I was very excited about coming to Paris, seeing as I have took four years of French. This gave me my chance to test out my French, with the French purists, the Parisiennes.
It took us while to search for our "hotel" in the myriad of underground metro and after we dropped our luggages in the hotel (a hostel that called itself hotel, bleah), we went to Champs Elysee where we took the important stroll along this famous promenade and we took this picture of the Concorde...
The Concorde (taken when the the traffic light is red in the middle of the road, while crossing)
The song is right, you can really find everything at Champs Elysee...After searching for all the nice food to eat...we ended up eating Mcdonald's...(hahhahaa)
The Obelix
It took us a while to get used to the traffic system, especially coming from Singapore (which uses the UK method, so no such problems in UK), where the right is left and left is right. The orientation is madness but in the end, we managed to get our bearings.
After the must-do stroll, we decide to check out one of the very few free sights in Paris (unlike London where nearly all the sights are free, in Paris, they cost quite a hefty sum to get in, unless you arrive on the first Sun of the month), the Petite Palais.
Bronze statue on one of the entrance of the Grande Palais
Main Entrance of the Grande Palais
Of course, when looking for the "Petite"Palais, we came across it's bigger brother, of which we have to walk all the way around to get to where we are going.
My first chance in asking how to get to the Petite Palais in French and I bungled it...Opps...Luckily, the passer-by I tested my French on was really kind as he didn't laughed at my massacre of his native tongue and pointed us in the right direction. Well, there's no shortage of another chance, so the next time, I'll do better...
Petite Palais (opposite Grande Palais, though not petite at all but definitely smaller than Grande Palais. Get the scale?)
Ok, we finally found the right sized Palais. While entering, we had to get this ticket from the counter before entering but this really muddles me. I mean, the place is free right, so what is the purpose of getting a ticket when it's free?? Even if they want to keep track of the number of visitors, they need only get a person with a counter at the entrance...hmmm....scratch head...Well the process just seems very communistic to me, like you need a token for everything. But nevertheless, get the ticket we did and below are the interior of the Palais.
After walking around, we got tired and decided to make good use of our mobilis card, so we took bus rides across town taking in the sights. So while taking the bus, we decided to see if we can get some food at some supermarket. Ok, so we are thinking back home, at Takashimaya, you can find supermarket, so we should also be able to find supermarket at Lafayette so we decided to go visit the largest (or is it the most famous?) department store in Paris.
Galeries Lafayette
Once there, we tried to look for the supermarket...Erm, to our great disappointment, the food section is actually a small cafe carry a huge price tag. So sad and tired, we put off buying food for dinner. Since we still have a lot of daylight to spend, we decided to go to the graveyard, La Pere Lachaise. Don't worry, this is no scary movie and we are not ghost hunters, this is the graveyard whereby many famous people were buried and is also the largest burial ground in Paris.
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The entrance of La Pere Lachaise
The stroll in the cemetery is really an eye opener, there are really a huge variety of tombstoen architecture in this "park". It think the most interesting tombstone is where Oscar Wilde lies (His tombstone is actually a flying Angel looking thing, and many a person have left their lipstick mark on his tombstone. Ewww....).
Well, to be honest, I really wanted to take some pictures of this really interesting place, however, as superstitious Chinese, I don't want to disturb the peace of the souls buried there, so we only took the entrance.
