Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Amazing Paris - Day 2, Part 1

To prevent this post from getting huge, I decided to do Day 2 in two parts. It had been such an amazing day, it deserves to be described well!

Day 2
I woke up at 6:15 am in the morning. I tried to sleep some more, but I was too excited, so I got up. While my mom was waking up I took a shower. We got dressed up and went downstairs for breakfast. We had a hotel with breakfastbuffet. You could choose many things: croissants, bread, toast, orangejuice, milk, cornflakes, chocolate cornflakes, yoghurt, fruit, chocolate spread, butter, cheese, coffee, chocolatemilk and tea. My breakfast was the same everyday, and I totally loved the chocolate cornflakes!
Then we went upstairs to get our stuff and then headed for the metro.
Here I am standing in front of the map of the metro. It looks complicated, but it really isn’t.
As you can see, we took an umbrella with us for the pictures.
The weatherforecast was really good though. ^^
This was my favorite outfit of the week, I love that skirt!

We wanted to go see the Eiffeltower, to get a real ‘Paris-feeling’, but since the metroline we had to take crossed the Place Charles de Gaulle Étoile, where the Arc de Triomphe is, we headed there first.
This is what you see when you get on top of the escalator: a huge triumphbow,
made in honour of Napoleon. And some Japanese people taking pictures of it.

I was really surprised we got to see it immediately when we got out of the metrostation. And it is so big! I knew it was tall, but it was really huge!

I look so small! It really shows how big the Arc de Triomphe really is! It’s such a
shame those stupid fences stood there. Can you see the Eifeltower on the right?

We took quite some pictures of it. It was so beautiful!
My mom, reading my self-made folder of Paris with addresses.
She was just pretending to read it though, for the picture.

Around the square, the traffic was horrible! Men in suits on scooters, touristbusses and cars were all honking at each other and driving like crazy people! This place is famous for its busy traffic, since the Arc de Triomphe stands on one of the main passages of Paris: the Champs-Elysées.
The Champs-Elysées, one of the world’s most famous streets. It is superlong and busy,
and it has the most expensive shops you can imagine, like Cartier, Louis Vuitton and Prada.

We also tried to take a picture of ourselves.
When you’re with two persons, a picture of the two of you becomes quite more
difficult to make. I think this one came out quite good though.

After taking a picture of every corner of the Arc, we headed for the Eiffeltower.
We had to walk a while from the metrostation, but we didn’t mind at all, since we had a wonderful view of the Eiffeltower (or as the French say: ‘la Tour Eiffel’).
My mom was really surprised that the Eiffeltower is actually brown: she expected it
to be silver. You don’t really see its colour in this picture though,
but I love this photo so much!

It was really crowded underneath the tower. There were people waiting in lines to buy tickets to get on top of the Tower, and one of the pillars was closed, so the other ones were extra busy.
Two painters covered in brown paint. The Eiffeltower gets re-painted every
seven years and it takes two years to paint it entirely!

There were also men selling miniature Eiffeltowers and scarves. There were a lot of these men and they all sold the same things. They were actually quite annoying, but if you said ‘No!’ or ‘Go away!’ they didn’t bother you any further.
There were also quite a lot of foreignlooking women, walking around in long skirts. One of them walked towards me, and asked: ‘’Scuse me, speak English?’ I said yes, whereupon she gave me a piece of paper. Before I even had a chance of reading, my mom said I had to give it back and that she was a beggar. I shoved it back into her hands and shook my head, after which she walked away.
My mom told me that these types of people are often member of an organisation. Sometimes they even earn 1500 euros a month by begging people. After looking at the women, I saw that their clothes were clean and that their hair was washed, so apparently they did have facilities after all. Of course I’m not sure wether they really needed help or not, but to be sure I didn’t give them anything.
I had to buy good walkingshoes for our trip and these were the only ones I could find.
They were plain white and quite boring, but I wrote ‘Paris’ all over it. I also added ‘Lolita’ on
both of them. As you can see, this one has ‘Baby, the Stars Shine Bright’ on it,
the other one has ‘Angelic Pretty’. Now I really like these shoes!

Anyway, back on topic: we sat down in Parc du Champs de Mars, the park in front of the Eiffeltower. There my mom took some pictures of me, underneath my parasol.
This is one of my favorite pictures. We had such luck with the weather that day!
Sometimes dark clouds neared, but it never rained.

I was really glad we brought this parasol along! My mom bought it for me at a gardeningcenter. It has a wonderful shape: it’s more bent than normal umbrellas.
The parasol also says: ‘Parapluie de Paris’, which means ‘Umbrella of Paris’, so I just had to take it with me.
I love the polkadots! They give such a nice effect on pictures.
As I love to say: So Lolitable!

After sitting for a while, we walked towards the river Seine. We decided to do a crossière, a rivercruise (God, I love the French language).
The boat navigated past several famous Parisian buildings, such as the Notre Dame and Museum du Louvre.
Me, while taking a picture of the Notre Dame. We didn’t visit it, because we
thought we had a great view from the boat already.

After the cruise, we went to a terrace where we ate crêpes: thin, folded pancakes, often with something special in it. We took chocolate and they were really delicious! A bit hard to eat though, I wouldn’t suggest eating it in your finest attire. ;)
After that, we went for the Bastilledistrict where ‘my shops’ were! I couldn’t wait, but at the same time I was a bit afraid of getting disappointed…
I had it all planned out perfectly: the stores were pretty close to each other, with a metrostation right between them. But right when we arrived the first day, I discovered that line 8 was closed down until August 2nd. And line 8 was the exact line I needed…
Luckily, my mom didn’t mind, so we took the Bastillestation and asked for directions. I understood the girl just fine, but apparently not good enough, for we got lost. Now the streets where the shops are are very difficult to find on the map, because they take two maps instead of one, so I couldn’t find them anymore. Fortunately, there was a nice French woman that helped us out, and we finally found the Baby, the Stars Shine Bright Store!

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