After class, students met at King's Cross/St.Pancras station to board the Eurostar train to Paris. We were all anxious to visit this grand city with a huge history.
In London, as in many densely populated cities, there are queues to contend with and lots of waiting around. If you are of the impatient sort, it is really better to read a book or a magazine and edify yourself as Nick does here. Notice that he's flipping through pages of The Economist and not The Daily Mail.
This is not to say that there isn't some merit in cuddling up and reading together, as Joan and Erwin demonstrate here. I guess that Cosmopolitan must be the French word for The Economist.
It is true too, that our students have often gone without enough sleep, given our full schedule of activities and classes. Sometimes, you just have to catch up, no matter where you are. Nick, however, does not need to sleep. Megan and Ana do.
Our hotel chambres in Paris were wonderfully outfitted and decorated.
The servez-vous (that's French for "go get it yourself") breakfast buffet had a good selection and this helped stave off any possible bouts of scurvy, too. Missing from the photo are apple sauce, orange juice, and yogurt. The croissants were one of the reasons why we made this trip, of course. And oh, for the art history, too, right?
Some students were so excited to visit the Louvre museum that they ran ahead through the arch that leads to the pyramidal entrance designed by US architect, I.M. Pei.
Jennifer and Stephanie imagine what it might be like to get crowned by Napoleon. What dress should they wear? What would they say in their acceptance speech? What would Empress Josephine have done?
Ashley and Ana find comfort together in front of Théodore Géricault's, The Raft of the Medusa, which depicted a very tragic naval incident in 1807. Many of the paintings in the Grande Format Salle are huge.
A brief regathering of some of the troops, before heading out to explore another part of Paris. Brian, in front, was struck by the beauty of the paintings as well as by the red-orange auto-focus-assist light from another camera.
Street scenes like this can still be found in Paris.
Bikes have become very popular again, and we saw many old bikes from previous decades resurrected and put back into useful service, alongside the new public bike rental program instituted earlier this year, all in the name of helping to relieve traffic congestion.
Brocantes (second-hand items from the attic for sale) are still held during weekends throughout many locations around the country. This one, near the historic rue Mouffetard, was letting go of a framed portrait, a lot of glassware, and a birdcage. The origin of this street goes back to when it was part of the road from Rome to Paris.
Ms. Reber and Mr. Timmerman have the Tuileries park (designed in 1664 by Le Notre, who also did the garden in Versailles) all to themselves, or so they would like to believe. We'll just let them go on thinking that way.
Our visit to the Musée d'Orsay permitted our group exclusive access so that we were able to avoid the crowds. Just kidding. This is a photo of a scale model of this renovated train station that is now a museum. The fifth floor had an exciting collection of Impressionist paintings and sculpture. This must be the reason why we came to Paris!
Ms. Reber (left, in black) and Mary (right, in purple) both try to photograph the maddening crowd inside the Musée d'Orsay as part of a photography assignment to capture people in a public space in the manner of photographer William Klein. It's not as easy as it looks.
Although the Eiffel Tower has been photographed a million times, this is the first time a UFO has been captured circling the tilted structure, at least to my knowledge. No Adobe Photoshop was used in the creation of this photograph. Photography students, can you do any better? To paraphrase recent President-Elect Obama, "Yes, You Can." So send me your "take" of this favorite site.
Two Foothill-De Anza students got to Paris long before our group did. On the right is Pierrick, who heads Marketing and Communications for a French company and on the left is Alexis, a photographer and website designer. Both attended Foothill and De Anza Colleges respectively, and are now married and living and working in Paris. Isn't it romantic? They met us under the Eiffel Tower (and isn't that romantic, too?) and later guided us up the steps to the Trocadero area so that I could make that tilted photo of the tower with the circling UFO from afar. Then they took our hungry group of students to a restaurant that specialized in crepes from the Brittany area for a late snack in Montparnasse. After trying the salty caramel crepes and special cidre (cider), Erwin is a new convert and swears he will return to that restaurant again, no matter how long it takes. "Thanks," and "Bon Courage" to Pierrick and Alexis! (See Alexis' website: http://www.bohemebox.com)
OK, we confess. We all came to Paris for the café and pastries. Au revoir, Paris! A bientôt!
