Today is the first day of the two-day annual event of Journées Européennes du Patrimoine. It was an exciting day to explore Paris, but since I am not a natural morning person, I woke up late (around 9 am). After taking my time getting ready, I decided to visit the furthest interest point as my first destination, the Techno Parade in Le Marais. I purposefully took a quick stroll alongside the Seine River and got several great shots. Two of them are below; you can see the rest of them in here.
Square du Vert Galant
Pont Neuf
And quickly enough, I walked on Rue de Rivoli going towards Bastille to catch the crowd of the that is The Techno Parade at Le Marais. It was exciting and crazy (when I got there on 1:30 pm, it could easily be more than 5,000 people gathering on the street). Also, I finally got to see how French people street-dancing (which involves a lot of snake-like arm movements and stationary up-and-down bobbing leg actions). Perhaps it's just one of their styles, but it certainly is a new experience for me. And did I mention that Le Marais is the gay quarter of Paris? Anyway, you can see a small video footage of the beginning of the parade on my Vox blog. Below are some of the pictures I took about the Techno Parade.
Anyway, after hanging around for about an hour, I decided to walk a little bit north of Bastille. I passed Place des Vosges and entered Musee Carnavalet, which unfortunately did not allow photography inside the museum. The museum itself was built as a townhouse in the 16th century, and it contained paintings, decorated rooms, and many works of art rich of Paris history. Since today was part of Journées Européennes du Patrimoine, people were free to visit. I also did my first vintage shopping at Rue des Rosiers. I got two vintage tops that I absolutely love. The best of all, they costed me 25 Euros.
A garden in Musee Carnavalet complex
After passing the Techno Parade crowd once more and Hotel de Ville, I rested at the frontyard of Notredame Church. Not for long, though. There was this random French guy tried to strike a conversation with me and tried (unsuccessfully) to ask where I came from. When I ignored him purposefully (I just wanted to eat, man!), he even asked a passing-by key chain vendor to ask me where I came from. He also claimed to have bought me a La Tour Eiffel key chain; "Please listen, I bought this just for you," he said. Oh God, the stuff a girl has to go through just to rest her legs and eat some lunch! Anyway, I bolted out of the otherwise great scenery immediately.
Hotel de Ville
The Notredame Church in Paris
I continued my path down to the Quartier Latin area, passing the La Sorbonne. The school was closed unfortunately, I was too late. Normally, this school is closed to public but today is one of the two days of the year when non-students could come visit inside the school. Well, I blew my chance off of this one...
But, the Luxembourg Palace and Garden was simply a redemption. Not only the scenery was gorgeous, (this time) I conversed with a nice old Spanish guy who have lived in Paris for the last 20 years. He spoke very little English and I spoke very little French, so voila! But he was a really pleasant guy and I enjoyed our "Lost in Translation" moments with him.
Palais du Luxembourg
After deciding that my feet were getting less fatiqued, I strolled closer to the palace and immediately decided not to go in simply because I realized my feet were just too tired to go up and down the stairs in the palace anyway. Surprisingly though, I met some ESSEC exchange students in front of the palace! One of them recognized me and called me over, and shortly enough, others started to appear! Sarah, my Pepperdine colleague also showed up and kindly invited me to have a girls' night out moment in her place with three other girls. It was also at this time that my camera's battery died. So, no picture from my camera about the girls' night out at Sarah's place. But, the full album is accessible from here.
We had an awesome time; we shopped the ingredients at a market near Sarah's place, we cooked them together, ate them, drank some red and white wine, and had long girl talks. I absolutely loved, loved it! Another pleasant occurence that evening was that the tortellini with mushroom that Migena cooked did not make me throw up (I am known for my inability to eat pasta). It's probably because I ate them with lots of salad, but still, I did not throw up. More importantly, I think the meal was delicious, a very lovely meal! After some more girl talks, I decided to go home since it was getting late after all (about 11 pm).
Tomorrow would be another day of Journées Européennes du Patrimoine, and I hoped to venture some of the closer destinations, but man, my feet were hurting me....
- to be continued... -
No comments:
Post a Comment