Hi scoopers,
I am back, today with a little more on the travelling side. I will share with you an unforgettable experience, Paris, the city of love...
Upon my arrival to Paris, yes, exhausted, jetlagged, moody, I found myself very pleased to arrive at the hotel, and take decisions, foggyminded and depleted. I had 2 choices, sleep at 10 am in the morning or some petit dejeuner and hit the streets with a big fat java/caffeine fix. Well, I decided the latter.
That was it, the journey begins.
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| Let's dot this, coffee ASAP! Petit dejeuner at Cafe duTrocadero |
And off we went to visit the broad spectrum of amenities Paris can offer you. Only walking the streets is fine with me.
We decided to walk around Les Invalides, a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military ...
As I said, just walking around Paris is a pleasure, really, we encountered that day some sort of Military exhibition/Air show, and it was truly amazing, spectacular at Les Invalides, so much formality, so much security and safety for the expectators...Even an air show is done with such finesse.
Roaming in Paris at night is beautiful, you'll bump into L'arc de Triomphe, it stands in the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle, at the western end of the Champs-Élysées.
You can take a glance or walk to the beautiful Eiffel Tower, an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris, erected in 1889 as the entrance arch to the 1889 World's Fair, it is mesmerizing and breathtaking, specially at night when lighted up.
Or you can simply enjoy a stroll on its main avenues and enjoy the beautiful displays of high end boutiques and stores ( awesome windowshopping), the beautiful cafes with all the eccentric people, the live shows in Trocadero, live bands playing, you name it...
I want to share a couple of experiences I had in this magical city.
First let's go to Galeries Lafayette, OMG! It's a shopper's dream, look at this place, they call the stores Magasin, in this stunning magasin, I had a really bad experience, but let me first show you my madness in taking pictures of the store like the typical tourist. It never ceases to amaze me...
This store has stunning architecture, 7 floors of all type of merchandise, but it is very particular. Let's see the pretty collage I created with the pictures I took:
Pretty, huh? When my husband tolde me we were going there, I was like a child going to Disneyland.
I was so happy we didn't have to do the museum/culture stuff that particular day, don't get me wrong, I enjoy it, but I really wanted to go to my dream store. I admit it. You know, girls, we are like that, at least some of us. It's not like I had the biggest budget to shop or anything, but just going inside this particular store is all so exciting, after shopping in say, Dadeland or Merrick Park or Bloomies. It's a whole different feeling...
Don't get me wrong, I adore and love all these malls, but this is quite different.
I guess the flabbergasting dome and the glass windows and ceilings, the whole atmosphere, gives it a nice, pleasurable, time warping feeling. Like you are suspended in time and can stay there for 72 hours straight...
The downside to it, is that in every little balcony, each one belongs to a designer, so as I was digging into the "soldes" ( sales, this was clearly NOT a shopping trip) and carrying all my stuff, from each balcony, suddenly out of nowhere, this rude lady starts literally screaming at me in French, I was like "WTF?", and a nice young lady finally explained patiently to me in English, that you have to try on and pay the merchandise of each designer in each balcony, which proved to be a hassle, because, in the states you can pay or go to any fitting room you'd like, and they treated me with an attitude, being the Latina that I am...
Well, I followed the nice lady, left the French bitch behind, mumbling God knows what and proceeded to do my thing, and get my tax return.
Unfortunately, some French ladies have an attitude. I was so embarassed...
Continuing with my saga that day, it was time to leave because we had the Christening of the son of some very good friends,( that's why we had gone to Galeries Lafayette that day), we took our stuff to the laundry, but didn't realize the laundry didn't work on saturdays, or was it Sunday? It was closed!
Anyways, guess what, turning the subject around, I'm always checking my purse to feel my wallet inside, as we were catching the metro to go to the hotel and get dressed, I sat on the metro, and I slipped my hand into my purse, and my wallet wasn't there! OMG! I got hysterical! I was screaming " Stop the train!!!!" AS IF...
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| This is me on the Paris Metro |
Obviously, everyone was staring at me like if I was a madwoman or a lunatic, speaking Spanish and all...my life was there, my Euros, my credit cards, my documents...
Well, You can imagine, the little thiefs even used the credit card to buy a cell phone, thank God we cancelled it on time, because If not, God knows what damage they might have done.
Oh and my cash, in Euros, that was tough...So for the next part of the trip, I had to depend on my hubby to purchase every little thing, as if he was my dad...That was not good, maybe for him it was, but not for me.
Most, but not all pickpockets work in groups. They are often adolescents, since it is extremely difficult for minors to go to jail there. They can be groups of young girls or boys and of all races. And let me tell you, I know I was holding that purse tight, they slip that magic hand and you won't even notice, they will usually bump into you as you go off or on the train, and there they will do their magic. Creeps!
And never mind the roaming costs for cancelling my credit cards, or getting my documents upon my arrival to the Dominican Republic, that is another story altogether...
But who cares? I was in Paris, right? Obviously we never arrived to the Baptism, we were too busy getting off the train and trying to catch the pickpocket creep, and making our calls to cancel the cards, and I was extremely upset, so we decided to just forget about it, and stroll along the city, and make the best of it.
The next few days everything was better, so off we went touring away, passed by the Opera, Pont Alexandre, on top of the Seine river, The Louvre, The Musse D'Orsay where It houses the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in the world, by such painters such as Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin and Van Gogh. A lot of culture and such little time to suck it all in...
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| @Musse D'Orsay striking a pose |
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| Palais Garnier Opera House, Louvre museum, Musee D'Orsay, Pont Alexandre |
We coincidentally were there for a beautiful exhibition, Takashi Murakami, he is an internationally prolific contemporary
Japanese artist. He works in fine arts media—such as painting and sculpture—as
well as what is conventionally considered commercial media —fashion,
merchandise, and animation— and is known for blurring the line between high and
low arts...
At the time there was a big controversy of Japanese Manga hitting The Versailles but the museum's director, former culture minister Jean-Jacques
Aillagon, was well aware of the controversy these exhibits provoked, and insisted on drawing a line between debate and censorship.
He said that the palace and Murakami's work are both
"joyful" -- "the palace was not a place of penitence, not a
place to be sad." More on the controversy here...
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| Takashi Murakami's flowers |
More on Takami Murakami's art and work here:
Enjoy the video of the exhibition, it was truly fascinating...
Worth every minute spent on line to watch it...A true experience, if you add the splendour of indulging it all in Versailles, with its beautiful salons, halls, gardens, lakes and mazes...(SIGH)
Another interesting visit was to Le Grand Monde D'Andy Warhol, at the Grand Palais on Champs Elysees, more than four hundred paintings, photographs, Polaroids,
films, and other documents, this vast exhibition brings together the largest
number of Warhol portraits ever shown. Portraits of living subjects, almost
always commissioned, are seen in the wider context of three other genres:
posthumous portraits of figures from the world of cinema (e.g., the
"Marilyn" series of 1962, Judy Garland, ca. 1979, or Hitchcock,
1983)...AMAZINGLY COOL AND OH SO POP!
A nice thing to do is take the Bateaux Mouches where there are open excursion boats that provide
visitors to Paris, France, with a view of the city from along the river Seine. I did this on one of those days I was really exhausted. Check out more info. here:
Another important site is Notre Dame de Paris, the cathedral is widely considered to be one of the finest
examples of French Gothic architecture and among the largest and most
well-known church buildings in the world. The naturalism of its sculptures and
stained glass are in contrast with earlier Romanesque architecture.
Paris is always a good idea, there are so many other places to visit like for example The Centres Georges Pompidou, Montmartre, Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Les Halles, Saint-Germain-des-Pres, and so many others...The list is neverending.
Anyways, hope you enjoyed my little experience, here are some places I highly recommend for you to go when visiting this magical city:
http://hotelcostes.com The best dining and wining experience I've ever had. Don't sit inside. When you make the reservation, make sure they sit you in the terrace area, there you can even bump into celebrities and the beautiful people, a real treat.
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| Lounge area |
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| Terrace area |
http://www.castelparis.com: Wanna club with your age group? Try making it here, you will love it! Red Room of Fun!!!
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| Partying! |
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| The Red Room of Joy! |
http://www.laduree.com, not only exquisite for their macarons, but quite a dining experience on Champs Elysees.
http://www.charbonrouge.com: A French steakhouse, delicious and cozy! And it's actually owned by a
Dominican! The ambience gets really nice...
Le Cafe du Trocadero: Delicious petit dejeuner and the food is to die for, right in front of The Tour Eiffel.
Well, hope you enjoyed my post on Paris, so many things, such little time, there's so much more to it than this. I hope I can someday see it all and be able to write about it! LOL!
Please feel free to suggest and recommend more places to visit, restaurants, anything you consider might be noteworthy mentioning.
Thanx for reading!
xo,
T.
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