

Everything is going well so far. Paris is such a vibrant city and there is always something going on. Our room faces a rather busy street, and I'm kept up at night by the sound of the cars and mopeds that speed by the hotel. I really like the Latin Quarter (le Quartier Latin). There are magasins (shops), boulangeries (bakeries à la française), and restaurants everywhere. My favorite is Au Vieux Campeur, a camping and sporting goods store that is literally everywhere. My theory is that if it were in the United States it would be a huge store like REI, but since it's been crammed into the 250+ year-old buildings of le Quartier Latin, it has been divided into different departments. For example, the Au Vieux Campeur on the corner near our hotel has hiking supplies while the one on the adjacent street (about 30 yards away) sells swimwear. The result: an Au Vieux Campeur everywhere I turn.

One of my biggest stresses here in Paris is food. Food is SO expensive! I would say an average dinner in the Latin Quarter costs about 20 euros (about 27 dollars). It's only 15 euros if you decide to drink water. Soda here costs as much as wine (and sometimes more)--about 3-5 euros (4-7 dollars) for one glass (no refills!). I've not had very much success at French restaurants, and most of them cater to tourists anyway (while obviously hating them at the same time). My best dinner so far was strangely enough at a Chinese restaurant on la Rue de St-Germain. Because both we and the server suffered from a language barrier, there was a certain understanding, maybe even a solidarity, among us. We ate a delicious spread of soup, rice, homemade noodles, pot stickers, and tempura to the wonderful sounds of the Backstreet Boys, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé. Tonight we had success at a Mexican restaurant called Fajitas! It's owned by a woman from Massachusetts and serves pretty legit Mexican (not quite, but closer than expected).

Today I got up early because I couldn't sleep and went for a run around the Quartier. It was about 7am, but in Paris the sun doesn't rise until 9 or so, so the streets were still lit by lamps and I got to see Paris rub the sleep from its eyes and begin its day. Only 5% or so of Parisians do any sort of exercize at all, so I got a lot of funny looks from the people I passed in the streets: restaurant owners sweeping the side walk in front of their establishment, street cleaners spraying the street, suited businesspeople walking to work, and the crowd of students making their way to the Sorbonne for class. It was a great run despite the stir I caused and I got to explore the Quartier in the best way possible. I now have a good map in my head and I know a few places to find cheap (but delicious) food on the petites rues that the tourists don't know about.

As for my explorations in Paris, so far I have yet to leave the Latin Quarter except to travel the 6 or so blocks to the Ile de la Cité to see Notre Dame. Here is the list of places so far:

-Musée du Cluny (largest collection of medieval art in Paris; 2,000 years ago the Romans used it as a gymnasium and bath; during the Middle Ages it was a monastery; now it is a museum--Voilà the great span of history of Paris!)

-lots of churches (really cathedrals) including Notre Dame, l'Eglise de St-Etienne (prettier than Notre Dame!), and a hidden church on the Ile de la Cité called l'Eglise de St-Louis

-Pont Neuf: one of the oldest bridges in Paris that provides a great view of the Seine

-the Panthéon (huge! and also very beautiful)

-la Sorbonne and the Université de Paris

-Arsènes de Lutèce: 2,000 year-old arena now used for plays that is in the middle of a garden riddled with paths

-Jardin des Plantes: beautiful garden that contains several museums of science and natural history as well as a menagerie (really more of an all-out zoo complete with kangaroos (kangarous), peacocks (paons), camels, guinea pigs (cochons d'Inde), leopards, raccoons, snakes, geckos, tarantulas (mygales), monkeys (singes), ostriches, yacks, and flamingos. Great vocab exercize and so neat to see a French zoo with "exotic" animals like raccoons and guinea pigs!

-Rue Mouffetard: old street in Paris (not unlike all the others) that is too narrow for cars and is therefore a treasure trove of restaurants and small boutiques. I bought my first pair of boots (des bottes, pronounced like "day butt") today there for only 25 euros--a great deal considering the next cheapest pair I found was 69 euros and most cost more than 150 euros.

In the same neighborhood as Rue Mouttefard there is an école élementaire (elementary school) and the sound of children's laughter was echoing off all the slowly-deteriorating stone buildings when we passed it this afternoon. Those walls are witnesses of the French Revolution and both world wars, a fact I was reminded of by a sign by the gate of the school in memory of the Jewish students who died in the Holocaust. A few blocks down from this school are the remains of the building where one of the French kings of the 12th century was born. The mildewing bricks tumble into the street, held in place by two apartment buildings (probably built in the 18th century) that some Parisians still call home today.  As Professeur Barjasteh said in class the other day, in Paris "l'histoire défile dans les rues"--history parades (in a sense chronological, metaphysical, and spiritual) in the streets. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the people who have walked on these cobblestones before me, those who have lived, laughed, and loved in these buildings and died in these streets (French Revolution). In Paris, you can feel the connections you share with all humanity: past, present, and future.