For once it was sunny this weekend in Rennes, a rare occurrence normally and a minor miracle in the spring. I have not worn my winter jacket since the middle of February and even though my host mother keeps warning me that the weather will grow colder again before we really hit spring, I am pretending the winter is officially over. Still, I will go back in time long enough to finish telling the story of our recent school trip.
The next day, after spending the morning crisscrossing the Latin Quarter on a tour that showed us the houses where writers used to live, which included Hemingway, Orwell and Joyce. Then it was on to the Louvre. |
The Louvre was naturally one of my favorite parts of the trip. It is huge and we saw only a very small fraction, but what we did see had me bouncing up and down like a little child as I dragged E.C. through every single gallery of Dutch painting (that was open- 12 were closed). We also saw 19th century French works, some Greek and Roman statues and some Italian art from the late Middle Ages.
This year, thanks to one of our history teachers at SYA who organized the visit, a group got the opportunity to visit inside the Assemblee Nationale in Paris. Think of it as the equivalent of the US House of Representatives. We got a tour of the building and I got to hold one of the laws that just got passed and read through it a little. It must have been about four inches thick. Considering how much we have studied the French government, it was interesting to see it in person.
I am going to end our Paris trip here before I end up writing a whole other blog post. I will end with two pictures, one of all the locks couples leave attached to the Pont des Arts in Paris and the other of the view of Paris from Mont. Martre.