France - Paris & Provence 6 Days Trip : Day 5

Day 5 - Paris





Galeries Lafayette Department Store


A legendary spot of shopping for fashion enthusiasts that no one can miss out. Paris is the fashion capital of the world, and the Galeries Lafayette is the fashions’ premier showcase.


Galeries Lafayette is laid out among 3 buildings – The main, Lafayette Coupole, Lafayatte Homme and Lafayette Maison.

 
Even you are not intend to shop those luxury designer collections, latest jewelry trends, accessories, cosmetics etc, visiting Galeries Lafayette is still worthwhile for the breathtaking setting. The store’s unique Belle Epoque architecture, which features a dramatic colored glass dome and an ornate Art Nouveau staircase offering dizzying perpectives, contributed to the department store being named a Paris city heritage site.


We do our street shopping along Lafayette for souvenirs while sis’s friend is queuing for Channel. And there a street with quite number of Chinese advertising signboards which make us thought it is the China town. We attracted by a Chinese mix rice restaurant where all the dishes look very delicious. We have our lunch there and it is the most expensive mix rice that I ever had.

This meal cost RM130.

Trinité Church near Galeries Lafayette.

Musée du Louvre


The world most famous museum. If you are not a art lover, by just standing outside and looking at the Glass Pyramid, in front of the beautiful buildings (Palais de Louvre) and admired the Porte de Lions, the Passage Richelieu and the Carrousel is satisfying enough and you will realize, yes, you actually in Paris.

Once we got out from the Metro, we are surprised seeing a huge poster of Emperor Qing hanging on the wall of Louvre building. “The Forbidden City in the Louvre”, this exhibition will held til Jan 2012 and more than 130 artifacts exhibited at the Louvre and some of the collections are exhibit for the first time ever.

Musee du Louvre are huge. There are 2 types of entrance ticker, 1. museum only (10€) and 2. museum + exhibition (14€). We opt for option 1 with 2 reasons: 1. we only have 3 hours to visit the musee and 2. we have been to forbidden city, china.

Only 4 of us are entering to the museum. We got a map in order we can easily access to the famous collection that cannot be missed; Mona Lisa, Winged Victory of Samothrace, Venus de Milo, the Great Sphinx of Tanis, Michelangelo statue. Surely you get amaze with all those fine arts collection in here. But we are not going to study 1 by 1 like the students/arts lovers doing here, we just walk pass all those rooms and search for the “Smile”.

I never thought this piece of art is much more smaller than those displayed outside. It been framed with glass and it keep a distance from the visitors. Yet, it still attracts hundreds of peoples with hundreds of cameras focusing on this beautiful mystery smile.

Emperor KangXi exhibition

Centre Pompidou

Is the largest museum for modern art in Europe. The building structure is very special and odd. It is totally different from all other building we seen in Paris. The critics have described the design of Pompidou museum as an “oil refinery in the centre of the city”. The intention by the architects was to place service elements, such as water, electricity, outside of the building and consequently turn the building “inside out”. Outside of the Pompidou centre, there are streets artist for portrait drawing or sketch. Unfortunately, we are late for this.




Moulin Rouge


There is a story when we heading to Moulin Rouge. We are struggling on the map on how to going there with the complicated interchange. While we studying the map, sis manage to ‘catch’ a Chinese asking him the direction. He is very helpful with giving us a map and draw out which line that we should take. He keeps on advice us to be extra careful. “夜深了. 那挺危险的. 要小心哦.” Before he left, he still give us a word, “小心保管自身财物. 要小心哦!”. Listening to the Mandarin it feels very warm. 他乡遇故里, 一个小叮咛, 温馨无比. The metro stop is Blanche.


Moulin Rouge is the best known night club-theater and famous of its Cabaret show. We did not enter for the can-can show as it is expensive. We are just here to view the Red Mill night scenery.

 There are few souvenirs shops around here. I am a bit of regrets that didn’t get a painted photo of Paris now.

10:00pm Way back to apartment. Another funny incident happened. We are at Haussmann Saint-Lazare station waiting our RER back to Chelles Gournay. Not much passenger at the station. And there a train came but we saw the signboard is not our destination. We remain sitting there and listening to there unique tone of announcement. 5 minutes passby and we saw some only got up the train after long wait and we blaming that why this train is not moving? Our train won’t be here if this train is not leaving. The whole station is left only us. Almost 10 minutes, with curiosity, I walk to the front of the train and look at the sign. And found that this is the train to Chelles. I shout at them and ask them to board on the train quickly as the door closing alarm has been started. Luckily we all managed boarded. This is the last train back to Chelles, if we miss this, we might take taxi back.

Inside the train, we blast out laugh. Minutes ago we laugh at those last minutes boarding. And actually we are the one who did it.




Last day at Paris with much much more memories with its hundreds year history complicated subway system. Those need to lift up the handle to open door, press button, double-decker, need to climb up or down between the gap of platform, or all by automatically. Amaze with its superb complicated interchange between link of all metro, bus, RER, SNCF and the TGV. Love it so much.