And so the time has come. Six months in France is officially over and I can hardly believe it. It's been so long, yet so short! As a last farewell to Paris, here is a ton of pictures that shows my life here for the past three weeks of exploring :)
Of course I had to stop by the Moulin Rouge!
The Sacred Heart of Montmartre
A poster I found on a wall in Montmartre...
Grocery shopping!
Visited Victor Hugo's house. This cool street art was on the wall before it!
This is my I'm-not-taking-a-selfie-stop-watching-me-creepy-guard-man smile. :)
Hugo's bedroom. I think it's a bit much, but to each his own I suppose...
I really wanted to visit a holocaust memorial. I haven't been to the D.C one so I was eager to visit the one here in Paris and it was fantastic, terrible, and moving.
This crypt contains the ashes from the crematoriums to remember the 6 million Jewish people murdered. On the wall behind it, it says, "Look at me, no one has had pain like mine. Young men and women killed by enemy swords."
Children's photos
The uniform. The sac on the right was made with the hair shaved from the heads of women.
Not a light topic, but I strongly believe in the importance of remembering to learn from mistakes of the past and it moved me to visit such a powerful memorial.
On to the light stuff again!
The cute traffic lights just for us bikers :)
The Louvre. One of the three things I did that cost money while in Paris. If I spend 12€ to see a museum, I'll be spending all day in said museum. So, after 6 hous in the Louvre, these are just a few of the pictures I took ;)
The main lobby
Egypt was my first goal and I saw everything in the Egyptian section. Very cool!
Winged Victory of Samothrace
I thought the crowds, distance from the Mona Lisa, and the guards were all quite comical. The amount of selfies being taken was mind blowing...
Venus de Milo
This is an upside down photo of part of the original Louvre from the medieval times. Very cool that they have such a large part of it still! (To lazy to delete and trip load a flipped photo, haha)
Yannick, my second host, got some new skates to learn rollerblading!
And I finally put my poor old shoes to rest! They're were starting to tear up my feet :( They lived a good long life!
A fun Friday night with friends (and food!)
Couch surfing.com has activities on the events section and I did a couple free tours on there! The first was Notre Dame, as I did not go inside the first time I saw it. I loved it! And I loved it even more as I learned about it :)
The beautiful windows were beautiful.
The next museum I went to bad the heads of the Kings from the front of Notre Dame. They were all beheaded in the French Revolution. After the renovated the church, they found the heads buried not far from Notre Dame so they put them in this medieval church, which I just happened upon while exploring that same day. What chance!
Later on that same day (all about the tours!) I went on a free tour of the Père Lachaise Cemetery that was really cool!
Chopin's tombstone
Jim Morrison
This bloke is considered the fertility symbol of the cemetery. You may see where many a visitor has touched this grave...
Oscar Wilde. They had to put up glad around it because women covered it with lipstick..
My guide on the left was super nice!
Meanwhile, I was sent this AWESOME photo from my parents after Bryony let them see movie. So adorable!
I liked to sit on the window sill and blatantly people watch :)
I found another American traveling on the couch surfing site and we met up at the Petit Palais museum. It was closed...always closed on Mondays. But I forgot! So we went to the Chateau Vincennes, which was great, because I was living in Vincennes, so I just walked back to the flat after :)
We went to the park right behind the chateau and it was a gorgeous break from the craziness of the city.
Since I had Ken there, I got a photo!
Getting around is so easy by bike!
I went to this park in Bercy three times. It was great, and there were always rollerbladers there. Cool to see the graffiti change everyday, too.
I went to the natural history museum and it was very cool!
One of my strolls.
The oldest public toilet in France...was disgusting. Fabienne, Nicolas, and I went on a tour and explored instead of the catacombs because the line was over an hour long! It was a great time and we learned about cemeteries, vampires, toilets, and jails. Always a good time with these too ;)
This slightly threatening sculpture was hanging outside someone's house...I'm definitely not trespassing there!
This beautiful sculpture was inside the Madeleine church that I visited. It took twenty years to make that. Can you imagine that patience?
I finally made it back to the tower on this cold, rainy, windy day ;) this was the second thing I did that cost me money (3€ because I took the stairs, not the elevator.
I had no line, but that's the line for the elevator haha!
The transparent floor was fun
And the view was great!
SO windy! It stung my poor eyes
I never did get used to looking over my shoulder throughout Paris and seeing the Eiffel Tower. I loved it!
This green building stuck out in the city
I love riding the bikes! And seeing the leaves fall made it even cooler.
It rained a lot on the last week :/ Didn't stop me!
"Stop! Here is the empire of the dead"
The catacombs were amazing! This was the thesis thing I did that cost money (8€) and it wa swell worth! I waited in a much shorter line with a couple from Georgia who were behind me. We had an awesome time. In this picture you can see a black line on the ceiling. That's how people navigated the catacombs before electricity. They followed the line with their candles. Don't lose the line.
There are six million bodies in the catacombs. They were moved there fr the cemeteries of paris because they were becoming health hazards. At first they were dumped down there in the tunnels created by queries for limestone. But then began the time of romanticism.
They put signs with quotes from famous authors and designs with the bones
Morbid, but much neater then a pile of bones!
A very cool sight under the city. Worth the wait and the money :)
I visited the park just before it rained
It was very nice, like an oasis in the city :)
Then I helped Nico keep rain from pooling on the plastic at their street sale for a bit. Not on our watch, rain!!
Bye France!
Now even though I took a million pictures, it doesn't say it all. I can't express how cool it is to get around Paris by bike, chat with a hairdresser, have a drink with Fab and Nico, kill zombies with Yannick, be asked for directions from a Parisian, and just soaking up the city. I can see why people all fall in love with Paris; there is always so much to do, see, and learn. I will be back one day! Thanks to everyone in France for everything, visit Florida some time ;)
