Les Champs-Elysees

Day 2 out and about. I was planning on hitting up the Louvre today, but the weather was just too nice to be inside for 9 hours. So I switched tracks to starting with L'Arc de Triomphe. The metro is a little windy and I was getting my sense of direction all confused in the tunnels. I saw the exit sign (sortie) and didn't recognize the streets but decided to head up and orient myself once above ground. Wham bang, just as my escalator scooted me up to the sunshine, there it was staring me in the face.

The arch is smack dab in a roundabout that connects 11 boulevards so they call it la place de l'Etoile (star) - or did before Charles de Gaulle was born and became a hero. The most notable boulevard (or avenue?) is the Champs-Elysees which I meandered down. Lots of movie theaters, clothes shops, Sephora (which was fortunate because soap, lotion... is expensive here! and I've been sorely disappointed in the selection at the neighborhood supermarkets. Weak-sauce market more like. Just picture the communist Safeway in Palo Alto and make it 10x more communist feeling.)

It's a pretty long walk to head all the way down to la place de la Concorde (some obelisk which I don't know much about). I'm not a big fan of obelisks. But man, as soon as you hit that spot, you're surrounded with huge, HUGE, palacially decorated, statuesque buildings. I couldn't keep track of what everything was, musee this, embassy that, hotel this... (but hotel doesn't really mean "hotel" here so that didn't clarify anything.)


Continue tout droite and you run into le Jardin de Tuileries. Not as fab as Luxembourg or Sceaux, but the setting is surreal. It connects right into the Arc de Carrousel and the Louvre. Which I'm saving for another day. You can kind of see though what I'm talking about when I say that I was SURROUNDED by amazing architecture. This only shows 1/8 of it.

I was pretty pooped by this time at walking and made a Uie to head back and see a movie - Dan in Real Life (for some reason renamed t0 Coup de Foudre en Rhode Island - Love at First Sight in Rhode Island). On my way, I walked along the Seine and came across the Pont de Alexandre III. Which was nicely backdropped with le Tour Eiffel - also saving for another day - I'm thinking night, and New Year's ;)

At this point some weird man found some gold ring on the ground and decided to give it to me. It was clearly a man's ring and I wanted nothing to do with it. He kept insisting and then said something about cafe and sandwich. I couldn't tell if he was begging for money or asking me to eat with him. Judging by his teeth, I would say the former, which didn't make much sense seeing as how he just offered me the gold ring. But all I cared about was trying to scoot away before his 2 inch long ash from his cigarette dropped on me. I said "desolee" and shooed him away. He kept the ring :-)

And THEN I turned and saw the Grand and Petit Palaises. Wow!

the biggie

the small

I decided to drop in the Petit Palais - which is an art gallery (both are). It was built or finished rather in 1900 for the sole purpose of displaying art at some exhibition. That must have been one expensive exhibition. Here were my favs from the colllection.

The room was blocked off for this one so I couldn't see the artist or name of the piece :-(

Just ignore my reflection in the glass. I thought it odd that it was called L'Apassionata seeing as how her face is so calm. But I guess it has the red going for it.

That was the end of my sighseeing adventures. But I do recommend Dan in Real Life. Sort of on the sadder end for a comedy, but good nonetheless.

PS - thought I might give a little count for how I'm doing on the "enjoy France" scale.

# pastries consumed - 7 (tartes, croissants, quiches... mmmm)
# chocolates savored - 0 (shameful)
# cheeses tasted - 0 (also very shameful)
# new words learned - not enough. I might as well be a mime here. Although I did mumble my way through asking about cell phone subscription details. That was sort of a moment of glory.