Paris, je t'aime! Part 3: Visiting the Mall and Meeting Mona

In Part 2, we left off with Chris and I being duly impressed with the Arc de Triomphe and ready to escape the hordes on the busy Champs-Elysees.

Just you wait.

This sh*t gets super impressive.

After our time at the Arc was done, we headed back underground - this time, to the metro/train station directly underneath it!  We rode the train to the Opera area of town (we'd be back there in a few days) and walked to our destination, the Galeries Lafayette.  So, yes, this is a shopping mall.  It looks like a pretty normal shopping mall from the outside, if a fairly large one:

See?  Nothing super special, although the building

itself is far lovelier than what we have at home.

The Galeries have been around in some incarnation since the late 1800's, but it really started to look the way it does now starting in the 1920's.  I'd read, and we heard from reputable sources (our friends the Skinners, here in town), that one of the best qualities of the Galeries was that its 9th floor rooftop garden was completely free, and it gave you access to some of the best views of the city.  As we made our way inside and headed up the escalators (lots of them) to the roof, we also took time to admire the amazing dome of the structure.

I mean, right?

This is all directly over the cosmetics department.

Look for this the next time you're at the

Clinique counter in your local mall.

Some of the intricate railings on the upper floors

We eventually stopped craning our necks upward at this gorgeous site and made our way to the rooftop.  Over the past few years, as the green movement has firmly taken hold almost everywhere, the Galeries opened their own private rooftop garden, which grows actual produce used by chefs all over the city (apparently, the nearby opera building has beehives on its roof, and they fly over to fertilize as they wish).  You can apparently tour these gardens, although we didn't have time on this trip.

Gardens!

Although you can't walk all of the way around the rooftop, it offers you a good 180 degrees of views, and they are truly incredible (particularly because they're free!).  Let the excessive pictures commence!

The nearby Palais Garnier - the opera house

The Garnier again, on the left, and there she is -

the Tower on the right!

This direction is west, as you might have guessed.

Looking south - 

the dome in the background just to the left 

of the Garnier is the Pantheon.

See the uniform look of those buildings in the foreground?

That's Baron Haussmann's work,

which is really interesting.

Read about it here.

More of the Haussmannian architecture

There she is again!

Looking north,

there's Sacre Coeur and Montmarte...

...zoom lens enhance!

Looking east toward the Pompidou Centre,

the modern art museum

Guys, I might seriously have a problem.

I can't stop taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower.

#thestruggleisreal

We finally tore ourselves away from the amazing views and headed back into the mall.  It was time to get back to the Marais and officially check into Les Tournelles, our hotel, and hopefully, get a quick shower before setting back out for the evening.  On the way to the metro, we grabbed some street-level shots of the Palais Garnier, which we'd see in more detail in a few days (spoiler alert!).

We popped back out of the metro in the Marais, filled out our paperwork for the hotel, and crammed ourselves and our luggage into the teeny, tiny elevator for the trip to our room on the fourth floor.

The Chemin Vert metro stop - 

we used this one most often

We are packed in here like sardines!

Our room was pretty small (by American standards)

but perfectly served our needs.

Unlike other older hotel rooms,

our windows were outstanding -

you noticed how quiet they kept our room

the minute you opened them for fresh air.

Gifts from the hotel - a cute tote bag

and two crackers that say

"Eat me - I'm Tournelles."

Nope, I don't know what that means, and neither does Google.

We chilled out in the room for about an hour, taking delightful showers, even though the shower itself had one of those little "half-doors" which caused us to soak the entire bathroom each time.  I didn't take a shot of it, so thanks internet, for helping me out here:

This wasn't our exact room,

but you get the idea.

Anywhoodle, we headed out for the evening to do more sightseeing, stopping first at the Pompidou Centre, for a quick walk-by look.  We didn't go inside (even though modern art is probably my favorite type), but since seeing a picture of the Centre in my French book waaaaay back in 11th grade, I've always wanted to see it in person.  Apparently, when it was opened in the 1970's, it caused quite the scandal with its "inside-out" design, but in the intervening decades, Parisians have come to love its unconventional beauty.

The escalator to enter the building

This really is the outside of the building.

Pretty cool, non?

We also stopped by the Stravinsky Fountain, located nearby, home to several whimsical sculptures representing the works of Igor Stravinsky.

"We have clean hair!"

"Take a selfie!"

Just around the corner, we stopped into Bar Demory, an outpost of Brewery Demory, one of the more notable breweries in the area.  We grabbed a sampler of their wares, and we truly enjoyed them all.

This was their flight list - 

it was designed to fit right into the wall art.

So cool!

Salut!

Our internal clocks were royally weird by this point, but since we weren't quite ready for dinner, it was on to our next sightseeing stop - the Louvre Museum!  Each major museum in Paris has a night where it stays open late (generally until 10pm or so), and we made certain we hit both the Louvre and the D'Orsay on those evenings; we figured this would extend our ability to pack in things to see and help us avoid the daytime crowds, and it worked out pretty well overall.  While there's no way to see everything in the Louvre (truly - don't even try), we were able to breeze past the highlights, and the crowds were pretty minor, all things considered.

Just one of the wings of the Louvre - 

until Louis XIV built Versailles and moved

everyone out there, this was the royal residence.

It is correspondingly massive.

The famous pyramid entrance

with another wing of the museum

Inside the pyramid, looking up at the main entrance

We took advantage of the Rick Steves' self-guided tour from our guidebook, and we saw the major sights - the Venus de Milo, Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, David's The Coronation of Emperor Napoleon, Michelangelo's Slaves statues, and of course, the lady herself, Da Vinci's Mona Lisa:

There's normally wall to wall people in front of Mona,

but as I mentioned, the crowds were rather small.

While we didn't get an intimate audience with her,

we were able to easily take this picture from about 10 feet away.

She is pretty cool in person.

For my part, I was most stoked

to see the Winged Victory of Samothrace,

and she was pretty rad, too.

In case you ever forget you're in a former palace,

just look up - the ceilings will quickly remind you of that.

We exited the Louvre into a light drizzle, and we decided it was time to find dinner before heading home and to bed.  We wandered a bit and ended up at Au Chien Qui Fume (or The Smoking Dog), one of the older bistros in Paris.  It was great - we split a bottle of wine and had escargot and mules/steak frites (mules for Chris, steak for me); everything was delicious!

Our bottle of Bordeaux

After a long day and a delicious meal, we were more than ready for a good night's sleep, so it was back to the Marais and Les Tournelles for us!  Tomorrow, we'd make the pilgrimage to the islands and the left bank!

Later!

Amy

P.S. - I made sure to wear my FitBit throughout our trip, mainly to use it to catch any notifications that might come in from my phone - emergency calls or texts about the dog or the house, etc.  However, it also did its main job - tracking my steps - and I'll be adding them at the end of each day's blogs, just to give an idea of how far we walked.  On this day, I wore the FitBit up until we went back to the hotel to change for the evening, and it recorded 12,118 steps.  5 miles is roughly 10,000 steps, and again, that's before we walked to the Pompidou Centre, through the Louvre, etc.  We were eating (and drinking!) plenty of calories, so this helped balance things out somewhat.