Wandering down the champs was a nice stroll, looking at all of the stylish fashion shops, car showrooms, and restaurants. The restaurant Fouquet's is the "place to be seen" frequented by many movie and theatrical stars, including Kirk Douglas, Sean Connery and Sophia Loren. It offers traditional French cuisine, and is very expensive, so we decided not to eat there!! ;)
Couldn't pass up a photo of Louis Vuitton, and Marni, Ashleigh and I just had to wander in to Abercrombie and Fitch, for a look at the shirtless, very attractive men, and to enjoy the fragrance of their cologne!
From here we wandered down past the Grand Palace and the Petit Palace. By this stage Kyle was being pretty painful, and extremely annoying, we had just seen the French President drive past, and police everywhere, Grant couldn't handle it any longer, and Kyle received a smack on the butt in the centre of Paris!! Ohh great, I thought I was going to be bailing Grant out of a French jail - we all had a laugh about it during our late lunch, but it was pretty intense at the time!!
We walked to the place de la Concorde, the largest public square in Paris, and where Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antionette were beheaded, and where the large Egyptian obelisk now sits.
By this time we were all very hungry, so we found a lovely little restaurant with the most amazing patisseries and stopped for a late lunch. After filling up, we walked out to find the weather had changed again, and it was now pouring with rain, we headed towards our destination, Galleries Lafayette, a most amazing shopping centre, which was extremely busy! All the same it was very interesting wandering around, especially in the food section, where we saw this Iberico Ham selling for £298, as you can imagine Grant was in food heaven!
Still pouring with rain, we needed to at least glimpse the Louvre, hoping that it may clear by the time we got there, but instead the rain had got heavier. The line was very long, and not undercover, I guess being a public holiday, it was even busier than normal, so we decided that as much as we desperately would love to see the Mona Lisa, it was not meant to be! So a few quick snaps, including one of Kyle (he was redeeming himself very quickly) standing in the rain, we made our way back to the Latin Quarter to be closer to the apartment.
After a quick dry off, and a rest, Grant, Kyle and I went to the deli and patisserie to get some goodies, including some foie gras, baguettes, strawberries and fresh salad vegetables. (The fresh fruit and veges are delicious at the moment, all the summer fruit is in all the shops, the raspberries are amazing!)
We have had very little luck with the weather, which has been a shame, it definitely hasn't been as enjoyable as we were hoping, and we are all struggling big time with the dirtiness of the French, including women who just spit out their chewies on the street as you walk by, and the smoking is bordering on intolerable!! The architecture and history is amazing, but you get a distinct feeling that the French totally dislike tourists. Even when you try to be polite, and begin a conversation in French. Today the boucherie (butcher), refused to serve us, he took an instant dislike to us as soon as we said bonjour, we did our best to explain what we wanted, however he threw his hands in the air, and made the younger man serve us, who was lovely and very understanding. We all had a laugh with the young man and said Auvoir, the older man still mumbling about us in French to one of his other employees!!
Anyway, hoping the weather would be clear for our very much anticipated visit to Versailles tomorrow, we ate and were all in bed, desperately hoping that the party in the neighbouring apartment, which kept us awake for most of the previous night, would not be repeated!!
Beaucoup Amour,
Chrissie xx
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