A reunion and a museum challenge double header

After hot chocolates to cap off our lunch, I bid farewell to my weekend guest, a visitor I'd long been inviting but hadn't entirely expected to show up: Becky, my MIT Course 20 (Biological Engineering) p-set buddy. You have to understand, regular homework partners at MIT form a very special sort of bond. Becky and I spent many sleepless nights tooling together. And as our similar desire to start the homework early and really get to the heart of every question tied us, we became an inseparable homework duo. Though we'd always gotten on remarkably well, the workload back at MIT left it such that we got together for social purposes less than five times during our years on campus (and we were so proud of actually finding the "friend time" on those few occasions!). As such, this weekend was unquestionably the most amount of "friend time" we'd ever managed, and it was overdue after a (welcome) total lack of sleepless nights tooling together over the past three years.

Although our weekend began Friday with the glamor of French supermarket shopping and home cooking à la grad school, things progressed from there.

At least you couldn't complain about the view during Friday night's dinner ;)

On Saturday we literally traversed the city, northward on foot and back south that evening by vélib, Paris's public bikes.

Image from lavieenclose.com.br

Trace our trajectory on this map of Paris: On foot we began in the 15th near Montparnasse, walked to the 6th and across into the 5th, through the Ile de la Cite (home of Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle), over to République at the border of the 3rd/10th/11th, and up to Montmartre in the 18th. Our evening bike ride home took us just near the canals in the east, back across Ile de la Cité, over to (and through!) the Eiffel Tower, and back home past Pasteur.

In short, our Saturday consisted of shopping in real Parisian boutiques, a stop at L'Eglise Sainte-Chapelle and the Conciergie, a former castle-turned-prison-turned-national-monument (which was on my Museum Challenge to-do list), Irish coffees at the Chat Noir, and an evening's tour of Montmartre.

The Sainte-Chapelle on the Ile de la Cité, our first historically relevant stop, was built between 1242 and 1248 to house the relics of the Passtion of Christ, including the Crown of Thorns, whose aquisition actually cost more than this entire church. (I'd love to know who sold the king that deal...) This church is unquestionably my favorite in Paris. The upper chapel displays 1,113 scenes across 15 stained glass windows that tell different Bible stories from Genesis through the resurrection. The rose window, to complete the room, depicts the apocalypse. Admittedly, it's pretty hard to follow the stories when you check out the church, and from 2008 through 2014 a massive restoration continually leaves some of the panels under cover. Nonetheless, the sheer brilliance of light and colors that hits the visitor when emerging from a narrow spiral stone staircase into the upper chapel are enough of an experience to merit the wait. The sensory overload of the church shocks me every time.

While still on the Ile de la Cité, seat of the French monarchy from the 6th to 14th centuries, we checked out the aforementioned Conciergerie. The building was once used for governing, then served as a prison (where a certain Marie Antoinette was held in her final few months), and today is preserved as a museum and national monument. Mostly, a tour through the site teaches about the history of the French revolution and the role the prison served through those pivotal years in French history. Becky and I were particularly wowed by a guillotine blade on display... a used guillotine blade...

Better yet, here's the visual summary of our first day on the town:

Becky and my Saturday in Paris

On Sunday we went out to tackle yet another site on my Museum Challenge to-do list: the catacombs. (The part that's legal to visit, which comprises only a small subset of the catacombs which run underneath much of Paris.) The catacombs became an ossuary at the end of the 1700s and continued to be filled until 1860. There are about 6 million skeletons stored in the catacombs of Paris, dug out from overcrowded graveyards. The entry to the ossuary had a delightfully creepy label overhead: "Arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la mort" : "Stop! This is the empire of death!" In case that wasn't enough, heavy quotes were engraved on signs lined with femurs and skulls, like the one pictured below which reads, "Ils furent ce que nous sommes; Poussière, jouet du vent; Fragiles commes des hommes; Faibels comme le néant !" : "They were what we are; Dust, toys of the wind; Fragile as men; Weak as nothingness." The duration of our visit wasn't enough for the reality of how many deceased human beings, the remains of so many lost and completely forgotten lives, were stored underground lining these underground walkways. It's a place to see, but unlike Versailles or the Musee d'Orsay, it's not one to see over and again.

The delightfully creepy catacombs of Paris

Emerging back out into the sunlight, we head up to the Luxembourg Gardens for a thorough tour before hopping on vélibs home to cook and pretty ourselves up for an evening at the Caveau de la Huchette, a jazz club I recently discovered at the end of my tenure as a doctoral student representative (effectively, social coordinator). For a mere 10€ (student rate, otherwise 14€ on Fri/Sat, 12€ Sun-Thurs), you are admitted to a cozy bar that leads down to a wine cellar-like cave with a small stage and an open dance floor surrounded by scattered seating. The building has been standing since before 1550. It was once home to the Knights Templar and later served as a secret Masonic lodge. The club claims to be the first jazz club in Paris. Here, along with Peter who'd joined us for dinner, we caught a live performance. There were even some guest tap dancers who performed a couple call-and-response acts with the band. The Caveau de la Huchette amounts much in part to a clubbing experience from another generation, and how the regulars can dance! A few professionals even made appearances, including a pair who had us on our feet left our mouths gaping.

A Sunday afternoon in the Luxembourg Gardens followed by an evening at the underground jazz club the Caveau de la Huchette

Deep in the Caveau de la Huchette, it's easy to lose track of time. Before we knew it, the clock had struck (and past) midnight, and our vélibs were quickly turning into pumpkins. We emerged into a midnight rain, paying the price for a weekend of beautiful weather. After a soggy ride home, we turned in, wrapping up our very first weekend together without a single break for tooling (even if grad students can't exactly afford that... woops).