Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Today Nolen [my roommate] called me and asked me if I wanted to join his language school on a walking tour of Paris. I decided that it was probably a good idea since I should really know as much as possible about the city that's my home for the next 5 months. All I really can vouch for is that it's super cold out and makes me NOT want to walk around at ALL ! I met up w the group at 2pm and we headed to the Pont Neuf [New Bridge, which is actually the oldest bridge in Paris] for the beginning of the tour.
We walked through the Louvre courtyards, past the pyramid, around the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and through the Jardin Tulieries. We continued on to the Champs-Elysées were we stopped at a few flagship stores and toured an art exhibit above the Louis Vuitton store [after of course balking at the price of the leather goods on display]. While this all sounds short and sweet, we were zigzagging all over the place, popping in and out of hotels and various buildings, and didnt arrive at our final destination, the Arc de Triomphe, until around 6:30pm. It was informative, cold and exhausting. Which made it easy to come home, make dinner and veg out in front of the 8pm news.
Here's a map of our route. It was 5km, which is about 3.1miles... which should only take about an hour or so to walk... but we managed to draw it out to 4.5, with all the stopping and learning :)
(photo not my own)
We walked through the Louvre courtyards, past the pyramid, around the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and through the Jardin Tulieries. We continued on to the Champs-Elysées were we stopped at a few flagship stores and toured an art exhibit above the Louis Vuitton store [after of course balking at the price of the leather goods on display]. While this all sounds short and sweet, we were zigzagging all over the place, popping in and out of hotels and various buildings, and didnt arrive at our final destination, the Arc de Triomphe, until around 6:30pm. It was informative, cold and exhausting. Which made it easy to come home, make dinner and veg out in front of the 8pm news.
Here's a map of our route. It was 5km, which is about 3.1miles... which should only take about an hour or so to walk... but we managed to draw it out to 4.5, with all the stopping and learning :)
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Today was the 10th Traversée de Paris [crossing of Paris] by this French car club. Basically if you have a car thats a classic and older than 1976 you can drive through the streets of Paris and show it off. I thought it sounded cool so Nolen and I left around 8am to get to the Arc de Triomph to see some old cars drive around the massive round about. We pretty much stood outside for 30 minutes and saw one car. I was expecting some sort of Parade, but I guess that wasn't the case. We decided to walk down to Trocadero, by the Eiffel Tower to see the endpoint, and maybe there would be some cars there... We trudged through the slush and about 20 min later made it to the endpoint, which was right in front of the Eiffel Tower. Picturesque. Except... where were the cars? We spotted one and there didn't seem to be any more showing up so we decided to call it a day and head home. I couldn't feel my toes and it seemed like we were on a wild goose chase. As we were leaving a FEW cars pulled up, so I snapped a few shots so the day wasn't a complete waste.
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