Paris, September 13th
This is a very picture heavy post, but we got to see a lot that day.
The first thing we did in the morning was visit the post office and buy some stamps (from the stamp machine) and then our first stop for today was the "Arc de Triomphe".
Which is BIG. 50 m in height and with all kinds of interesting decorations.
The ceiling inside the Arc de Triomphe
And just to show you how big it is, a pic together with tiny me.
From there we walked down the Champs-Élysées (passed by the LV store, didn't walk in nor did we buy anything!).
We arrived at the Palais de la Découverte (which is technically a part of the Grand Palais).
One the leftern and rightern side of the entrance they had very detailed giant friezes (at least I think this still counts as frieze), which showed the history of France.
A close-up of the entrance to the Palais de la Découverte.
We continued walking towards the Seine, walked along her and passed by the statue of General Lafayette.
From there it were just a few steps towards the Pont Alexandre III, with golden decorations ^_^
And more huge decorations at the feet of the coloums.
With the Seine behind us, we walked towards the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais.
The "corner decorations" of the Grand Palais. Compared to that Quadrige, the one on the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin looks boring.
The Grand Palais itself
And the Petit Palais just across the street. Try to recognise the person (plastic to the left) there. It's DEAD easy.
More of the Petit Palais
And the entrance of the Petit Palais, including the marrying couple, who had their pictures takes by a professional photographer.
By metro we went to the Place de la Madelaine.
This is La Madelaine, which is a church, just doesn't look like one ^^;;
After that, it was high-time for lunch and we settled for something tradional. Pizza ^_~
Mel: Speciale; Kiara: Grilled veggies (delicious!)
After we felt somewhat rested, we continued with the sight-seeing.
Moulin Rouge was only a few steps away from the pizzeria.
A night it looks like this:
We went back to the Opera (which is only a few blocks away from La Madelaine)
And the Opera from the rooftop of Lafayette.
Then it was finally time for Lafayette (where we only bought Macarons at Ladurée, but nothing else. TOO EXPENSIVE).
The "mall" looks very, very pretty inside.
Metro once more, which brought us to the other side of the Seine, to the Quartier Latin.
We walked from the station "Jussieu" to the Pantheon and only found out later in the evening, that we had missed some ancient Roman amphitheatre by just a block. We went there the next day though ^_^
Just across the Panthéon is a church called "St-Étienne-du-Mont".
We sat at the stairs you can see in the picture and had our expensive, but very, very delicious macarons and some more stuff from a bakery.
The we saw the Panthéon (church as well) from the outside, entrance fee was 8 € and they were about to close for the day anyway.
Lovely ceiling is lovely.
And huge coloums are huge.
From there we just wanted to walk down the main street to the next station, but ended up exploring a mini parc and "discovered" the "Musée National du Moyen Age" behind it and the Sorbonne in front of the parc *g*
Musée National du Moyen Age, which rather looks like a castle.
And the Sorbonne, or what we could see from our bench.
Now we really wanted to walk to station, but lo and behold, one more church!
On the following pic you can see the entrance we used.
When we walked it, we first checked the times and "yes, it's open until 19:30. Oh, wait, no. It's says the next mass is at 19:30, so they'll surely have open a while longer..." Quite relieved that we didn't have to hurry, we took our time, looked here and there, made comments that obviously all the money goes to the big churches like Sacre Coeur or Notre Dame and that they don't want to spend a cent on the smaller churches.
While we looked around, the mass started and then we saw some guy locking the entrance o.O Luckily we had already made a full round in the church and knew that there was another exit/entrance.
So we got to see the church from this side too.
The sun was slowly but surely setting, but we were only about 100 m away from Notre Dame, so we walked there and took pictures from the outside (as of course it was already closed for the day).
The main tourist entrance:
Notre Dame from almost all sides...
And a random "Kiara doing random things" pic
And only then did we call it a day. Got into the Metro, got off again, bought a few Crepes and finally back to our hotel and our feets could rest ^_^;;;;
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Didn't spellcheck this entry. tl;dr _._