france – L'ensemble du jour

March 5, 2020 – Meilin’s Day Off (OOTD #617)

Published on December 21, 2020December 20, 2020 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

You ever have your classes cancelled because of a massive strike taking place outside your school’s main classroom building?

I hadn’t either, until this year. In truth, I don’t even know what the strike was about — as much as I could gather, it wasn’t actually connected to the transport strike that was going on when I first arrived in Paris. I think it may have had something to do with Sciences Po’s student government?

At any rate, when I woke up on March 5, I found an email in my inbox from Sciences Po announcing that classes had been cancelled for the day. I hadn’t been planning on doing anything that day (other than school), so I was pleasantly surprised to have a day to myself.

At this point, I’d been in Paris for going on two months, but I still didn’t feel as though I’d really had time to explore the city, at least since January. Most of February was spent trying to get accustomed to life as a Sciences Po student and the rest of my time was spent backpacking through Central Europe, so I hadn’t had a chance to simply hang out in Paris.

I texted my friends to see if they wanted to hang out, since we hadn’t really had a chance to see each other since our winter break trip. We had become so close during our travels, but we mostly didn’t really have classes together, so this day off was exactly what we needed in order to catch up.

We decided to visit the Musée de l’Orangerie, one of Paris’s many famous art museums. It’s not the Louvre, and it’s not the Musée d’Orsay, so if you only have a few days in Paris, I can understand why you’d skip it. In terms of famous, well-known pieces, it really only has a few of Monet’s “Water Lilies.” In fact, while we were there, it was free admission for everyone because they were doing construction on half of the building, and “Water Lilies” was literally the only exhibit that was open.

After the museum, we stopped into the Angelina pâtisserie, one of the famous pastry shops of Paris. I’ll admit — I hadn’t really made any effort to try out very many pastry or bakery shops while I was in Paris, even though I knew that’s one of the most famous elements of French cuisine and culture. For one, I’m just not really much of a fan of bakery goods, like cakes or breads. And secondly, I thought — like I thought about many things I hadn’t seen in Paris in early March — that I had two months still in Paris. If I hadn’t yet tried every famous pastry shop according to TripAdvisor, I figured I had time.

Perhaps ironically, one of the main subjects of discussion among my friends and I while we were enjoying our cakes at the Angelina was COVID-19. At this point, the first outbreaks in Italy had made their way into the news. We all remarked on how lucky we were to have visited Venice during Carnevale, where the first outbreak in Europe had occurred, and that none of us had gotten sick. We shared theories that perhaps the bad cold that a few of us had come down with after we got home was really coronavirus, before laughing it off and agreeing that it was probably just exhaustion.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this was actually the second-to-last time I went out in Paris and took pictures for my blog. That’s right — there’s only one more Paris post to go (and a few posts about a short weekend trip) to Luxembourg. A little over a week later from this little outing with my friends to the Musée de l’Orangerie and the Angelina, I received the email from my university president that I was being evacuated and sent home — but that’s another story.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life during my semester abroad in the Paris, France. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest,Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Dress: Thrifted (A Buffalo Exchange in Washington DC)

March 3, 2020 – Chez Moi (OOTD #616)

Published on December 16, 2020December 15, 2020 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

It sure felt good to be back in Paris after traveling Europe for a week.

It was definitely weird to have only gone to school for about a week (two, if you count the Welcome Programme as “school”) before going on vacation. In total, I’d been in Europe for well over a month at this point, but I’d actually only attended classes for a small fraction at that point. I figured, though, I would have 2-3 months still to get into a routine of going to class and coming home and maybe going out sometimes or traveling during the weekends. Even if my life up until early March hadn’t been terribly “normal” I thought it soon would be. Jokes on me, I guess.

By March, coronavirus had become a relatively big story in both Europe and the US, and I was beginning to consider the possibility of getting sent home. Still, it seemed like a pretty far-fetched option at that point. Worst case scenario, I thought maybe I’d get stuck in Paris and be unable to travel on the weekends anymore.

Early March (or at least what was left of March until I eventually got sent home) was devoted to getting accustomed to life in Paris. Despite having lived in my apartment there on the 14e arrondissement, it hadn’t felt like I’d actually spent much time there.

So I set about trying to fix that. One day, after class, I took the reading I’d been assigned for school with me to a small park about a five minute walk from my apartment. It was late afternoon, so the light began fading earlier than I might’ve liked, but it was nice to study somewhere other than my apartment or the cramped Sciences Po library (never thought I’d miss Hesburgh Library) for a little while. The weather was mild enough that I was comfortable in just this light leather jacket.

As I was leaving to go home for dinner, I had what I think might’ve been my first instance of coronavirus-related racism. There was a (white) woman who’d parked herself at the entrance of the park and was asking people for money as they left, and as I was packing up, I dreaded having to walk by and ignore her. Weirdly though, as I approached, she took one look at me and crossed to the opposite end of the street. I distinctly remember making eye contact with her before she did so.

Microaggressions are stupid and awful for many reasons, but one of the worst is that you can never really know if what just happened actually had anything to do with race. It’s like being gaslit by yourself. By March, I’d already heard stories about Asian people being mistreated because of coronavirus-related fears, and I felt as though I got a few lingering glances on the metro when I coughed, so that’s what I wondered immediately had been going through the woman’s mind — but I’ll never know.

Turtleneck: Express

Skirt: Thrifted (Poshmark)

Jacket: Thrifted (Free’p’star Paris)

Tuesday Musings – February 2020 Bullet Journal Spread

Published on December 15, 2020December 15, 2020 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

I promise, I’m really making an effort to get caught up on these blog posts.

It’s pretty difficult actually trying to wrack my brain to remember how I was thinking/feeling months ago. February 2020 was a vastly different world from December 2020. For context, in case you’re reading this later, in February 2020 the coronavirus was mostly just a far-off news story from China, and in December 2020, the first batches of the coronavirus vaccine have just started being distributed in the US. Lots has changed.

I’m really quite happy with how my February bullet journal spread turned out. Can you believe I actually brought it (and my art supplies — including a small pouch of markers and my erasable pens) along with me all through my winter break travels? I probably didn’t need to do that — in truth, I likely only worked on it once in my AirBnB in Prague. Mostly, it was just extra weight I lugged around.

Unfortunately, I’m at home right now, and I left the bullet journal which contains February, March, and April’s spreads back at my apartment at school, and I have no pictures of my February spread saved. I thought I was smart — I’d learnt my lesson from having unnecessarily carried around my mostly-unused bullet journal through 8 countries! I guess I misjudged again.

I debated whether I should make this post or not without pictures, but having my blog in chronological order is pretty important to me (which is part of the reason why I’m writing about February in December). I figured I’d rather have something incomplete go live in the correct order than wait a month until I’m able to go back to my apartment and then write this blog, messing up the chronological nature of my site.

I’ll go back and add pictures of my February spread later, when I’m able to photograph it, but for now, I’ll describe it: since February 2020 for me was mostly characterized by my Sciences Po winter break travels, I themed it after the places I visited: Frankfurt, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Ljubljana, Venice, and Toledo. Ironically, what visually ties each of these cities together on my title page — and I never once took a train during my travels! We pretty much only took buses, with some Ubers and shuttles and a plane ride or two thrown in. I guess if you count metros or cable cars as trains, then I rode in a few trains?

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life studying abroad in Paris. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5,

Pens: Pilot Frixion

Markers:Prismacolor Brush Tip and Copic Brush Tip

February 8, 2020 – La Campagne de Champagne (OOTD #607)

Published on December 2, 2020December 2, 2020 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

For my non-French speaking readers, the title here means “champagne country” — of course, “champagne” is a pretty obvious direct translation, but “campagne,” which means “country” or “countryside,” is less so. They rhyme, which is fun — making them a good combination for a fun blog title.

Once again, I have a blog that features a short day trip that I took over the weekend to get away from Paris. I promise, I’ll get back to Paris soon — though it may take several more posts. Up next is my week-long “ski holiday” from school, and I’ve got seven countries worth of photos to talk about before I work my way back around to home base.

This time, the second weekend after classes began, my friends and I visited Reims, a small town a short bus ride outside of Paris in the middle of Champagne country. I actually didn’t really want to go at first — I was feeling really under the weather, and I knew everyone would wan to go on a champagne tour, and I had pretty much completely lost my sense of taste and smell from congestion.

Or at least, I thought it was just the congestion at the time — but looking back at February 2020 from my perspective writing now in December 2020, I’m not convinced I didn’t actually have COVID. Back then, COVID was just a distant news story from China. It had barely touched Europe, or at least it wouldn’t in any kind of substantial capacity for at least another few weeks, and I’m not even sure we’d recorded our first case yet in the US. I had a stuffy nose and a cough and a headache, but at the time, there was no reason for me to believe it was anything outside of a regular cold that came from traveling to a new country and being exposed to new germs. Simpler times, I suppose.

Whether it was COVID or not, I guess I’ll never know. I did decide to travel to Reims anyway, despite feeling a little ill (not something I would ever do now!) because I didn’t want to miss out on a group bonding trip. I’d enjoyed our trip to Bordeaux quite a bit, though I thought the group was slightly too big. The cohort for Reims was a little smaller and more intimate — perfect for traveling. There were enough of us that you always had someone to talk to, but small enough that it wasn’t like pulling teeth to make a decision or dragging our feet hauling a massive crowd around.

We’d had the pleasure in Bordeaux of being able to take a guided walking tour in the morning before our wine tour, but there was no such thing in Reims. Instead, one of our friends, Liam, who’d done an exchange in Reims when he was in high school, took us around to the major sights. We saw a church (also called Notre Dame, interestingly), a castle museum, and stopped in a bakery for croissants — typical European city tourist things.

In the afternoon, we went on a champagne tour, the main attraction of Reims. Unfortunately, I still didn’t have my full sense of taste and smell, so I wasn’t able to enjoy the actual tasting quite as much as I would have liked. I’m no connoisseur of drinks though, so I’m not sure how much of a difference it would have made. All champagne kind of tastes the same to me.

Don’t tell the people of Reims I said that, though. Their city really was lovely — It wasn’t crawling with tourists, unlike Paris or even, to a lesser extent, Bordeaux. Reims reminded me in many ways of Vichy, another small-ish town that I’d visited back at the start of 2019. That feels so long ago now.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life during my semester abroad in the Paris, France. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Sweater: Thrifted (Free’p’star Paris)

Jacket: Thrifted (Free’p’star Paris)

Skirt: Abercrombie

February 3, 2020 – A Hill to Die On (OOTD #606)

Published on December 1, 2020December 3, 2020 by lensembledujour1 Comment

Montmartre rivals the Great Wall of China I think in the amount of steps I had to climb at a tourist spot.

Well, actually, come to think of it, there was a temple in Nepal that was supposedly 1000 steps to the top that I tried to climb, but it ended up getting dark before we made it up more than a few hundred. To be honest, I’m not sure I could’ve made it up all 1000, so I was grateful for the sunset giving me a valid excuse to bow out from the hike.

This was actually the second time I visited Montmartre within my first week or two in Paris — the first time, though, it was dark and I was there with my Welcome Programme group to visit a bar. I didn’t even bother trying to see Sacré Coeur, the grand church atop the hill, because I figured there wasn’t anything to see in the night.

The second time, though, I visited in the day — a much more appropriate time to visit, in my opinion. For one, you’re at much less risk of tripping and twisting your ankle as you climb up the steps. And secondly, you can actually see the beautiful surrounding neighborhood.

I wouldn’t call Montmartre the most spectacular view of Paris, as you can’t clearly see the Eiffel Tower, which is, of course, the most famous landmark of the Parisian skyline. Unfortunately, however, since my time in Paris was cut short due to COVID and I wasn’t able to make it to all of the tourist spots I’d wanted to visit (including the top of the Arc de Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower, where some of the best skyline views of the city can supposedly be had), Montmartre ended up being the only skyline view I got.

More impressive than the skyline view (or the Sacré Coeur Basilica, in my opinion — Sacré Coeur seemed to be more spectacular from the outside than I think it really was inside), was the cute little artist community that the neighborhood is known for. People talk about the Montmartre area of Paris for its small town feel in the middle of a big city, and I think that description is deserved.

I wouldn’t call Paris a “hustle and bustle” kind of a city — not like New York — but it certainly can be overwhelming at times. It can be crowded and dirty in places and full of tourists. That was what I liked best probably about my short visit to Bordeaux the previous weekend — that I was away from the business of the city. While Montmartre was certainly still busy and full of tourists (what a world pre-COVID times were), it still felt a little more charming and cozy than downtown Paris. Paris is beautiful and elegant and glamorous — but “cozy” it really is not, save for a few places like Montmartre.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life during my semester abroad in the Paris, France. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Top: Amazon

Jacket: Thrifted (Free’p’star Paris)

Skirt: Forever21

February 1, 2020 – Never Bored in Bordeaux (OOTD #605)

Published on August 17, 2020 by lensembledujour5 Comments

I took my first short day trip outside of Paris the weekend after classes began.

Normally, I wouldn’t opt to do a ton of traveling right after I’d arrived in a new city (remember — I’d arrived in Paris just two weeks prior), but my Welcome Programme friends wanted to travel, and I wanted to make sure I kept up my ties with them. The first few weeks in a new location/school are a critical period — I don’t normally adhere to a FOMO (fear of missing out) mindset, but when I’m trying to make and keep new friends, I find it’s often best to take people up on as many invitations as possible.

Sometimes though, that can be exhausting. In the case of this Bordeaux trip, it meant getting on a night bus at 10pm on a Friday night after I’d just finished the first week of classes so that I could arrive at 6am Saturday morning in Bordeaux. This was my first experience traveling via night bus — and not my last. Keep that in mind for later.

The morning in Bordeaux was spent walking around the actual city center with a free walking tour (interestingly, I believe it was with the same walking tours group as I took a tour with in Jerusalem? Small world). My friends and I got lunch at an Italian pizza place in the afternoon, and then we hopped on a bus for a winery tour — the actual main attraction of Bordeaux.

I’ve gone on many bourbon distillery tours in my life, but I believe this was only second time (the first one being in Frascati, just outside of Rome) at a winery. I’ll be honest — I’m not super interested in the actual process of manufacturing or bottling wine. I’m mostly just there for the free tasting at the end and the pretty locations for photos. That I will say winery tours seem to be better at than distillery tours — the pretty locations for photo-taking. French châteaux in the countryside are admittedly a little more romantic than what Kentucky has to offer.

In the evening, we left Bordeaux via the fast train, so at least we didn’t have another 12 hour bus ride to top off an already exhausting day. I made it back to my apartment in Paris before the last Metro on Ligne 4 left for Porte d’Orléans at 10pm.

I didn’t get a ton of work done that day, but since it was the very beginning of the year, there wasn’t much to do anyway. As they say, “less study, more abroad.”

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this semester abroad in France. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Jacket: Free’p’star Paris (thrifted)

Sweater: H&M

Blouse: H&M

Skirt: Pitaya

Sunday Musings – January 2020 Bullet Journal Spread

Published on August 16, 2020December 15, 2020 by lensembledujour1 Comment

Ah yes, of course, the most relevant time to be writing about my January bullet journal spread — mid-August.

I’ve vacillated a bit on what to do with my bullet journal posts on this blog — if I should post them more in line with the actual time of year they correspond to, or if I should post them at the same time as my OOTD posts from that month go up — ultimately, I’ve opted for the latter. Hence, this post going up at the same time as my January 2020 OOTD posts, despite the publication date now being August 2020. It’s not ideal, but it’s what I’m going to work with until I get caught up again in my blogs.

January 2020’s theme was an idyllic French kitchen. I drew it up before I left for Paris, so unfortunately, it does not match the actual kitchen I had in my Parisian apartment (though they honestly share the same aesthetic).

I had originally wanted the theme of January 2020’s bullet journal to be Paris in general (think drawings of the Eiffel Tower, cafés, les Champs-Elysées, etc.), but I decided to go with something a little less “on the nose.” I figured that I’d probably get enough of Paris in my daily life; maybe I didn’t need it to feature so prominently in my stationery as well.

I was also afraid to make my bullet journal theme Paris before I’d even arrived in the city in case I didn’t like it after all. That fear, of course, ended up being unwarranted — Paris was a lovely city, and though it took me a little bit to warm up to (as do most places in the world), I was getting to be fairly comfortable in it by the end of January, after I’d been there for about two weeks.

There’s also the chance my opinion is a little tinted by nostalgia now, seven months later, because I miss Paris so much. Looking back at my bullet journal from January literally feels like a lifetime ago. Even though now, as of writing this post, I’m back at Notre Dame again and life feels like it’s slowly picking up the pace into a steady rhythm after several months of semi-isolation at home, it still seems so foreign to me and look at my January calendar spread and see all the trips and meetings I had planned. Pre-COVID Meilin really was .

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this semester in Paris. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5,

Pens: Pilot Frixion

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip and Copic Brush Tip

January 28, 2020 – Shakespeare in Love (OOTD #604)

Published on August 1, 2020August 1, 2020 by lensembledujour3 Comments

Wait, this isn’t a restaurant chain in Lexington, KY.

For context, there are some restaurants in my hometown called “Shakespeare and Co.” that serve cute brunch foods. Apparently, they have really good vegan options, so when my vegan friends come to town, I often go.

The real Shakespeare and Co., however, is an old bookshop in Paris. I’m not actually sure where I heard of it first — was it my freshman English class? Was it one of the various French movies I watched for extra credit but never really understood? It’s just one of those things that I know I know, but I don’t know how I know — you know?

On Tuesday, the last day before classes began, my new friend, Hannah, and I decided to do some shopping, with the specific intent of visiting some thrift stores. We’d heard it alluded to by our Welcome Programme leader, and Hannah had actually visited it before, but I hadn’t yet made it there. It sounded like heaven to me — an entire section of town devoted to vintage and thrift shops? Sounds like my cup of tea.

Of all of the neighborhoods in Paris, I think I visited Le Marais the most frequently, after my own neighborhood and the neighborhood Sciences Po is in. Le Marais is the proverbial *bohemian* part of town, akin to Shoreditch in London or Wicker Park in Chicago. It’s home to a thriving gay community, arts community, and of course, lots of wonderful vintage shops.

My favorite was Free’p’star. No, I don’t know why it’s called that. All I know is that it was an amazing store — I don’t like the phrase “happy place,” but that’s probably what I would call it.

There were actually two Free’p’stars right across the street from each other — again, don’t know why. They both had similar stocks — not that that means anything, when I’m pretty sure they sold just about any kind of clothing imaginable. I can’t say they had a very consistent theme, beyond “used French clothes.”

But the thing about “used French clothes” is that they’re much nicer than used American clothes — much nicer than what you’d find at a Goodwill. French people, especially Parisian French people, are a fashionable bunch. When they get rid of clothes, what they get rid of is still pretty nice.

The best part of Free’p’star was the massive 1 euro bargain bin at the back of the store. Everything in the bin was 1 euro — no lie.

You’d often have to fight a crowd just to stand at the bargain bin and sift through its treasures. As soon as someone moved in position slightly, you had to be prepared to elbow your way in — and if you were standing at the bin already, you had to be prepared for someone to sneak next to you as soon as you shifted your feet. It was competitive — people would start stacks to get clothes out of their way as they hunted, and someone else would come along behind them and start shifting through the other person’s stack of refuse, creating their own stack in the process.

But there was some really nice stuff to be found, if you were willing to do some treasure hunting. As it turns out, that’s exactly my kind of thing. My mother, on the other hand, who hates the disorganized nature of even a store like TJ Maxx, would have taken one look inside Free’p’star and turned around and walked out.

After Le Marais, Hannah and I visited the famous Shakespeare and Co. across the river. There were signs requesting that tourists not take pictures inside, which I mostly heeded. I did get plenty of pictures outside though.

To my surprise, Shakespeare and Co., sold almost exclusively English language books. I’m not sure what I expected out of a bookstore named for the most famous English writer in history, but I was hoping for a chance to check out some French books. That was why I was in Paris, after all — to learn French.

Thankfully, Gibert Jaune in the Latin Quarter was able to scratch that itch. There were several Gibert Jaune storefronts at the same intersection, so it took Hannah and I a moment to figure out which store was best for us, as each store was devoted to a different genre of books. After wandering around aimlessly in the nonfiction store and then the science fiction/fantasy store, we finally came across the discount books store.

I picked up copies of L’étranger by Albert Camus and Vol au-dessus d’un nid du coucou by Ken Kesey, a French translation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I figured I needed something other than Harry Potter et le prisonnier d’Azkaban to read on the Metro on my way to school in order to look like an authentic Parisian.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this semester abroad in the Paris, France. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Jacket: A vintage shop in Budapest (thrifted)

Dress: Francesca’s

January 27, 2020 – I’m in Louvre (OOTD #603)

Published on July 27, 2020December 1, 2020 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

Yeah, the Louvre was pretty cool. It was so cool I don’t even have any jokes to make about it, beyond the pun-based title of this blog.

As I’ve mentioned in my last few blogs, I had quite a lot of time to kill in between my arrival in France and my actual first day of classes. It was around two weeks, actually. About one of those two weeks was devoted to the surprisingly not awful Welcome Programme, and the remaining days I spent exploring my new city.

By some dumb luck, I didn’t start classes until Wednesday the first week of school. My Mondays were clear anyway (though they didn’t remain clear — more on that scheduling nightmare in a later blog), and my Tuesday class got cancelled. That left me with half the week to try to keep myself distracted from the anxiety of starting new school in a whole different country.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too hard. Owing to the absolutely exhausting job of making as many friends as possible during the Welcome Programme, I was invited to spend the afternoon with two students from Boston University after they finished up their morning classes. I gratefully accepted — not only is it always really nice to be included in people’s plans, but it also gave me something to do so I didn’t make myself sick from nerves in anticipation of my first classes.

We actually didn’t even intend to go to the Louvre — in fact, we had planned on going to one of the other super famous French museums, the musée d’Orsay. We’d all gotten to visit the musée d’Orsay very briefly during the Welcome Programme, but it was just a rushed hour-long guided tour, and I think we were able eager to go back and set a more leisurely pace. In fact, I have no pictures from that first visit at all because of how fast it went by.

However, the musée d’Orsay was closed that rainy Monday afternoon, and in wracking our brains for other famous indoor Parisian sites we knew of that we could visit on a Monday, we naturally settled upon the Louvre.

I say “settled” as if it was some great disappointment to visit the Louvre over the d’Orsay. Far from it.

There are some tourist sites that don’t live up to the hype — in fact, I’d say that a lot of famous tourist sites don’t live up to the hype. The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen is kinda lame. Big Ben in London has never not been completely obscured my construction every time I’ve visited. The Washington Monument in DC is kind of neat from a distance when it pierces the skyline but up close it’s really just a big stick.

The Louvre is awesome. Even if you don’t like art, I think the Louvre is awesome. It was the old palace of the Bourbon family, when the king for wanted to be in Paris to be more connected to political affairs rather than hidden away in his Versailles estate. Even if you think the old paintings are dusty and dull, just wandering the old palace is entertainment enough. I’d liken it to the Vatican Museums in Rome — yeah, the art is neat if you’re into that sort of thing (and I am!) but there’s a lot more to take in as well.

But yes — everything you’ve heard about the Mona Lisa is true. It’s tiny. The room that it’s in is crowded with people (and you have to remember — I was there on a rainy Monday afternoon. In January. In the middle of a massive city-wide transportation strike. It was hardly peak season, and that room was still jam packed. I can’t imagine what it’s like in the summer). As a painting, it’s underwhelming to put it kindly.

My personal favorite work in the gallery was Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberté guidant le peuple,” or “Liberty Leading the People.” For a long time, I wanted a print of it to hang in my bathroom, owing to the fact that it was used for the cover of my favorite Coldplay Album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. During that time, I also had a pretty intense Les Misérables phase — and so anything French Revolution-themed seemed col to me.

This was my one and only time I got to visit the Louvre. Like the Eiffel Tower, like Versailles, like the musée d’Orsay — I thought I’d go back. It was a given, in my mind: how on earth could I spend four months in Paris and not go back to the Louvre to explore it more thoroughly? As a student of the EU, I even got free admission! It’s the Louvre, arguably the most famous art museum in the world. Of course I’d be back.

Sweater: Forever21

Blouse: Banana Republic

Scarf: My Aunt Denise

Trousers: Altar’d State

January 25, 2020 – Bus Tour de France (OOTD #602)

Published on July 26, 2020December 1, 2020 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

I really wouldn’t say that a tour bus is the best way to experience Paris.

I almost didn’t even go because even before I took the bus tour, I was pretty certain that it wasn’t the sort of thing for me. I was also absolutely exhausted from the night before — Friday had been the last day of the Welcome Programme (well, technically, the bus tour was the final event, but it was optional), and I was out late the previous evening at a club.

What ultimately convinced me to go was that I figured that, as a bus tour, I could sit there and look out the window most of the time. I love long train rides, and I thought, if nothing else, a bus tour of Paris would allow me to see some of the tourist sites without moving my feet. I just needed a big sun hat and plastic sunglasses and I could be a proper Asian tourist lady.

What I didn’t count on with this tour, though, was that the bus was mostly just a vessel for us to get from site to site — from there, there was actually quite a bit of walking. It was hardly a hike — honestly, I walked more on my first day in Paris and in Versailles — but I think when combined with how tired I was from the previous day (and the whole week in general), it ended up being a lot.

My social battery was also running out. I’m truly still shocked that I managed to be so extroverted during the whole of Welcome Weekend. I went to almost event, I accepted every invitation, I made an effort to be friendly and outgoing even after I was semi-comfortable in my established group of friends. I don’t normally subscribe to fomo — that is, the “fear of missing out” — but this time, I did.

And I’m glad I did. Though by the end of the week, that bus tour (followed by going to a café with friends later in the afternoon, and then going to a friend’s apartment after that, and then to dinner that night with even more friends) was absolutely draining, I think it was necessary. Compared to my semester in Washington DC, where I ended up regretting turning down a few early invitations because it meant it took me a bit longer to establish a group of friends, I started the semester in Paris with a pretty strong group. I mean, I’m sure there was also luck involved — sometimes, groups just don’t clique and there’s nothing you can do about it — but, given how my time in Paris was ultimately cut short, I’m so grateful that I spent as much time as I could early on with such a great group of people.