Day 7--Miscellaneous



Before leaving the area near our hotel we went a few blocks away to get a some daytime pictures of a nearby building.

This building is called the Hotel des Invalides, I have mentioned it before, Napoleon is entombed here. We were kind of interested in going inside but the price seemed rather stiff so we decied to skip it. You can't really tell from this photo but the dome is mostly gold and when lit up at night it is quite brilliant.

Next we went back to the Place de la Concorde to get some daytime pictures. Most of those are posted with the other Place de la Concorde photos. However, I did get a chance to snap this shot that I wanted of a building called the Madeleine. It is situated between the two buildings on the side. I tried to figure out what the buildings on the left and right are, but they are not labeled on my map so I don't know. The Madeleine, however, is another church, but we did not go inside. Upon closer inspection the building seemed to be covered in the same black grime we had seen on many other buildings, but I still thought is was neat and very Greek looking.



We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city without any real idea of any specific we wanted to see. Most the major things we came to visit we had been to already so we decided to just walk and have some fun finding out what was in our path by accident. My friend was interested in going to a specific store which took us a ridiculously long time to find. Before that, however, we went back to the Jardin du Palais Royal to check out a store that had been closed on Sunday but we were interested in looking in further. It was a music box shop, and probably the smallest store I had ever been in. With my friend, the store clerk, and I inside I really don't think anyone else could have entered with breaking something. As it was, I was afraid of knocking things off the shelf. I decided here to buy a music box, which was very expensive, but worth it in my mind. I love music boxes and wanted something very special to commemorate my trip.



Next to the music box store there was a toy store in which we both bought some gifts for our kids. It was a really cute shop with lots of wooden toys and very fancy marionettes (which we did not buy).



We then set out to find another store my friend wanted to go to but I had no interest in. I was getting slightly annoyed because I would have rather spent the time walking in the Latin Quarter or someplace like that, but I didn't want to seem impatient so I indulged my friend and we walked nearly the entire length of the Rue de Rivoli which runs next to the Louvre and beyond. I thought my feet were going to stop functioning completely after yesterday's torture but I managed. We finally found the store she was looking for and doesn't it figure? They did not have what she was looking for! Oh well, in the process of walking we did see many other interesting shops which I did not allow myself to enter having spent too much money already and we found by accident another interesting building called the Hotel de Ville.

We giggled about the name because it reminded us of the villian in "101 Dalmations", but it really is an interesting looking building absolutely covered with statues on the outside. My understanding is this building is the city hall and it has a large plaza/courtyard in the front. Since it was winter there was an ice rink there and many children were skating on it.

There was also a carousel with two levels nearby, I had never seen anything like that before.

This actually took most of the day. Since we were each catching planes rather eary the next morning we needed to get back the hotel and pack and have time to get some dinner before getting to bed as early as we could. On the way back we stopped briefly at the Opera Garnier (see above photo), which is where the ballet in Paris is now performed. This was a really nice building and I would have loved to see the inside, but they do not offer tours. However, the outside is interesting enough with the names of famous opera composers carved all over the outside like Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. The large dome on top is green.



One funny thing did happen. When we got off at a Metro stop sometime during the day on our way around town we heard a familiar song. We had gotten used to seeing the street performers in the Metro stations by now playing various instruments, singing with a kareoke machine, and even rapping in French. This time we heard a lady singing with a Kareoke machine and when we heard the song we nearly died laughing..."I just called to say I love you..." I'm so not kidding. We laughed so hard that we were stared at, we had to physically sit down to control ourselves. After the train left we saw her on the other side of the train platform. It was too much, I'll never be able to think of that song in a normal way again, and I still don't know what is it about that song in France but I felt like we heard it everywhere. This could have been because we kept singing it to each other, imitating the guy I sat next to on the plane, but still. Very strange, and very funny!



Back at the hotel we packed as the sun went down and gathered together all of our stuff. After dark we ventured out to find a place to eat. We ended up having an American dinner, which was disappointing for our last night, but there was nothing else open that wasn't charging a fortune for a simple meal so we had to take what we could get. In the restaurant we met a Canadian girl and a British guy that we talked to for a while. They both lived in Paris, going to school and teaching. I couldn't help but feel jealous that they lived in this fantastic city, but I was also eager to get home. We returned to the hotel, played some cards for a while, and then went to bed.