All the News That's Fit to Print

I haven't posted in awhile, and quite a few things have happened since then, so this will probably be a rather long post full of mirth and matter.

Perhaps the most outstanding event of the past two weeks has been my trip to Paris, France! We've been before, so we eschewed the Louvre and walking to the top of the Eiffel Tower in favor of other sights and sounds. Essentially, I did the self-guided Hemingway tour. For those of you who don't know, Hemingway is one of my favorite authors and The Sun Also Rises is my favorite book. I've read it about seven times in less than that many years and can quote directly from the text in most cases. I went to Biarritz during my semester abroad simply because at one point Brett Ashley mentions that someone wanted her to go there, but she told him that she knew too many people in Biarritz. Anyways, the story starts in Paris, and Hemingway uses very real places to set his tale. We stayed in a hotel in Montparnasse near Boulevard St. Germain de Pres. Over the course of the week we visited Le Select (a cafe which Brett Ashley mentions, and one which Hem actually frequented) and ate Croque Monsieurs and had a specialty drink called the Hemingway Sour, the Dome (another cafe), and the bar of the Hotel Crillon (which is where Brett says she will meet Jake Barnes, but doesn't show up-- the Ben Folds song "Love Just Leaves You Bruised" always makes me think of this scene). I also followed around his book A Moveable Feast, walking through the Luxembourg Gardens, and wandering over to 27 Rue de Fleurus, where Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas lived.

My love of expatriot writing doesn't stop with Hemingway though; I also followed, as if it were a guidebook, Shakespeare and Company by Sylvia Beach. Shakespeare and Company was an American bookstore on the Left Bank opened in 1919 and owned by Sylvia Beach. Her memoirs mention people and places and experiences with writers such as Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and most importantly James Joyce. She was the first to publish Ulysses in 1922, when no one else would because it was considered obscene and labeled as erotica. There's currently a Shakespeare and Company in Paris on Rue la Bucherie across from Notre Dame de Paris, but Sylvia's was at 12 Rue de L'Odeon. So of course, we found it. Currently, it is a clothing store for older French women called Moi-Cani, but the woman who owns the store apparently has recognized the importance of her location in literary history, and has bookshelves around the shop with books by all the expatriot writers and the French writers with whom they consorted, and she had made up a fitted long-sleeved T-shirt with a picture of James Joyce and Sylvia Beach standing in the store. Of course, I bought it.

We did other things, too, besides following around dead authors. I remembered from Munich a free English-language walking tour given so that students wouldn't have to choose between a tour and food. In Munich, our guide told us they were expanding out of Germany and into Paris. We looked up Sandeman's (the company) online and found the meeting point for the free tour. It was fantastic. It was about three hours long and we saw most of the famous sites and got fun anecdotes and facts from our New Zealand guide, Gabbie. Additionally, we went to the Rodin Museum, a place I have longed to go for about five years (it was worth it), to the Musee de Luxembourg for a special exhibit of Fillipo and Fillipino Lippi's, to the Invalides to see Napoleon's Tomb, and to Sacre Coeur up in Montmartre. In less elevated sounding excursions, our hotel had a bowling alley next door (Le Bowling Montparnasse) that my mother and I frequented nightly in an effort to watch real French people bowl. I think France is my kind of place as I saw one guy that got a score of over 100.

Perhaps the most interesting and surprising thing to happen in Paris was on Sunday morning; my family went to Cafe les Deux Magots for breakfast and just as we sat down I heard someone call "Abigail, Abigail!" I thought, "They can't mean me!... but then again, Abigail isn't a very French name." Sure enough, it was a friend from William and Mary! His name is Chris, and we were never all that close, but we were at many of the same parties and once ran around with the same set of friends. Amazing to see him in Paris! He told me he was planning on seeing the Louvre and paying a visit to Shakespeare and Company (he took the Joyce class).

The other part of my visit to France was a day-trip to Chartres, which my mother and I took together while my dad was at his business lunch. The train ride to Chartres was only about an hour away, and the town itself boasts a beautiful medieval Gothic cathedral. Honestly, it impressed me, which I find difficult to do after spending a semester studying art and architecture in Florence, then a semester in England living across the street from Bath Abbey. But the Cathedral at Chartres was amazing, truly beautiful. They had a carving of the Annunciation unlike any I have ever seen. Not that it was more beautiful than a Donatello, but something about it moved me more than any other. The town itself reminded me strongly of a French-speaking Bath. It centered around the Cathedral, it had lovely shops and cafes, a city square, museums, and a small-town feel. Plus, very few people spoke any English at all, so I actually got to use my limited knowledge of French! I was very excited about that aspect. Chartres was wonderfully pleasant, and a nice change of pace from the mad-house of Paris.

Not that the mad-house of Paris was all bad-- on the final night my dad took me to the Buddha Bar Paris and we got fantastic drinks in a very ambient setting. My drink tasted hardly alcoholic (though it gave me a bit of a buzz) and had a faint peppery taste. There's a Buddha Bar set to open in Washington D.C. at the end of this year, so I think I may have to make a trip up there to go out with my friends.

And, I suppose, that's the news from Paris. But I've been back in the States for a few days now, and other interesting occurrences have cropped up. The biggest news, I think, is the fact that I have officially gotten a roommate-- Stephen Cole! He moves in in September, and I couldn't be happier. He will take the third floor room and bathroom, help with rent, and generally make life better, as he does. He also told me that he has learned to cook, which I quite appreciate. I can cook in a colonial kitchen, but I'm not much above pasta and rice in a modern one. I will really enjoy having a housemate, I think. It gets very lonely without one, plus it's nice to know that if I fall in the shower and die I won't lie there until my neighbors smell me. But seriously, I'm so excited to have a housemate!

So, that's life over the past few weeks! Working at Bella still, my last day at Wren is the 30th (yay!), and trying to figure out what to do for my birthday-- any suggestions?