Today we had the whole day to ourselves to visit the assigned museums that we were given the first day here. I spent the day with Morgan and Jen. My assigned destination was La Conciergerie. It was an adventure finding it, to say the least. Let me tell you the story. The first day here, John gave us directions to get to our museums. Well, obviously there were some mix-ups and miscommunications because we ended up getting a little lost. We spent at least two hours trying to find La Conciergerie, and we ended up taking the metro, RER, bus, AND walking a long, long, long distance to get threre. It turns out that the metro stop that we were told NOT to get off of was the one stop that we should have gotten off of. Thanks John! We ended up seeing some really cool things on our adventure to find La Conciergerie that we wouldn't have seen had we not been lost. So literally, thanks John! Anyhow, after asking numerous French people for directions and visiting some new parts of the city, we found La Conciergerie, just two hours behind schedule!
La Conciergerie is a former residence and prison and it is famous for its role in the French Revolution. Anyone who was thought to be an enemy of the Revolution was arrested and put into prison in La Conciergerie. They were kept here until those sentenced to death were taken away to be beheaded. This is where Marie-Antoinette and Robespierre were sentenced to death. We got to see Marie-Antoinette's prison cell and a scene that depicted her in her cell and the two policemen that guarded her. This is where her actual dungeon cell was located. We also got to see the different types of cells and scenes that depicted life in the prison. It was very interesting to see, although the environment of the prison was very dreary. I learned a lot and it something that I am very glad that I had the opportunity to see.
After going to La Conciergerie, we went to attempted to find Morgan's museum. Once again, we had a little trouble finding it. At first we got on the wrong bus, but luckily we realized it right away and got off the bus. We the backtracked on the metro after getting some lunch. From this mistake, we got the best ham and butter baguette that we have had, so it was a successful mess-up! We ended up riding the metro for many stops to find Morgan's museum, but we eventually found it. The funniest part is we actually had walked past it earlier on in the day and commented on how cool the outside of the building looked. We even took pictures of some of the statues that were outside and didn't even realize that it was her museum. Morgan's museum was the Museum of Modern Art. After we eventually found it, we walked around the museum and got to see some of the coolest art displays.
Jen's museum was the easiest to find. We got on the metro from Morgan's museum, and found it very easy. Of course, when we got to the museum, it was closed. Figures that the museum we find the easiest is closed. So, needless to say we did not get to visit her museum, so we came back to FIAP. We had to put a presentation together for class on where we went.
After our session of presentations, we went to dinner. I am now doing laundry here at FIAP in preparation for spring break. We have to check out of FIAP in the morning, then we have most of the day in Paris. We are going to put our luggage in a friend's hotel room for the day while we spend our last day in Paris. Then tomorrow night, we are taking a bus to the airport, where we wait for out flight to Greece to depart early Wednesday morning. I will let everyone know when I am safely in Athens. We have an apartment for 6 nights there and I will have internet access at the apartment.
No comments:
Post a Comment