Paris Metropolis: Day 4 – Last Day in the City of Art, Shopping and… the Japanese…?

15 Rue Jules Ferry, Paris, France (Last day—Noooooooo!)

    My goal today is for my post to be considerably shorter—yeah right, as if that’ll ever happen. Anyways, it is our last day in Paree, as tomorrow we’re taking the train to Tours to visit some castles. I can’t wait…

    …But for now, let’s concentrate on today.
    Grandma woke me at 8:30 and left to wander the neighborhood, expecting me to get up on my own. Um, yeah. Not happening. When she came back at 9, she was actually surprised that I was still asleep. Well, what did she think?
    We left almost right away after our banana-grapes-baguette-cranberry juice breakfast. We took a different route today, heading for the Champs Elysées. (Ooooh, Champs Elyséééééées… I know, I’ve had that song stuck in my head all day, too.) Upon leaving the metro station, we were a bit disoriented. As in, we turned around in circles for a while trying to figure out exactly where we were. In our defense, the streets were not properly labeled. But that could also just be a lame excuse.
    Finally realizing that The Petit Palais, our ultimate destination, had actually been standing in front of us the whole time, we went through the doors and security.
    The temporary exhibits were free (Yay!), so we wandered around there for some time. There was a beautiful display of vases blown from glass, and there was a furniture collection. There was also a room dedicated to Impressionism (My favorite!) and several statues. It was really nice. We stayed there for an hour or so, and escaped out into the (at last, no more rain) sunshine.

Petit Palais

    We walked along the wide street with no particular direction in mind. We knew that we would not be going into any stores, however; everything on the Champs Elysées is super expensive. Oh, you saw the title, did you? The shopping is actually later, but don’t worry. Remember, I said this would be a short post…

    We bought another umbrella today. 15 euros, instead of 5. And guess what? It never rained…

    We took the subway in the direction of a Japanese noodle place Grandma had found in the Paris book. Once again, we pretty much found it by mistake, as we did with the ice cream place yesterday. Just when we were wondering where it was, it popped up right in front of us. Places tend to do that, don’t they?
    There was a lineup, but we took that as a good sign. It must be good, then, right? We must have waited for about half an hour—I know it sounds really long, but it wasn’t. Finally reaching the front, we were escorted downstairs into the basement. Since we had ordered in advance while we were waiting, our lunch came quickly—two tempura udons, a Japanese beer and a “Coca” (European name for a Coke. Don’t exactly know how they would react if I ordered an actual Coke, but I’m not really sure I want to find out, either.). It was actually quite delicious. We slurped a lot, and I said that all of our slurping would drive Gaby INSANE (Sorry Gaby, if you’re reading this. Although I doubt you are…).
    We walked around the area for a bit after our lunch, and we noticed the number of Japanese places. We must be in Parisian Japantown… We went through a few grocery stores searching for Hello Pandas (for those who don’t know what Hello Pandas are, you’re missing out—they’re these little cookies filled with chocolate, I had been eating some in Montreal in the airport.), but we unfortunately couldn’t find any. Also, we weren’t really sure how to ask: “Est-ce que vous avez des ‘Hellos Pandas’?”
    We stopped at almost every window to look through. There were some really nice scarves. We walked into a store selling Samurai swords, fans and special socks for these wooden flip-flops elevated from the ground—geta, Grandma tells me they're called.
    Finally, we chose to begin our search for a metro station, prepared to go home. But that’s when we saw it.
    This is where the shopping begins.

The skirt Grandma bought me!

    There’s this European clothing company that Grandma really likes called Desigual, and we found a store for it. It was really, really cool. We spent a long time in there, but I don’t mind. Everything was so nice—although expensive. Extremely expensive. All of the dresses that I liked were above 100 euros, but the colours were so bright, and the designs so unique.  In short, if I were rich enough, I would’ve bought the whole store. Instead, Grandma bought me a skirt. Don’t worry, I’ve just finished reimbursing her—I gave her a looooooong foot massage a few minutes ago. She says it was good. Yay.

    Finding the metro, we metro-ed back home. Grandma had a bath and I gave her said foot massage.
    Then, we went Thai.
    The restaurant was only a few blocks away; we shared a pad Thai and a chicken dish—so good. When we walked in, the waiter asked us, “Vous avez réservé?”
    Grandma, not having understood the question, answered, “Yes, yes; we speak English.”
    ...
    Don’t ask me how she got “Do you speak English?” from “Did you make a reservation?” but she did, somehow. It was really funny.
    After dinner we stopped at the bakery and bought the last croissant of the day for tomorrow’s breakfast. I can’t believe tomorrow is our last breakfast in Paris. Time went by so quickly… Luckily, although our stay in Paris is over, the trip is far from being finished.

    When in Rome…

    …Do as the Parisians do. I would like to make a quick note about our stay: Grandma and I have been doing our best to wear scarves—just like real Parisian women! It’s true, they’re all wearing them. Grandma had found this video on a bunch of different ways to wear a scarf. We’ve been trying them out, but so far, the most interesting one is a style that looks like a braid… We’ve also been using them to keep warm on these windy, rainy days. Today was a beautiful one, though; I haven’t even had to use my brand-new umbrella, yet!

    Buskers on Metros

    Another note: we’ve been seeing quite a lot of buskers in the metro stations. Here’s a quick list of all of the musicians in and around the stations:

• Saxophone player on our first day. He was playing with a recording in the background.
• Many guitar players finger-picking throughout the stations.
• Around seven men singing and playing the accordion and other various instruments—we’ve seen them twice! They were there two days in a row, and who knows how many days they stand there playing and singing. They usually attract a crowd because of their size—I thought they were actually really good.
• There was a jazz saxophone player who was really, really good. He was on the metro today.