On Wednesday morning we flew from Budapest to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. After checking into the hotel, Holly and I walked around the area for a bit in search of dinner. We picked a café at a busy intersection and sat facing the street. I got a Croque Monsieur, a ham and cheese open sandwich that I discovered on my last trip to Paris that I really liked and a crepe (and part of Holly's creme brulee) for dessert. We stopped in front of a park in front of our hotel, the jardin des grands explorateurs, on the way back because there was a pretty fountain.
Thursday 5/6We had really delicious croissants for breakfast at Holly's friend's apartment down the street, after which her friend took us around the city. We first walked through Luxembourg Gardens and saw Luxembourg Palace. The gardens were pretty, and a few people were milling about, some taking pictures of a random statue of a head. A man was working on some artsy boat thing (below), and we had a view of the Pantheon from one point.
We saw Saint-Sulpice Church (which was under construction/cleaning) and Val-de-Grace Church (which Wikipedia says was built in 1645), but the big climactic church was the Basilica de Sacre Coeur on the top of Montmartre. I didn't go in because everyone said it's nothing special inside, but the outside is pretty and there's a good view of Paris from the top of the hill.
We did some more walking and ended up at Fauchon, a candy store (I think one of the two stores, which are next to each other, has food and dessert, and the other is just candy). It's all pink, including the windows, and the packaging for most of the chocolate is pink. So, obviously, we got some.
I had seen pictures of L'Opera in friends' albums on Facebook, so we stopped there next. We couldn't actually go in and see the giant Chagall painting on the ceiling, but the outside was pretty.
As we were leaving, I stopped to watch some guys performing outside the steps -- and oh, am I glad I did. Of all the street performances I've seen, none have looked anything like this.
Across from L'Opera is a major department store: the Galleries Lafayette. We stopped in to check it out because it's supposed to be seriously impressive, and it was. I've never seen a Macy's -- or even a Neiman Marcus, for that matter -- with a stained-glass dome ceiling.
Nearby was Printemps, another department store that supposedly has the biggest beauty department in the world. I was underwhelmed. Maybe the idea of the biggest beauty department in the world was idealized so much in my mind that I was imagining coming home to a mecca of make-up, but it wasn't quite as big as I was picturing. On the top floor, though, there is a café with nice views of the city. And a bunch of red bunnies, for some reason.
We stopped in Place Vendôme where there are a bunch of designer stores, as well as the Ritz hotel. Oh yeah, and the Ministre de la Justice. There's also a big green column, the Place Vendôme Column, that was erected by Napoleon.
Our final activity of the day was a snack stop at Angelina, a tea room famous for their hot chocolate. It. Was. De. Lish. But it filled me up so much (it was so thick and rich and yummy) that I wasn't hungry for dinner at all, so I just grabbed a petit baguette and went back to the room while Holly went out to dinner with her friend.
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