Part 2

Fashion Show, Sorbonne Area, Pantheon, Mouffetard, Ile de la Cite, Pere Lachaine Cemetary

Breakfast of champions at the hotel.  Breakfast was very continental.  It consisted of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate, with a baguette and croissants, butter and jam.  No honey, so I bought my own and used that.On our way out for a day of touristing, we saw some people headed out to demonstrate and strike.  This says something like, "Understaffed, too much worked, miserable salary, uhh...a little more vaseline, please".  We talked to this guy--they were workers at a hospital (this man was a nurses assistant), striking for higher pay.  He's been to Seattle before, renting a car here and then driving up to British Columbia.


At the Galeries Lafayette department store, one of the oldest and largest around, we went to a fashion show that they hold every week.  We had signed up for it previously over the internet.  Very interesting--the first fashion show I've ever been to.


The dress on the left here was the only one that I liked. The rest were too far out for me.


This picture was taken by a couple from Virginia who had signed up for the fashion show as well, but got up too late.  We told them to check out our web site and look at our pictures of it.  We didn't get their names, but if you make it here, greetings!This is the inside of the store, built around a huge atrium.  I was surprised to see that the store itself seemed a little shabby and in need of renovation.


This coat was in the fashion show, one of the first things that they displayed.  Right after Eric took this picture the lady came up and said no pictures.We found the hospital strikers again, just in front of the opera.  It seems like striking in France is a national obsession.  They tied up the traffic tremendously--good thing we weren't driving.


Back at the hotel, we went for a walk in the neighborhood (the Left Bank).  This is the Cluny Museum of the Middle Ages.


Part of the University of Sorbonne, very close to where we stayed.Lots of interesting stores in the area.  We went into a store that caters to medical students, with all kinds of teaching supplies (models of the eye, etc.).


A store of sculpted busts.A teapot store


Another Jules Verne store (our second)A typical Parisian cafe, with chairs on the sidewalk.  It's a little to cold to be drinking coffee outside, though.


We bought our first crepe from this guy, and almost got ripped off by him. It was 15 F, we gave him 50 F, and got back 25.20 F. He was hoping that we�d think the 20 centime coin was a 10 F coin (they both have a bronze color). After we�d walked away, Eric counted the change and realized we were short. We walked back and told him we didn�t get the right change. First he said he�d given us another 10 F coin, but then he he gave us the right change.A bookbinder in his workshop.


The next day we walked by the Pantheon on our way to the Mouffetard (a big market street).  The Pantheon was built as a church, but is now something like a secular mausoleum.A pleasant little courtyard close to the Pantheon


Pantheon in the background, and the guy who took the picture for us called the green thing a fountain, but I didn't see a place for water to come out.Yummy, delicious little tarts in a store window.  We tried many pastries like these.  I think my favorite was a coffee eclair.


Rue Mouffetard.A cheese shop.  Tons and tons of selection here, as expected.


A fruit stand on Mouffetard.I bought some Lichee fruits from this vendor.  I was really surprised by the fact that they're so popular here--you see the shells everywhere.  Apparently they're imported from Madagascar.


Our arch nemesis in walking around Paris were the dog turds everywhere.  We had to keep our eyes on the pavement all the time, and call out alerts.  The quick little side step we took, when we almost stepped on one, we called the "dog shit dance".Lunch at this restaurant.  Not too bad at all.


These boats can take hundreds of tourists along the Seine.  During the off-season, though, there's just a few on board.We saw this woman taking pictures both at Notre Dame Cathedral, and here, in front of this famous Metro stop.  She propped up a little duck with a picture of a guy stuck inside it (her boyfriend?) and took pictures of it.  Hmm...


La Concierge, a famous prison on Ile de la Cite (not far from Notre Dame) where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned.A view of another huge department store, La Samaritaine.


The tip of the Ile de La Cite, the island that Notre Dame is on.Scooters were very popular in Paris as a means of transport.


Inside a metro.Lots of famous people are buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery.  It's huge, and is supposed to be the most visited cemetery in the world.


Composer Fredric Chopin


Rock star Jim Morrison.  A young woman, dressed hippie style, was sitting on the ground close by here, smoking pot, with a cat in her lap. Another guy, older was standing close by, just standing and looking around.  I guess fans come here to experience the aura.


I was surprised to see that there were lots of communist graves here.  No crosses, of course.This is a memorial to the people who died in the concentration camp of Ravensbruck


To the heros of the resistance to the Nazis.More memorials to concentration camp victims: Buchenwald..


and Sachsenhausen.Writer Gertrude Stein


Writer Oscar WildeIt seems like Oscar Wilde's grave has become something of a gay pilgrimage site (he was gay).  Lots of lipstick marks on it.


Painter DeLaCroix


Writer BalzacPlaywright Moliere


Nobody famous, just thought the inscription was interesting.  It reads in part, "This tomb contains, alas, the three things that made the happiness of this father and husband".  Then it lists the two daughters and the mother, both dying in the early part of the 1800s.Me, in our hotel room, writing up notes.


Another crepe, this time a plain butter and sugar one.In the evening we went out to a cafe right next to the Sorbonne, frequented by students.  There was an extremely animated group of students there that we took a discrete picture of.


The Sorbonne.