hiiiiii ...
we havent done anything huge yet today; last night we had a class on napoleon and how he contributed to paris that we see now - really really interesting; sylvie is a great teacher she really knows what she is talking about; apparently paris was a crappy city before the 19th century (which is what we are studying;) it was dirty and smelly with no buildings; then after the reovlution and a change of heaps of governments, napolean took power; he was from sicily and apparently was a crazy man (i think he was pretty cool)
here are some things about napoleon
- he was very smart
- slept only 4 hours a night
- great memory - knew everything about hi cabinet
- misogynist (this is the part i don't like about him grrr)
- he wasnt very religious
he had this idea of paris being a great city and he built basically all the monuments we see now (napoleon the 3rd finish this off - but we will get to him later in the trip)
so the paris we see now was created by napoleon; a lot of the buildings he created emulate the architecture of classical periods in history of huge empires ie. roman and egyptian; for example - he built a church that looked like a coloseum with roman pillars - he thought that religion sometime in the future wouldnt be an important thing so he wanted his chiurch to still be relevant in modern times - and he thought traditional looking church would NOT be relevant so he designed his churches in funky cool styles ... he basically used the city as a basis for his propoganda - for example there were heaps of water fountains he built around paris (before napoleon paris had no running water and sanitsation was awful) but each fountion was designed in a way so that it represented one of his battle victories and each fountain was engraved with the names of his battle victories; that way the people of paris remebered him as a great leader ... he had this idea of creating an empire within europe
we are learning how different leaders used paris to their advantage -- sylvie was emphasising that paris isn't just a location where heaps of events happened; but the actual design of the city of paris is esential to life there; what happened during the 19th century is that paris became an open city - this guy called haussaman (architect) knocked down all the walls around paris, changed all the narrow roads into huge boulevards and installed lamps all over paris and lit it up - so paris became a place for entertainment and became known as the city of lights - rather than a smelly plaec with cramped streets --- napoleon and haussaman really revolutionised paris ... however many writers n artists wer unhappy aboutt this because paris became sort of like a party city - huge prostitution, immorality, gamlbling etc ... and they were worried about the degradation of tradition/history ...
enough with the history :) we have lunch in a few hours then another history lesson in paris this afternoon --- im going to take lots more photos of food this avo as has been requested by ness n catie :) yumyum hehe i try and stay away from the patisseries becase otherwise ana pilalges the village .... i might turn into cindy mad dog russsel - as sexy as her curves are, i think mum wouldn't find me as cute as cindy if i became as tubby as that haha ...
french dont really snack they eat main meals ... they r really diff from australians in eating because we eat big meals but healthy stuff ie big breakies etc whereas the french tend to grab a croissant n coffeee and eat smaller amounts but really indulge ---
we are going down to the latin quarter for dinner yet (im not sure if ive already said this and am repeating myself lol?)
oh and just something to add about getting lost with sylvie ... (nici talked about it in her blog) ... my disclaimer is im not angry haha ... i was the one that was late ... and i really really didn't mind catching the train into the metro with nici alone - it was very easy!! slyvie had a deadline to get into the metro otherwise wed lose our reservation ... the nice guard let us in after 15 minutes when i talked to him :) so everything was fine ... we got into the museum fine, no hassles, sylvie didn't mind at all!!! :)
BISOUS :) (this means kisses in french)
