day 13: château de vincennes et la grande mosquée de paris

Tiring but informative day. We met at 9AM as usual (as opposed to the graceful 10AM meeting time the day before.) Essentially we spent the day touring the very nifty Château de Vincennes, the "fortified royal residence" (1, Green Info Pamphlet). Unfortunately my camera was low on batteries all day as I had forgotten to charge it the night before. I had to take pictures then frantically turn my camera off which, as you can probably imagine, reduced the quality of my pictures. (I know I'm already an amateur as it is...haha. Scary. Brace yourselves for the uncentered-ness and blurriness!)


That's the cathedral on the right, but we didn't get to go in as they're doing some restoration in it. Yes, that's Zak's head mid-laugh, haha.

Starting the 18th c. the abandoned chateau was used as a prison. Apparently the prisoners passed their time with drawings like these.



An impressively deep well.

There are some rooms that I didn't take pictures of, such as the underwhelming latrine that was really just a boarded up indoor outhouse. I suppose they didn't want tourists doing anything stupid or obscene so they blocked it up. I think it would have been interesting to at least block it up with something see through so we could see the piping systems. I'm not so much inerested in the scatological humor as I am the mechanisms of transporting human waste out of an old, old building... (OK maybe the scatological humor is tickles the five year old in me a little.)

After the tour we had an hour or so for lunch. I was with Aria, Priscilla, and Zak but somehow we got separated at the MONOPRIX that we found. I guess I sort of ran away because I was following my nose; my nose was sniffing out the smells of the MONOPRIX bakery (cheap and reliable--is it un-classy for me to really enjoy MONOPRIX baked goods?). Alas, my nose did not fail me and I found a small bakery at its other entrance where I purchased a Poulet sandwich and a Grille Pomme (A lovely, ordinary apple tart that looks like it's been grilled...AKA has a criss cross pattern of flaky pastry dough over apple tart-y goodness.) I exited from that entrance and decided to sit at the park and consume my Lunch. The street that is adjacent to the Château was quite quiet but just further inside the smaller streets (and in the small park where I sat) things were much livelier. I had a nice time people watching and ended up meeting with other people for the rest of the lunch time.

Depsite tired feet and tired brains (I have a few hypotheses on our group tired-ness one of which I will explain later) we trekked to the metro and went to the Grand Mosquée de Paris. The guide we had did not speak English so our ever so helpful guide Christine, agreed to become impromptu translator. The architecture was quite breathtaking and certainly, especially in the middle of cosmopolitan (in a French way, I suppose) Paris, quite a getaway. The main garden was certainly reminiscent of some sort of exotic desert paradise. See for yourself (kind of):

For an extra cute picture of Jonah in this courtyard, check out the Photobucket Album!


Inside the mosque's library.

And so, we ended our day. For the first time ever, nobody in the group wanted to stay after and go on our own--except the Herbsts! Everyone was thoroughly pooped and ready to retire to our dormitory rooms. After a good rest, myself and a few friends had a lovely evening by the Seine, right by the Notre Dame. Unfortunately, it was partially dampered by an obnoxious flying spit from some hoodlums (I think that's a fair description given the circumstances). Fortunately, it didn't land on anyone. Anyway we hung out by the Seine to relax after studying and thus we concluded another fantastic night doing something we could only do in Paris.

Very quickly (as I have been using lots of words lately--people seem to be more receptive to pictures than words, haha), my hypotheses on our group tiredness:

Travel fatigue is out of the question as it is the second week so I must say that, although our workload is not unbearably intensive, we do get lectured at a lot, and I do feel like we are constantly expected to be learning. Almost everyday, we have lecture, then in the afternoon we have small excursions where we are frequently guided by a tour guide who is presenting information to us that is all fair game for the exam. For me, I try to get as much as out of each excursion and try to pay close attention to everything the guide says (although I do admit the last few trips, due to the cumulative fatigue of this hypothesis, I have been a bit more lax ... aka lazy). Therefore, although we are not actively reading all the time (we don't need to be to be tired and/or overwhelmed with information) we do get very tired. We have lots and lots of free time, but I think a lot of us would feel very guilty if we spent all of that free time napping or even all of it reading instead of exploring Paris. So we explore Paris and then we do our work, but--at least for me, in this second week--I have done a fair amount of relaxing Paris exploring, but little guilt-less relaxing which, combined with constantly being lectured and trying to retain information, equals a very tired bunch.

And now I'm sure you're all tired after reading that. (Sorry, I said it was going to be quick...) Haha! I'm done, I promise. Thanks for reading and/or skimming. :)

P.S. Shout out to birthday cutie, Jasmine! (Yes, this is technically late but let's all pretend this was posted on July 12th, 2008!)