Wednesday in Paris

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We had thought we would go to Rouen today, but we JUST missed the train to Rouen, so we spent the day in Paris, instead (sad, no? ;-) ).

We wandered around the neighborhood of Gare St. Lazare ("gare"=train station), and saw La Madeleine (famous big church) and the old Opera house. We did some light retailing, and visited some very famous stores. Galerie Lafayette is sort of like a consortium of stores -- the bathrooms are on the second floor, with Rolex, Cartier, Chanel, etc, etc, and ... Laduree (very ritzy pastry shop). Laduree was the only non-really-expensive-jewelry/watch shop that I saw...... I had to pay 1E to use the toilette, and when you need one, it's a small price to pay...

(Digression -- they were selling toilet paper in bright colors near where you waited to pay your 1E. In addition to hot pink, etc, they also had black. Hmmm. Ok, enough pondering of that topic. End of Digression.)

Galerie Lafayette is very big, and one part has a huge stained glass dome. I hope the pics come out........

We had lunch at Fauchon (very ritzy food store). I had gazpacho (which had a very similar balance of flavors to the gazpacho at Amer's in Ann Arbor, but which was much smoother in texture), and my daughter had a risotto with artichoke hearts and cepes mushrooms. We'd seen cepes in the market (along with several other sorts of mushrooms I don't know), but had not knowingly eaten them. Both dishes were very good, and I want to learn to make risotto.....

I haven't mentioned yet that it rained off and on for most of the day. It didn't rain very hard when we were outside, luckily, but meant that some stores were even more crowded than they might have been otherwise......

We did a bit more retailing in Fauchon, and then headed out to Laduree and Pierre Herme for macarons.

We visited a few more places my daughter had seen when she was here two years ago (including les Jardins du Luxemburg -- the Luxemburg Gardens -- where she got a photography lesson from one of the people connected with her program). I have really been enjoying seeing in person some of the things I saw in her photos from 2008......

Then we went up the Tour (tower) Montparnasse. It is the only skyscraper in downtown Paris.

You can pay to go up, just as with the Sears Tower or the Hancock Building in Chicago, or the tower in Toronto, or Seattle, or the Empire State building.....

Or, you can go up to the restaurant and have a coffee and stay for hours, looking out and taking pics............. We opted for the coffee (moi) and a kir. It was still cloudy and rainy, but we could clearly see the Eiffel Tower (very nice manager guy put us right by the window in a perfect location). We stayed for an hour or so, with the maps out, figuring out where all the stuff was that was on our side of the tower. This "visit the restaurant" thing may be a little known "secret" -- be sure to do it if you go. It was very fun and we had a very good time up there.... We had the good camera with the 12x zoom, so it will be fun to see what the pics look like.......

Then we came back to the hotel to unload the results of the aforementioned retailing, and eat some bread (we have a very nice bakery right in our neighborhood -- Erik Kaiser) and yogurt, before turning around and heading back out to go see the Eiffel Tower sparkle. Every hour on the hour, from sunset until 12 or 1 am, there are special sparkling lights on the Tower for several minutes.

I've seen it from the webcam dozens of times, but didn't realize until tonight when I saw it in person that when you are there, the sparkles are in the shape of stars.

It was lovely, and I'm so glad I got to see it in person!!!!!!!!!

While we waited for the sparkles we watched the bats. Lots of small bats apparently catching lots of bugs. With so many old buildings, I wonder if they live in attics, or.......???

We will try for Rouen again tomorrow. We have our bread for tomorrow already, and will leave a bit earlier. We were truly just 10 min too late (needed to buy tix and get to the right track, and had only 1 min)........

Bon soir!



In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, here is a link to the post that comes after this one.

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