J'ai froid, encore!

The title of this post is integral to the understanding of my experience. So I will translate: I'm still cold. (Or I am cold again). After this week, I think I should receive some kind of award for being a Georgian and still surviving this weather. We have had walking tours every day in weather as cold as -8 degrees Celsius. With the wind chill, that translates to very, very cold. Even the news is filled with snow forecasts and reports from places as far south as Marseilles and Greece that actually have snow on the ground!

But enough about the cold. I still managed to get out and about. Yesterday, we began our educational tour with the Louvre. Even though I was very excited to be out of the cold, I will say that the Louvre is going to be my second home for a while now that I know Reid Hall has worked it out so that we can get in for free! (We are students of Art History here.)

Our tour began with the Medieval foundations of the royal castle, which were only dug up during the 1980s. No one had thought till then to look under the Louvre for artifacts! Now you can see the remains of the old moat and the foundation of the former home and fortress of French kings. It is awesome, for someone who wants to study Medieval society for the rest of her life. (That may not happen, but who knows?)

Then we proceeded to take a highlighted tour of the rest of the exhibits. We viewed the exibits of art from the Antiquities, including the Venus de Milo. Then we went to the Red Rooms and saw Classical, Romantic, Renaissance and you name it art. My favorite was a painting by de la Croix. Some of you might recognize it as the cover art of a recent Coldplay album.

During our tour of the Renaissance art, we seemingly stumbled onto a large crowd gathering around a painting covered by glass. It took me a few minutes to figure out what I was looking at because it was so familiar: the Mona Lisa, or the Jocande as the French call her. It's strange to see something at once so famous and at once so ordinary. It's just a portrait of an Italian noblewoman. But da Vinci has some kind of magic in his art, because even it's disappointing size can't keep the flocks of people (including myself) from being mesmerized by it!

During a bit of free time, we managed to hike up to the Tour Eiffel, not up it but up to it. There was neither time nor patience between all of us to wait in the lines that were surely gathering to view the city from the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was enough just to look at it and to take a few tourist photos.

I think we reached a new level of appreciation for the locals during our abbreviated tour of Marais today. With its beautiful assortment of ancient buildings, this part of town is the place to be. It is a historically Jewish district that is also home to one of the most expensive area to live in Paris. You can view the place where Mozart's talent was first discovered and eat authentic falafel for lunch.

I think my favorite part of today, though, was a semi-spontaneous visit to Shakespeare & Co. - the place that first published James Joyce's Ulysses and a welcome site for someone already missing the English litterature scene. I ended up buying a copy of Hemingway's A Movable Feast. Get back to me in a while about whether or not I've finished it! There are also events there, like readings and discussions for writers. I will be on the look out for things to do there!

Well, I have to go now. I'm preparing to eat a feast of crepes tonight in honor of la Chandaleur. Bonsoir!