we woke up on December 30th about 9am and showered and dressed and were ready to head out to explore Paris. we first looked for a patisserie, got a couple of croissants and then headed to the metro station to buy our metro and museum passes. we then made our way to the center of Paris and started walking around the banks of the Seine River. like Normandy, i was amazed at how old everything looked. it was hard to believe that i was actually in Europe. i had only seen places like this ini pictures before, and now it was all spread right before my eyes! it was very exciting. we continued walking along the river and crossed a bridge and started making our way to the Orsay Museum.

having just bought our museum passes, we didn’t have to wait in the hour and a half long line to get into the museum. we pretty much walked right in and started browsing. we were both hungry, however, so we went to check out the museum restaurant. it was our first experience with French food and a French restaurant. luckily, being a museum, the staff spoke English. so that was nice. i had pumpkin soup and sarah had shrimp penne pasta. both dishes were very good, although mine was thick and creamy so it got old about halfway through the bowl. it also had slivers of something slimy that i still have no idea what they were so that didn’t make it any better. it could have been mushrooms, but maybe not. who knows?

after lunch we headed into the museum exhibitions which were very nice. the Orsay is the museum centered around Impressionism, but also includes works from the pre-Impressionist artists as well as Post-Impressionist artists. there was an entire room devoted to Monet and it was pretty packed. there were students from an American art school there with pads of paper and they were reproducing the works that hung on the walls which was pretty impressive. it’s strange not only seeing buildings and monuments that you’ve only seen in pictures but also seeing works of art that you’ve only studied in school. it’s especially interesting to be able to get right up close to them and see the layers of paint and the brush strokes that the artists had made. in many of the paintings the paint looked very fresh and was still shining, even though some of them were over 100 years old.

while we were in the museum it started snowing pretty heavily outside. the snow in Paris was much different than the snow in Normandy. in Normandy it was beautiful as it covered the countryside and was just picturesque. in Paris though, it was all slushy and muddy and brown. not so nice at all. we trudged our way back to the hotel to rest for the afternoon after a morning of walking around and freezing. we had seen posters for a concert being held that night and had decided to go. it was at St-Eustache cathedral and was basically a chamber orchestra performing both Schubert and Gounod’s “Ave Maria’s” as well as the whole of Mozart’s Requiem.

the concert was at 9pm and we got to the church at about 8:15 or so, but it didn’t look like anything was going on there. we found what we thought was the front entrance but it was barred and locked and all the lights inside appeared to be off. we walked around the entire church and finally saw a line of people (we planned to get tickets at the door and figured that this is what the line was for) and went to get in line. as we got closer it became apparent that the line was mostly of scruffy looking men. upon approaching the line, there were several men that let us go in front of them and they were all smiling and appeared to be quite happy. we stood in line for about five minutes, moving closer to the front as the line was being processed, and then we noticed a sign at the front of the line. i don’t remember the whole phrase on the sign, but i do remember the word “soupe”. here we were, two fairly well-dressed Americans trying to get to a classical music concert to hear Mozart’s Requiem, and we were standing in line with a bunch of scruffy men……at a soup kitchen. we stood there for a few moments wondering if we could slip out of the line without being noticed, especially not wanting to offend the men that had been so welcoming to us to join them in a free meal of hot soup, but we were trapped. so we just sucked it up and began moving out the back of the line saying “pardon” and “excuse moi” until we were finally free. we were now thoroughly confused. again we walked around the church and finally found the correct entrance, hidden under a good bit of scaffolding, bought our tickets and found our seats.

the church was beautiful. apparently many people think it rivals Notre Dame, at least on the inside. having now been to both, i can see how some would say that, but i still think Notre Dame tops St-Eustache. at any rate we sat waiting for the concert to begin and admiring the cathedral. the concert was superb and the acoustics in the building were surprisingly amazing. i thought it would be real echoey, but it wasn’t at all. the renditions of “Ave Maria” were very beautiful musically and the Requiem was absolutely phenomenal. even though it was just a small 20 piece orchestra, it definitely sounded like a full orchestra and the choir and solists were wonderful. it’s a very special treat to hear such a piece of music in such a place as a cathedral in Paris.

after the concert we were both starving so we headed back to the area near our hotel where we had seen many restaurants. it was about 11:30pm so not much was open except for a German restaurant that i can’t remember the name of. the name’s not important though because it’s not to be recommended. if you’re ever in Paris, don’t eat German food. in fact, if you’re ever in Germany then don’t eat German food. the restaurant was just not very good at all. at least what we had. we chose to go there for two reasons: first, it was open. second, the menu had both English and French on it (Paris restaurants are required by law to post their menus outside) and we were too tired to go some place where the menu was only in French. sarah had some thing that she thought was going to be like a little quiche or something but was, instead, a big flat cracker-type-thing (kind of like matzo bread) with munster cheese all over it. it was good enough, she says, but it just wasn’t what she was expecting. i ordered some kind of sausage plate that did not look at all like the picture that accompanied it. it was basically a gigantic mound of sauerkraut with a little slab of bacon, two boiled potatoes that tasted like they came out of a can, a link sausage, and a frankfurter. the frankfurter was nothing more than a hot dog. it was just dumb and the service was slow.

after our “meal” we went back to our hotel room and decided the plan of action for the next day. satisfied with our first adventures in Paris (apart from the German restaurant) we caught up with the news on the BBC tv channel and then went to bed.