Day 14 - Models, Malls and Big Balls

The last full day in Paris was designated as go-look-at-stores day. After Breakfast #1, we hit the streets.

Here's Evan mildly gesturing toward the Vélib' machine. We couldn't rent these ubiquitous bikes because our American credit cards weren't up to snuff for the rental kiosks. According to our random sampling of locals (i.e. - asking a group of smiling people using one of these terminals), they're pretty great. Watch the video (posted 5/5/9) on the Vélib Blog - for a little taste.

First stop of the day was the local Muji. That's right - the Japanese "no-brand" store. I'd been waiting for the opportunity pretty much the whole trip (and also wanted to see how the prices in Euro compared to pounds sterling). The Muji was split into two stores, clothing/stationary in one and the housewares section a few doors down the street. We nosed around the stationary, looked at their folding bike and time keeping devices, and found a few choice items. Then Evan whipped out the iPhone, and after some calculatoring, figured out it'd be cheaper to pull the trigger in London (what with the weaker pound), and the goods were reluctantly returned to their shelves.

Seeing we were close to Mulot, we returned to EAT AGAIN.

And feeling like I had to eat something emblematic of France, I got their croque-monsier. Crispy. Golden. Delicious.

Evan got a delightfully light fishy sandwich.

Our next target was a shop I'd heard mentioned a lot - Colette. It was near the Tuileries/Louvre, so we took the Metro to the Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre stop. It was time to pee again. We walked around and around underground, in the station, passing promising looking hallways, an underground mall, and suddenly found ourselves infront of the Carrousel du Louvre, amidst Fashion Week.

People were lined up for the next show. There were long banners listing pretty much every big designer I'd ever heard of. Everyone was dressed to impress, and ready to judge everyone else.

As we stood in the hall taking it all in, some models flounced out of the venue, past a screen playing back one of the shows. It stopped them in their tracks. They watched themselves? or their friends maybe?, occasionally jumping up and down with excitement when a particularly favorable shot flickered across the screen. After tiring of this, they posed and flirted with the paparazzi around them, then stalked off on their impossibly long legs.

After the amazement wore off, we made it up to the street, and found Colette. I charged downstairs to Water-bar, their café. They had Japanese toilets with the bidet function. I decided it could go very wrong/to save it for another day. Probably the trendiest store I've ever set foot in, they had a bouncer, it was packed, they had art books, A Bathing Ape gear, jail-broken iPhones, blingity bling-bling chains, and upstairs, deconstructed clothes and a corner dedicated to the Barbie 50th Anniversary. There were photos on the walls featuring Karl Lagerfeld creations for Barbie and Ken.

There was nothing really souvenir-worthy at Colette, so it was time to turn our sights on Galeries Lafayette - a giant department store complex. We ran through a few floors, admired the rainbow lit ceiling, and found the best feature this giant had to offer.

Its roof! The view was fantastic. You can see the Eiffel Tower in the misty distance.

God-light! Sunflares!

Looking off the edge onto the street between the department store and Palais Garnier (the Paris Opera).

You can really see the Palais Garnier in this stitched panorama of the view on the roof. It's the big, peaked roof. Autostitch also managed to create a surreal wraith-like Evan.

We went back inside, down a few floors, and crossed a bridge connecting the buildings to the one with the food hall. There were counters selling chocolates, spices, a coffee bar, mediterranean dishes, chinese/vietnamese food, sausages, a juice bar, pasta made to order, cold cases with fancy condiments and dairy products, etc. We circled for a good while and Evan got some gnocchi. The vendor was being really strict about enforcing Evan's take-away food status (and probably didn't like the looks of the cold-case salad I'd gotten from the grocery section), but there were no common area seats available, so we walked out to one of the back streets in frustration.

Thankfully we saw this smaller, calmer eating situation while rounding the corner. I got an awesome quinoa salad and we happily sat down and ate.

Printemps (another giant department store) was right next door, so we did a quick run through, then bounced over to the giant H&M and Zara to see if it was any different than the ones at home.

Stores gotten through, we hopped on the Metro to see something more cultural. One more on M'daya's recommendation list, we took Line 8 down south.

It's not dorky, M'daya! Being able to see through to the far end of the train IS cool!

We made it to Bibliothèque François Mitterrand as the sun was setting. Four giant towers shaped to resemble open books, grey wood stretching to infinity, a multi-storied sunken garden. I'm still unclear as to whether the National Library of France is the biggest, or one of the biggest libraries in the world, but whatever - I was still impressed.

There was a promising exhibit on children's books going on, but the man at the information desk kindly talked me down from the ledge, explaining it wasn't worth spending the euro for 15 minutes of an exhibit all in French. Also, being that it was a serious research library where you actually had to make appointments to talk to the librarians, we couldn't really just wander through the stacks. So we took a lap around one of floors looking into the atrium, walked by several reading rooms, and at the end of the lap, found The Globes of Louis XIV. And what globes! They were so big, they had trap doors on their undersides. There was a neat display in the room next to them, but bummer for the non-French speakers - besides a couple of plaques that had been translated into several languages, pretty much everything juicy looking was only in French.

Feeling naughty for having taken a blurry photo of the globes in the low-light/no-photography zone, we slunk out into the night. In this shot, we're on the escalator ramp looking across the sunken garden and at two of the book towers across the way.

The expansive grey wood platform ended in some vertigo-inspiring stairs - it was like the entire length was a staircase punctuated here and there with some handrails. You can sort of see blurry Evan walking to the edge, facing the Seine and the bridge connecting the BnF and Parc de Bercy.

We tried to see if we could catch the Bateau Mouche near the library, but a guy wandering around near the river with a beer in his hand told us they were only running from a point near the Eiffel Tower. Cross town again? We decided to give it the good 'ol college try. We walked through the park towards what we could figure was the closest Metro stop.

We passed by the Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy - an arena that was buzzing with people. Was it for a game? No! It was more Fashion Week! The street was jammed with cars dropping off hordes of glamorous people - we'd just passed by Alexander McQueen party central.

Time was not on our side. After good-ol'-college-trying to get across town before the last boat sailed, we came to accept that by the time we dealt with key station closures, detours, and time necessary to get lost and found again, it wasn't gonna happen. Instead, we'd turn out attention to a nice dinner, on our last night in Paris. We Metro'd it to Bastille, and walked up Rue Lappe in search of a good meal. At the end of the street, we ran into Chez Paul (thank you, Kyle). It was packed and we were led upstairs to a tiny table in the corner. It so happened we were also right next to a large tableful of American fashion magazine editors, gossiping loudly. After being in our own english speaking couple bubble for so long, it was really really hard - both on the ears, and on the attention span. I tried not to get sucked into their conversations about incompetent so-and-so's who blah blah blah, but then gave in and had to ask one of them if the event that'd been going on was comparable to the SuperBowl for them or what.

The menu studied and waitress consulted, we ordered and settled down to some wine.

I was excited for some fresh vegetable matter.

Evan's pate was yummy.

I got steak tartare - beef sashimi! It was really good, but we started calling it cat food - giggle giggle.

Evan got a hunk of lamb - the waitress' suggestion - and the chitterchatter at the next table halted briefly while the fashion ladies all eyed his dinner, asking questions and remarking to each other how good it looked. And then they ordered themselves giant steaks.

Stuffed and triumphant, we walked back to the hotel to get wi-fi'd and rested for the next mode of transportation on the morrow.