In the Steps of Van Gogh

I’ve had a busy weekend. On Thursday I met up with an old friend from High School, Tristan. Tristan is French, and was an exchange student at my high school. He drove Clarice and I around Paris, showing us the sites and the layout of the land. It was great getting a tour from a native. That night Clarice and I went on a bus tour sponsored by AUP around Paris. It was awful. Our “tour guide” was an AUP upperclassman. One of his quotes “The Arc de Triomphe was built by Napoleon, after WWII.” It soon resorted to him telling us a bunch of drinking stories. Call me uncool, but some of us signed up for a real tour. We did stop by the Eiffel tower, and I saw it at night for the first time. It was beautiful! I took lots of pictures of course.

The next interesting thing I did was on Saturday. Clarice and I went on a walking tour of Montmartre, where all the artists like Van Gogh hung out in the 1800 and 1900’s. One of the first sites we saw was the Moulin Rouge! That was exciting because I love the movie. How ever I did not see Ewan : ( We saw the Sacre Coeur, a huge white Gothic church. It had an amazing view of Paris. This tour went a bit better, because it was led by an adult. He told us real information, not drinking stories. How novel. Then we went out to a restaurant for fondue. Montmartre is known for fondue. The food was good, we had some raw meat which we cooked in oil and also precooked meat that we dipped in a pot of cheese. We sat with a nice group of people too. Then we walked around a bit with two girls, Lauren and Ashley. We came home around 10.

Today, Sunday, we went to Versailles. Surprise Surprise, the trip was completely unorganized because it was run by AUP. We all bum rushed a metro stop to get the tickets we needed, and that took about an hour for everyone to get their tickets. Then we were shepared through the metros and train routes by several student advisers. We parted ways at the gates of Versailles, with our guides telling us to be back at 3, and they would help us get home. The way to and back Versaille is a bit complicated. So Clarice and I wondered around the palace and the gardens. It was crazy to think this is where Marie Antoinette and Louis 16^th lived and walked. The palace was completely resplendent, as expected. Every surface was gilded and painted. The gardens were huge, Clarice and I probably only saw about 1/8 of them. However, not much was in bloom because its fall, and all the fountains were off. Clarice and I returned to the appointed spot at 3:00. Surprise Surprise, the student advisers didn’t show. We waited 20 minutes and they never came. So we had to find our way to the Versailles train station on our own, which we weren’t sure about. We had to stop a nice old lady for directions. Thank goodness we found it, and then using a metro map we got home.

I love Paris, seeing all these sites has been my dream for as long as I can remember. However, I am so fed up with AUP. Over and over again they have disapointed me with poor organization. Many times they have dropped us off at sites and left it up to us to get home. We’ve only been here for less then a week! It’s ridiculous. So my conclusion is I like Paris but I hate AUP. We’ll see if classes change my opinion. Classes start tomorrow. They sound interesting, let’s hope they redeem my opinion of the school.