Place des Vosges et d'autres choses

I've decided to just skip ahead and ignore the last few days because I really want to stay in the moment. Oh, well.

(Deep breath, starting fresh.)

First, the professor took us on a walk through Paris. We saw where Baudelaire lived, the palais royal, the passages of Paris, and some other awesome stuff. This is a photo of the park in the palais royal. So picturesque.

Today I also finally got to really walk in the Marais, a neighborhood that I've heard amazing things about and that is many people's favorite place in Paris. It has the old, winding streets of le vieux Paris, more intimate than the huge boulevards put in by Haussman. I was not disappointed. The streets are winding and cobblestoned, with tons of vintage stores, boutiques, boulangeries, cafes, bars...and all are designed in either a supremely adorable, nostalgic way or are teeming with posh, graphic images. Somehow, this array of stores and such works together to create a neighborhood that is the Paris that I've always imagined. There are certain streets that are just for pedestrians, so they give the quartier an ambiance of being a village within the city. We walked and walked, and finally ended up at Place des Vosges, a sort of park with fountains that issurrounded on four sides by adorable cafes and galleries, which in turn line the first floor of perfectly Parisian buildings. I loved it, to say the least. Once at the Place, I did a charcoal drawing of one of the fountains. Later, we got gelato and planned our day for tomorrow. Perfection.

And tonight, we are meeting at some bars and going clubbing until the metro starts running again at 5 am. Mind you, this is Paris, so everything starts later, so this is actually not as crazy a feat as it may sound. A demain!