Art and culture trip to Paris 2018
Another wonderful trip to the city of romance, art and charm. Even in the snow, we managed to sample inspirational art, sumptuous food and exquisite shopping experiences. This year, Tracy and Gundel from the art department took 19 students to explore this fantastic city. We stayed in the comfortable and convenient Generator Hostel right in the heart of the town and used the underground Metro to get around just like the Parisians do! Many of the students had never been to Paris before and the excitement was clear as we wondered around the stunning streets of the Left Bank.
Our favorite art gallery was the Musee D’Orsay, an elegant and impressive building that was once an elaborate railway station and now functions as an airy and light-filled art gallery. The Musée d’Orsay is on the Left Bank of the Seine. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum’s opening in 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe. Here, we saw many old favourites, such as Monet and van Gogh as well as more classical art.
The snow didn’t stop us from investigating a lot to get a real feel for the city and some of us even braved the river Seine to sample the sights by boat. One of the highlights also had to be shopping in Gallery La Fayette, a building crowned with a massive Art Nouveau glass roof that made the experience truly ’French’. Apart from simply ‘being’ in Paris, we also enjoyed spending time with each other and making new friends with students we might not have got to know so well, had we not been on the trip together.
This is now the third time we have taken students to Paris to explore the amazing art and culture that the city has to offer and it will not be the last. International trips are becoming more and more important at EF Academy Torbay and I am glad that this is the trip that blazed a trail.
