Yesterday
I had class from 9H30 to 11H30, and then had our entrevues with Céline (where we tell her which classes we're interested in taking once the lectures begin on October 21st). I will be taking l'Histoire d'art and some sort of Cinéma class. I'm sure both of these classes will be extremely difficult, but everything is difficult when you're studying abroad! Why not make it interesting.
After class we had about 4 hours to kill before we met again for a guided tour of l'Hotel de Ville ("city hall"). In the mean time, we found our new favorite restaurant - Brioche Dorée. It's 5€50 for a bottle of pop, a sandwich, and your choice of dessert. We took our cheap lunch on over to the Luxembourg gardens and ate there before walking north to Notre Dame in search of an Orange store. We didn't find one right away - however, we did see a scam in action... I'm not sure if I've blogged about it before, but it truly makes me angry that it exists so I will now culture everyone who reads this blog on the lowliest of crimes:
Near tourist hot spots, it's really common to see groups of younger, foreign girls (oftentimes arab-looking, I'm not great with ethnicities, I apologize) holding clipboards. There are two approaches that I've seen for this scam: 1) they approach you, ask you if you speak english, and then ask you to sign their petition. They're pretty insistent. When this happened to me, I repeatedly said "no, thank you" at least 10 times before she finally went away. If they manage to finagle you into signing something (which is pretty much a no-no whenever you're in a foreign country, not just Paris), the other girls will steal your things while you're hands and eyes are distracted! The other approach - 2) a group of young girls holding clip boards come up to you, motioning for you to sign. They also motion to their ears and their mouth to show you that they are deaf and mute. You sign their clip board after they follow you around shoving it in your face, and then suddenly they surround you, walking in circles and asking for donation. You pull your wallet out, and they all begin to grab from it right in front of you. It's so fast that you don't really have an option, and they're not about to give it back. It's a "donation", after all. I saw this one happen to someone near Notre Dame. The point is, never sign anything. Always say no to petitions in tourist locations. Maybe even just in general.
Anyways, back to my day recap... We did some shopping on Rue de Rivoli and found our first Lush store. We found an H&M and both invested in new, bigger purses - pretty much an essential. We found multiple french thrift shops and visited the outside of Centre Pompidou. We saw a real french bulldog. We bought our monthly métro pass - Navigo Découverte, which will allow us to take the subway and the bus freely throughout Paris any time. We then went on a tour of l'Hotel de Ville - which was beautiful and grandiose but ultimately not the most interesting way to spend a day. And we retourned.
Today
We had class 9H30 - 11H30, ate free bread from the building our classes our in, Audrey got more Brioche Dorée, and we ate again in the Luxembourg gardens. Then we went to a mandatory slideshow about Paris which put us all to sleep, and took a quick stroll through Galeries Lafayette - one of the "grand magasins" of Paris, where you'll find Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton, etc. We kept wandering up Rue Lafayette and found a grocery store called Carrefour, which we quickly discovered carries Oreos, Reese's, Ben & Jerry's, along with 2€50 sandwiches and plenty of other good prices on good items. Luckily, it's not even a 5 minute walk from our new apartment! We took the subway back to Delph's place and made ourselves some quick pasta before heading out again for the night... we primarily left because we thought Delph was mad at us again, but I'm very glad we did leave!
We took a trip to the Eiffel tower and walked around it's gardens and parks. Audrey wanted to see it sparkle - which it only does for 5 minutes on the hour every hour past 8... so we hung around for a while. A man came by offering wine and champagne. At first we said no, but then on his way back we politely asked how much ("combien coûte le vin?"). 20€! We said no, and he continued to talk himself down all the way to 5€ at which point we felt we had achieved a great feat and deserved the wine. He even asked if we were French.. I guess speaking french does help in tourist situations. We drank our wine and watched the Eiffel tower sparkle, and then slowly made our way back to the RER station. On the way, we grabbed a crêpe au nutella banane avec crème - and it was to die for.
Now we are back at Delph's. While it doesn't seem like much (or maybe it does), I would say today was one of our best days yet!
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