Category: France

FRANCE

Saint Paul de Vence

Today we took a flight from Italy to Nice and rented a car to go to Saint Paul de Vence. When we got there we walked up some steps then got to our home. It was right beside the best gelateria in France. The family that owned it had kids that were named Emma and Fabio. Every day Fabio would come over to play. Sometimes we had French lessons and did stuff. One time we drove to Gorges du Verdon and I got a pocket knife by a French company name Opinel. In Gorges du Verdon we slept in front of sunflower and lavender fields. ps: better than a five star hotel. Oh and forgot to tell you…by our apartment in Saint Paul de Vence there was a small bakery. Every morning we went out around the corner to get a fresh baguette and pain du chocolat.

While we were there there was a festival of fire called St. Jean Festival. To celebrate you jump through fire. I jumped through the fire 3 times. Before you jump you’re suppose to wet your hair. I didn’t know that and just thought everyone was sweating. The fire is suppose to take bad luck away.

Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh was not that famous in his life. He only sold one painting. Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands on March 30^th. Van Gogh had two brothers and three sisters. At the age of 27 he finally decided to be an artist. Before that he had lots of different jobs he was a teacher, a minister, a book shop person and art gallery person. His parents were upset because he did a job then stopped a job and so on. So the parents kicked him out of the house. His brother Theo helped him by giving him money to buy food and paint.

Van Gogh learned to draw using pencils or charcoal sticks and sometimes he painted with oil paints. He loved drawing hard working people and he made a painting called The Potato Eaters. It’s one of his most famous paintings. It’s a very dark painting of a poor family eating potatoes. You can even search Van Gogh Potato Eaters. In his middle years he went to Paris to paint. Then his brother Theo sent a letter that impressionism was a new style. Then Van Gogh was inspired by Claude Monet and Edgar Degas. Van Gogh became close friends with the painters and started painting with brighter colours and he painted people on the streets and at the cafes. He also painted 28 self portraits. Then he moved to Arles, France (and ps: we live very close the Arles). OK so let’s talk about Van Gogh. In Arles, Van Gogh rented a big yellow house to live in and Van Gogh invited Paul Gauguin to live with him. The colours in his paintings become more vibrant and the paint got way more thicker and it takes weeks for his paintings to dry. Van Gogh 100 paintings during that time. Sometimes he painted a painting per day. The two artists had an argument and Paul Gauguin left in 1889. Van Gogh could barely take care of himself and so he went to the hospital. Oh forgot to tell you: people think Paul Gauguin cut Van Gogh’s ear off and some people think Van Gogh cut his ear off. In the hospital he painted 150 paintings in a year and some of his best work including Starry Night.

Van Gogh died on July 29, 1890. Van Gogh was cremated and curried next to his brother Theo. Van Gogh died in the middle of a field. Come people think Van Gogh shot himself and others say someone shot him because the angle of how the bullet entered his body. Some people think teenages shot him because the teenagers regularly made fun of Van Gogh like put salt in his drink.  Most of his most famous paintings were painted in Saint Remy de Provence, the place where we stayed.

Beaune

Today we went to a hospital. Well, it’s a hospital for the poor and the real name is Hotel Dieu. The owner of the hospital was Nicolas Rolin.  He built the hospital so he could go to heaven, not hell. He had 30 beds for the people and everyone got a mug and a bowl and a plate. They also held mass in the hospital. The smart thing is that if a person can’t walk to mass, they just needed to sit on their bed and watch. The roof has a nice pattern and the ceiling is made of colorful ceramic that was red, green, yellow, black and the patterns had pictures that show you hell and heaven. Oh and forgot to tell you, the people that took care of the sick were called nuns. They were hardcore. They went to bed at 9 pm and woke up at 5 pm and best of all…in World War 2, the nuns pretended that a French commander died and they filled a real coffin with only sand and the commander made it back safely to Hotel Dieu. The hotel was made in not 19, not 18, not 7, not 16, not 15 but 1443. That’s before you were born if you’re a kid and before all your parents were born too!

Paris

Today we went to Paris in a car. Close to the end of the car ride I When we arrived we settled in and the next day went on a walking tour. Because baguettes are so famous in France, they have baguette contests. The cool thing is that anyone can be a judge. You just enter your name and if you’re chosen, you could eat like 200,000 baguettes and they’re all different. If you want to find a good baguette in france the bakery has to say boulangerie. That means they wake up early and have to make it fresh. If places say ‘fresh bread’ or ‘pastries’ that means it’s not da one!  

In France there’s literally prize for almost every food.

Centre Pompidou

Today we went to Centre Pompidou, also known as the museum of modern art. It has art that whatever you think it is, it is.

Then we had lunch and went to see David Hockney exhibition. My favourite part was the four seasons. It was a video that was made using 9 cameras filming in different direction while driving in a car. Then he stitched it together and did that for each of the 4 seasons. It was set up in a room with 4 benches and every bench faced a different screen and different season.

Musee d’Orsay

Today we went to the Musee d’Orsay. It’s not like the modern museum. It has much older paintings like Van Gogh but first I want to talk about The Fifer Player, a painting by Édouard Manet. Not a lot of people liked it because it had only 4 colours and they were with black, red, yellow and it was a big controversy because it had no background. Then we went to see Van Gogh. I was like is this the real painting? Then my head was blown. My favourite Van Gogh painting was The Church at Auvers.

Saint Paul de Vence

Saint Paul de Vence was our first day in France. Saint Paul de Vence is a small town and we stayed there for two weeks in an apartment. Our balcony had a beautiful view of the countryside. Under our apartment there was a bakery full of French bread and sweets. Every morning my brother and I would go down to the bakery and get either fresh chocolate or plain croissants or one fresh baguette and we would all share it.

The croissants and baguettes were very fresh and smelled so good! One morning I was coming back from the bakery and I had to run home because the baguette came fresh out of the oven and it was so hot! In Saint Paul de Vence I also made a really nice friend. Her name is Emma and she was 11 years old and she spoke a little bit of English so it was easy to communicate. Emma also had a brother named Fabio who was five years old. I played with Emma and Elliot played with Fabio.

Beune

Today we went to visit Hotel Dieu, a hotel for the poor. The hospital was built by a man named Nicholas in 1883. One of the reasons he built the hospital was so he could go to heaven. In the hospital there is one very big hall. The hall is where all the poor patients with absolutely no money lived. More wealthy patients got their own rooms. In the hall where all the poor patients are there are 330 beds. The hospital is run entirely by nuns which care for the patients. The nuns are very hard workers and wake up at 5:30 in the morning and go to bed at nine. In World War II nuns helped a French general escape by pretending he was dead. The nuns even made a fake funeral for him and filled his coffin with sand. The roof of the hospital is covered with beautiful colourful tiles. The tiles are made of porcelain and black, green, red and yellow colours. The Hotel Dieu is very old and figuring that it was built in 1883 even though it is more than 1,000 years old it is still running.

Museum in France

While in Paris we visited the museum de Pompidou. We spent one afternoon exploring the museum. There was one really cool exhibit where you could fly a virtual WWI plane. At the end of the ride you get a certificate. The certificate that I got said “Adventurous pilot”. The certificate that my mom got said “Reckless Pilot”. There was another really cool exhibit where a video describes how an astronaut lives in space. At the end of the museum, we visited a planetarium that held a show about space and comets. Close to the end of the show is starting to get very cold! After the planetarium, the museum was starting to close so we visited the gift shop really quickly and left. And that was our day at the museum.

Luxembourg Garden

The Luxembourg garden is a big garden in Paris. One day for lunch we brought sandwiches and had a picnic in Luxembourg Gardens. We brought our picnic blanket hoping that we could have a picnic on the grass but we forgot that like most gardens in France you were not supposed to sit on the grass. Since you can’t sit on the grass, the many chairs and benches made up for it. After lunch we saw there was a bunch of sailboats in the pond. My mom and dad let my brother and I rent our own boat for 30 minutes. Each sailboat had a country flag on it. I wanted to get Canada but I was already taken. My brother got Poland and instead of Canada I got Japan. We got our sailboats and we also got a stick to push our boats into the water.

The boats are controlled entirely by the wind, when the wind is really strong the bolts will zoom across the pond, but when the wind is very still the boats will not move or move very slowly across the pond. After that we went to a really cool park. To get in the park you have to pay 1.50 euros but it was worth it! At the park there was a zip line!

Musee d’Orsay

The museum d’Orsay holds the largest exhibition of impressionist art work in the world. It was at first a train station and then converted into a museum. We spend a day at the museum admiring beautiful artwork and sculptures. The museum also has a collection of artwork by Vincent van Gogh! At first I thought that the room where van Goghs art is displayed was going to be very crowded but it’s surprisingly wasn’t that bad. The artwork was amazing! My favorite work by van Gogh is a painting called the starry night. It was especially amazing as we stayed in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, the place where van Gogh painted the painting and then seeing the art in person. The famous starry night is at the MOMO in New York City but this museum had a similar one. At the museum there is a place where you could dine in 100 year old restaurant! A long time ago there was a hotel beside the museum d’orsay and the hotel had a restaurant where their customers could have dinner. 100 years later the restaurant was converted into a restaurant for the customers of the museum d’Orsay. The restaurant was amazing with an original painting ceiling and at the end of our meal our waiter showed us pictures of the restaurant 100 years ago and it was almost looking exactly the same!

Paris

We stayed in Paris for 3 weeks. Paris is a beautiful city with a river called the Seine that runs right through it. Get a fresh baguette from the grocery store and some lunch supplies sit by the SeineGogh’sand you will have an amazing lunch! It’s also fun to sit by the canal and watch the water levels rise and just watch as the water gates open and close. While in Paris we also visited the Eiffel tower! We went there at night because when the Eiffel tower lights upd’Orsay it’s so beautiful! When we got to the Eiffel tower we climbed to the second floor and saw an amazing view of Paris. In Paris because the Parisians love food they have food contest for everything! If your bakery won best baguette in France they will be a big sign on the bakery saying first place!

Paris versus Rome

Paris and Rome are very different cities but they are also very similar in some ways. For example they’re both big cities with beautiful monuments like the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum. Both of these cities are also famous for good wine and food. The most tourist day on is probably Paris because it is so famous for the Eiffel Tower. Both the cities are European so they are pretty similar. My favourite city is Rome because the food is just amazing!!!