Uncategorized

The Palace of Versailles

Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on The Palace of Versailles

“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!”

(Translation: let them eat cake)

–Marie Antoinette, but probably not really

Towards the end of my trip, I ventured outside of Paris to check out the Palace of Versailles. 

These dudes

Claire told me that it was something I absolutely had to see when visiting France for the first time, so I took the train and made my way to the palace.

The Palace of Versailles, once the home of two of the world’s most infamous monarchs that sparked one of the greatest revolutions in world history, is now casually situated along a busy French street that is teeming with Ubers. 

The palace lived up to its reputation, with its Rococo style and its countless paintings along the walls, including this one of Marie Antoinette. I took a picture with my fellow tragic queen and moved along. 

I had a picnic at the Gardens of Versailles, (a moveable feast, if you will) eating an apple, cookies, and a croque de monsieur, while drinking rosé and reading my book. It was a meal fit for a queen. 

I see now why they cut off the royals’ heads. After roaming the manicured gardens and the wholly unnecessary, but very cool, hall of mirrors, it was easy to see that they were in fact living in unspeakable grandeur. 

A room built for a mirror selfie

I walked around outside, amazed at how the palace kept expanding into the horizon. I walked past the ponds and rolling lawns until my feet hurt, solidifying for me just how grand the Palace of Versailles really is. I called it a day once I could barely feel my feet.

After I got back from Versailles, I had dinner with some friends of mine and Claire’s, at a restaurant called Le Compères, where I ate bone marrow for the first time and decided that bone marrow tasted incredible. 

Over dinner, I got to hear about my friends at law school. They got to hear about the novel that I am working on and the clumsy description that I always give of the plot.  

Everyone who told me that I needed to check out the Palace of Versailles was right. I’d had a fun day navigating the churn of tour groups throughout the palace, before enjoying the mild spring weather and a good book in the gardens. I took my time; it’s not everyday that you get to see a decadent palace where every wall is gilded in gold. 

At this point, I was nearing the end of my trip and only had two more days to leave my mark on the city. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my previous blog post about my visit to the Louvre

Nice View

Categories Uncategorized2 Comments on Nice View

I woke up the next day and went straight to the Louvre in order to see, at long last, the greatest art museum in the world. I had been dreaming about going there since childhood, ready to see some of the world’s best artwork all in one place.

Even the name of the museum seemed to roll off my tongue when I was a kid. 

For breakfast that morning, I went to Cafe Marly, the cafe at the Louvre, having champagne and tea for breakfast, because I’m the pinnacle of good health. Sitting there, I had a perfect view of the museum. 

For those who have never been, the Louvre is probably bigger than any of you are imagining. In order to do it properly, a person should probably spend at least two days walking through it. 

I saw countless beautiful paintings, many of which I’d seen before as refrigerator magnets and postcards, but could now stand in front of, as a real painting with brushstrokes and texture. 

After looking at hundreds of paintings, I saw the main attraction. 

A massive crowd surrounds the Mona Lisa at all times, with tourists body-checking each other in order to get a photo. People rushed up to take their selfies with the Mona Lisa, not even looking at it. When it was my turn to get up there, I tried to stare and study the painting, before taking a photo of the most photographed painting in the world. 

People were churned in and out, standing behind a velvet rope. Everyone crowds around the painting, while quietly ignoring the Wedding of Cana painting taking up the entire wall across from it.  

After I was done in the Louvre, I walked through the tuileries, getting a sandwich from a food truck and then tossing pieces of bread at the ducks in the pond, which I was almost certainly not allowed to do.

I admired the sculptures in the garden and the violin playing of a guy who was chased off by a security guard shortly thereafter. 

From there, I walked down the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe, the monument to Napoleon’s military victories many moons ago and the French Revolution. The Arc de Triomphe is accessed through an underground tunnel, not by running across several lanes of traffic like in a game of frogger. 

While walking underground, I passed several people in marching band uniforms who were carrying musical instruments. Then I passed several people in military uniforms who were carrying assault rifles. A military display had just wrapped up, ending with the French flag waving over my head as I stood underneath the Arc de Triomphe.

Standing at the top of the arc, I got an incredible view of the city. By now, it was night time and after glimpsing the Tuileries Garden as the sun was setting, I was able to see the City of Lights while it was all lit up. From the top of the Arc de Triomphe, I could see the Eiffel Tower and its beam cutting across the sky.

Between the cafe at the Louvre, the Mona Lisa, my stroll through the Tuileries, and standing at the top of the Arc de Triomphe, it was a day of sweet views. I saw the sights from all angles, enjoying beautiful art, sculpture gardens, and the city at night from one of its most famous landmarks.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out how I spent the previous day in France

A Moveable Feast

Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on A Moveable Feast

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.”

–Hemingway, “A Moveable Feast”

After my couple of days of art museums, opera, and a cemetery, I decided to focus on purchasing two of the main things that I love: books and paintings.

Together, my aunt and I went in search of art. I’d seen enough movies and tv shows that romanticized the Parisian art scene to make me believe that there would be a starving artist on every street corner, hawking their wares to only the truest of art lovers (I’ve seen Titanic). That is a pretty old brochure for the city of love, as I learned when I walked the streets not seeing any intrepid young painters with easels sketching in the streets.

Undeterred, we ventured up Montmartre, one of the most picturesque parts of Paris, in order to get a view of the city from the basilica on top of the hill. We didn’t find any art there, but continued on throughout the city. 

No trip to Paris would be complete for an aspiring writer without making a pit stop at Cafe De Flore, an old stomping ground of Hemingway, Simone De Beauvoir, and Sartre, among others. 

Despite what other people will tell you about how the cafe is stodgy, overrun with tourists, and Instagram-famous (the biggest cardinal sin) I am willing to defend it. 

It is still a cute, charming French cafe with a lot of history. And, most importantly, it remains a good place to get a glass of wine.

After lunch, we walked down the street to Shakespeare & Co., an English-language bookstore that supported the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Joyce back in the day. It sold Hemingway’s first novel and still maintains a line out the door most days. It sits across the street from Notre Dame Cathedral right along the Seine. 

Walking down the street in the late afternoon, my aunt and I found an art gallery, which is how I wound up buying a nude painting of a woman. It is an incredibly beautiful piece of art that I want to hold onto forever and pass on to my family members once I die.

It was a good day of shopping, drinking, and art purchasing. My new books are on my shelf. My painting will soon be on display in my apartment. The day left its mark. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: For more ideas about what you can do in Paris, check out my previous blog post about my trip to the Musée d’Orsay and Opéra Bastille. 

Art & Opera: A Day in Paris

Categories Uncategorized2 Comments on Art & Opera: A Day in Paris

When I booked my ticket for Paris, there was one thing I knew that I wanted to do for sure: spend a day in the Musée d’Orsay and have lunch at the cafe inside. The Musée d’Orsay is one of the greatest art museums in the world, carved out of a hollowed-out train station that now houses some of the most famous art in the world. I have wanted to visit it since I knew it existed. Walking through it takes an entire day, so I planned on doing just about nothing else, wanting to feel like I had all of the time in the world.

My aunt and I met up and we walked the entirety of the museum. My father is the type of person who walks up to a painting, stares at it for twenty minutes, then backs away from it, and stares at it for another twenty minutes, studying every brushstroke and paint fleck. My aunt is not such a person. She could walk into a gallery, do a 360 turn, and then walk off, satisfied that she had gotten everything she needed from the paintings.

Like most people, I’m somewhere in the middle. 

We made it through the museum in record time in comparison to how my father would have done it, but I still felt like I savored all of the artwork. I saw all of the paintings that I wanted to see, starting with the “Birth of Venus” by Cabanel, which my parents have a print of hanging in their house. Seeing it in person is an entirely different experience, one that also makes you want to lay naked in the middle of the ocean with knee length hair while a bunch of cherubs careen over you. 

We checked out the Van Goghs, the Picassos, crossing off everything on my list except for Monet’s waterlilies (which weren’t on display and which I’d already seen). It was nothing but stunning paintings as far as the eye could see. 

We stopped to have lunch in a cafe that was behind a clock face that overlooked the Seine, sipping wine and chatting about the art that we had seen so far. 

After the Musée d’Orsay, I got ready to see the opera with Claire, one of my favorite people to go to the opera with. We saw Pelléas et Mélisande by Debussy, a French opera about…well, we weren’t quite sure what it was about. The show started and Claire and I promptly dozed off, taking high-priced naps at the Opéra Bastille. For me, it was jet-lag. For her, it was the rigors of being a full time law student. Either way, we were tired.

From what we did see of the performance, it was beautiful. There were loud, perfect voices ringing out towards the ceiling and actual children who could sing better than me. Nothing humbles me quite like going to the opera or ballet and seeing the talent of the stars on display, being made to look effortless.

After that, we called it a night.

Between the art museum and the opera I had the kind of day that most people expect to have when visiting Paris, one in which there is no shortage of art and culture. It was a blissful day of admiring some of the greatest artwork in the world, followed by the soothing tones of opera music.

Who can ask for a better day in Paris?

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out how I spent my previous day in Paris

Père Lachaise

Categories Uncategorized2 Comments on Père Lachaise

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow.” 

–Oscar Wilde

When planning a trip to Paris, lots of ideas spring to mind for what you should do: shopping, going to cafes, visiting museums, and walking (or taking the elevator) to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Visiting a cemetery is not usually one of them.

Yet, on my second day in Paris, Claire and I ventured across the Seine to Père Lachaise, one of the world’s most famous cemeteries so that we could see the graves of some of the greatest icons to ever live. It is home to an estimated one million late citizens of the world, many of whom changed it during their time.

Père Lachaise was eerier than most cemeteries (which is saying something) with crows pecking at the moss-eaten tombstones that lined the cobblestone paths. The only thing that was missing was the thin sheet of fog descending on what was already a cool, overcast day. We made our way through the cemetery like we were window shopping, asking each other which tombstone we could see for ourselves. (“I like the headstone on that grave” “I think I would prefer one of the standing ones like that one.”)

We visited the graves of Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Proust, and Balzac, all of which were littered with flowers, love letters, candles, and other esoteric objects that signified people’s enduring love for them. I stood back and admired the various legends who were buried six feet below my feet, whispering to Oscar Wilde and Balzac that I had read their works for class.

Towards the end, we found Oscar Wilde’s tombstone. It was only a tiny bit obvious which one was his, since it featured a bust of him as a sphinx (no one can say that he didn’t have style). Claire later told me that a tour guide standing nearby said that the sphinx once had a penis attached to it, but that someone stole it in the 1960s. Now his grave is encased in glass, which people have kissed while wearing lipstick. 

Spending time in an iconic cemetery brings up many strange questions, like what is worth putting on your tombstone, what kinds of people would ever visit it, and what a person would have to do in order to be remembered for something centuries after their death.

These are thoughts that, much like the one million or so bodies in Père Lachaise, will fester.

From there, Claire and I went for a stroll in a park. It made for a nice relaxing end to our day, as we admired the waterfalls and flowers. It was a beautiful spring day in Paris.

Later that evening, I met up with my aunt and uncle and my uncle’s nephew (they all also ended up being in Paris at the same time as me). Together, the four of us went to see the Eiffel Tower and grab dinner at a nearby cafe. 

The Eiffel Tower is one of the few landmarks in world history that is just a little bit bigger than you think it’s going to be in real life. After years of imagining what it would look like up close, it did not disappoint. It shimmers on the hour every hour for five minutes and I was able to see the glittering tower just as it changed. Child Raquel was squealing on the inside.

We didn’t go up it. We just admired it from afar.

After checking out the Eiffel Tower, we had dinner together and then we called it a night.

I scratched off several things from my Paris itinerary in a single day: the graves of beloved icons and the Eiffel Tower. I was ready to see what my next day in Paris had in store for me.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

An American in Paris

Categories UncategorizedLeave a Comment on An American in Paris

“I love Paris in the Springtime”
–Cole Porter

Like so many little girls growing up in the US, I always dreamt of going to Paris. It consumed my personality: I had an Eiffel Tower lamp, an Eiffel Tower statue, and a calendar of famous Parisian landmarks. I even made a painting of the Eiffel Tower once. 

Anytime I saw a movie or tv show set in Paris, it seized my imagination, and I could suddenly picture myself strutting down cobblestone roads and seeing the Seine lit up with street lights late at night. 

Many great American writers lived in Paris for a time, like Hemingway, Baldwin, and Stein. It made me hope that one day I would do a stint in Paris as well, reading and writing in an epicenter of art and culture.

Despite all of my dreams of visiting, I didn’t always think it was going to happen. Paris always seemed nebulously far away, more of a romantic ideal than a potential reality, but when my friend Claire returned to Paris to finish her studies at the Sorbonne, I asked if I could spend Spring Break sleeping on her couch. I was thrilled when she said yes. 

Mon ami

While she went to work, I tooled around town, doing all of the touristy things that locals would never dream of doing. I waited in long lines, seeing the sights, and mumbled my way through the few French phrases that I knew (“Je suis désolé, est-ce que vous parlez anglais?” was the most popular and I left out half the words.)

The day that I arrived, we started by getting brunch at a restaurant called Jozi. We ate avocado toast and mimosas, while I fought my jet lag and lost. It was my first Parisian meal, not including the tiny bread roll that I was given on the plane, and it more than lived up to my expectations. 

After that, we walked along the Seine and waited in line for the Notre Dame Cathedral. The line was so long that it zig-zagged across the plaza.

It was one of the first times in years that Notre Dame Cathedral was open to the public since the fire in 2019. The bricks of the cathedral are now a lighter color than they used to be, but you otherwise cannot tell that the church is any different. The line moved shockingly fast and before we knew it we were being ushered through the church. 

We took our time milling through the cathedral, looking at the paintings, listening to the church organs, lighting candles, and buying rosaries for devout Catholic grandmothers.

The cathedral is just as beautiful as I imagined, with sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows, dimly lit by candles, and smelling vaguely of incense.  It has been perfectly restored since the fire. 

Parts of it were a surprise to me, like the statues of saints that lined the front of the cathedral and how they stared down at you, almost as though they were doing it from heaven. 

It’s hard to find an original thing to say about Notre Dame Cathedral, the beautiful gothic church that has captured the minds of writers, artists, and Disney execs around the world. All I can say is that it’s worth seeing if you ever find yourself in Paris (and Paris is not a bad place to find yourself). 

After that, I dragged my tired ass home. I could barely keep my eyes open or feel my feet, but I had gotten my first taste of the city. I was ready to spend the next day conquering the city, dominating the public transportation system, and getting to know Paris.

I’ll keep you posted!

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my previous blog post about the feminist birthday party I attended a few weeks ago that raised money for nonprofits aimed at upholding women’s rights around the world.

For the Girls

Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on For the Girls

A couple of nights ago, my friend Julia invited me out to a birthday party for her friend Synclaire. Many of you have probably seen Synclaire on Instagram where she can be found bringing facts about women’s rights and women’s health to the masses. She is a model and influencer who advocates for women’s rights.

She is one of those perfect people that you think are too good to be true: stunningly beautiful, intelligent, super sweet, and generous, as was evident when we arrived at her party. 

@synclaire.warren

Her party was a fundraiser for women’s causes, mainly aimed at upholding reproductive rights and providing safe abortion access. Her birthday party was being held at a venue in Chinatown called The Bench that could easily be described as my dream New York City apartment. Unassuming from the outside, spacious and fun on the inside.

The party had an unapologetically girl power playlist. Appropriately, Britney was playing when we walked in. 

@winxhealth

Julia was wearing a high ponytail and a cute going-out top, a look that she described as being “for the girls,” thus beginning the first running joke of the night. Men don’t understand the power of a high ponytail and a cute going-out top. Therefore, it is simply “for the girls.” 

The party favors included condoms, lube, Plan B pills, nighttime pads, and pregnancy tests, saving us all trips to the drug store and lots and lots of hassle. 

In lieu of gifts, she requested that we make a donation in her name to one of the nonprofits sponsoring her party. I decided to donate to Vow for Girls, a nonprofit aimed at ending child marriages around the world. After cake, donuts, and feminist speeches, we collected our party favors and called it a night. 

@dagnedover

It was an amazing night to support the girls and to support Synclaire as she continues spreading the gospel of women’s reproductive rights. 

Happy birthday Synclaire!

And, if you’re interested in donating to organizations that protects the rights and dignity of women and girls, check out these nonprofits:

Plan C Pills
Repro Uncensored
Winx Health
Vow For Girls

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my previous blog post on the Double Creature Feature I attended at The Met a few weeks ago

Double Creature Feature

Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on Double Creature Feature

“Listen to them. The children of the night. What music they make.”

–Dracula, Bela Lugosi

Every few weeks The Metropolitan Museum of Art puts on a film series called “Long Films for Long Nights,” taking place in the auditorium in the Egyptian Wing. 

A couple of weeks ago the theme was “Vampires,” starting with the 1931 Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. Before the film began there was a slideshow of gothic artwork from different cultures that The Met had on display in order to emphasize the universality of the occult and themes of darkness that exist across cultures.

Dracula has special effects that seem comically bad to us today, but definitely blew the minds of everyone who watched it at the time. A panel of film experts then discussed the different elements of the film, including how they tried to mask the film’s “homoeroticism” by trying to make Dracula be more animalistic instead of incarnate, so that it didn’t seem gay when it was implied that he put his lips on another man’s neck. Being a depression-era film, Dracula was popular in America. It showed Europeans, whom Americans blamed for the Great Depression, being bad, and harbored resentments for “the foreigner.” It also therefore spawned an interest in genre-films for the first time ever. We have this film to thank for all other horror movies.

The next film was Vamypr, a French-German expressionist film that depicted vampires as a metaphor for psychological distress and experimented with cinematography for the first time in the 30s. The film barely had sound yet did some incredibly ambitious camera work. I probably would have chosen to go for more of a film score and color instead of hazy camera work that was supposed to convey grief, but to each his own. 

Nothing says “I go to art school” quite like saying that you spent an evening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art looking at a slideshow of gothic paintings of the occult across various cultures, before watching a black and white film from the 1930s, and then listening to a panel discuss the themes of homoeroticism and the Great Depression before watching another black and white, subtitled, French, German-expressionist film from the 1930s that made groundbreaking strides in cinematography and depicted vampires as a metaphor for psychological distress. 

You have moments where you do something like that and then think to yourself, wow I used to be normal. 

Either way, it was a fun and interesting way to spend an evening and a very different way for me to spend time in The Met. I hope that all of you get to experience the erotically-charged, depression-era film that is Dracula, as well as the experimental, German-expressionist masterpiece that is Vampyr at least once in your life.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my previous blog post about Swan Lake

Swan Lake (in Be Major)

Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on Swan Lake (in Be Major)

A few weeks ago, I hit up one of my favorite New York City pastimes: dressing up like royalty and going to see a show at Lincoln Center. Growing up, I always thought that there was something major about going to the New York City Ballet– and I am still very right about that– but I thought that it was something that only elite people got to do, that going to see the ballet meant that you were a MAJOR deal.

There’s something about taking in a show at Lincoln Center that makes me feel like “The Talented Miss Raquel,” a faux posh person in a very posh environment. 

I bought ballet tickets several months ago, purchasing literal cheap seats that veered far enough to the right that I couldn’t always see the action that was happening on stage. Standing there, holding a $45 ticket that I’d purchased two months earlier, I no longer felt like The Talented Miss Raquel.

Cleaning up nicely for one night and one night only, I left my house on what wasn’t exactly a warm and cozy night, in heels that I couldn’t walk in, and attended the ballet.

I spent the evening watching Swan Lake and thinking to myself “wow this is nothing like Black Swan.” (Which is a good thing for those who’ve never seen the movie).

I know that I’ve said it before on this blog, but I am always blown away by how effortless ballet dancers make it look, standing on the tip of their toes like it’s nothing. The human body is not meant to bend that way. 

I’m not sure why half the characters were dressed like court jesters and the other half were dressed like flocked pine cones, but I think it absolutely worked. It was a beautiful performance.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Read my previous blog post on my 2024 royal portrait

Royal Portrait 2024

Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on Royal Portrait 2024

As many of you know, each year I do a photoshoot with my best friend Padgett. We take photos that make their way into my holiday cards and onto this blog. 

I call it getting my royal portrait made. 

It’s always so much fun coming up with how I’m going to do it. I get to pick an aesthetic, I flip through magazines to get inspired, I make a playlist, and I try to cajole my cat into taking one decent photo with me (which goes about as well as it sounds).  

This is what we managed to come up with:

A classic black and white photo on a black and white tile floor:

Here’s how they stack up to the black and white photos of years past:

  • Processed with VSCO with kc25 preset

Here’s the best photo I was able to get of Calypso and me:

Some random photos:

Some BTS photos:

Every year, the front of the card is a royal portrait and every year the back is something fun that I did the year before. This year, I went with a photo of myself at the Golden Gate Bridge, a shot of my beloved cat, and a picture of myself on the cover.

I hope that many of you received a card in the mail, probably getting to you well after all of the holidays are completed. 

Happy New Year!

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my post on all of the books that I read throughout the end of the year.