Sensual Walk & a Fake Walk

So this post will have two walks, one from last week, and one from just yesterday. Let's start with the one from last week. So last Saturday, we did the Madeline Walk: also known as Marcher Le Nez au Vent which translates into something like the Follow your nose to the wind walk. So that's why I call this a sensual walk. First of all, we have our eyes being wowed by the Cathedral of the Madeline. It's a really cool Cathedral, unique in it's Greek-style columns.

Here's a few pictures. The one inside is actually illegal because I saw others taking, but then I found out they weren't supposed to either.


Then we had our taste buds tantalized!! It's called Ladurée and it's really famous in Paris. We had these macarons that were invented here and I had chocolate, orange flower, rose, and strawberry. My favorite were rose and strawberry. Chocolate was alright, I prefer just real chocolate, and orange flower was disgusting. No one else wanted to try it. I tried some of the girls' vanilla and that was good! Caramel was alright too. Here's me trying one:

And look how pretty the inside of the store is!! (That's Brooky's cute hat)


Then we went to this tiy Chapel called Chapelle de L'Assomption, where there was just two elderly ladies worshipping. No tourist at all even though all around were so many tourists shopping. Finally, our noses were awaken by this Perfume "Museum", called Fragonard Musée du Parfum. I didn't take pics at the Church because it was so small and we couldn't take any at the Perfume Store/Museum. But basically this lady took us on a tour but she didn't know english and had pretty much memorized it. She showed us some ways to make perfume, like putting the flowers in water then evaporating the water and letting it condense. The tour itself was only like 10 minutes but the French speaking tour in front of us was way longer. I think I understood more of that than her english. She gave Rosalie a sample ingredient and said it was like Mint or something, but we both smelled it and know for sure that it is NOT what she said.

Then we had a perfume sampling thing which was quite fun actually. I wish there were a cologne sampling. She showed me a few of the cologne being sold but there was hardly any selection. Thanks meimei for the D&G light blue you gave me for Christams btw.

Now time for the fake walk called METRO WALK. You pretty much just sit in the metro most of the time. I decided to do it since it was raining and I just wanted to get it out of the way. Mike was sleeping from 10 am to 4 pm so I just left without him. Started out dumb....then I found a mall, but all the clothes were for girls. There were two H&M's but one was H&M Femme and the other one was H&M Lingerie. That made the walk suck more. Anyways the Paris Metro was built a long time ago, starting in 1900. This is why most of the lines suck compared to the ones I been to. Taiwan's by far is the best but it's only built in 2000. Boston's started in 1905 but overall they updated it better except for a few ghetto stations. But Paris has sooo many ghetto stations. I will admit though, they do have the most amount of lines than any of the other two. It covers more area and is spread throughout Paris.

Take a look at this following picture at our first stop St-Lazare. It's from 1911 which is why the ceiling is vaulted. The colors green and white with some brown shows the two different companies at that time that had their own separate metro systems. This station was created then to allow connection between these two private enterprises. It was later on combined and I think the government owns it now.

This is not part of the walk but I went to Abesses to find a store my host family's son told me about, but I couldn't find it anywhere. But going up the metro station I noticed everyone waited for these 3 elevators to go up...everyone except me. And I saw these cool paintings all up the stairs...and I was like "HA! Those lazy bums are missing out!" But it kept going up, and up, and up, probably 4 stories.

Next stop was Rotonde de la Villette by Jaurès station. This was a tollhouse built by Ledoux to surround Paris to get taxes and stuff but people tore down most of these and the walls around Paris too during the revolution. This survived and because of the rules that forbade construction to be 325 feet away, it allowed for new roads to be built and eventually the Metro system was able to use those free space as well.

Close by was where little Amelie Poulain threw rocks and I think her gold fish:


Then we went to Porte Dauphine to see Art Nouveau Hector Guimard, but I totally saw it and thought it was supposed to be way cooler and then walked all the way around. Turns out it's just this pic below. And since he had similar stuff around Paris I thought it was dumb we had to come all the way here to see it. It was cool to see it that first time in Montmarte but not to ride forever to get here.

Then I finally found a shopping place by Place D'Italie. It's an American-style mall in that everything is inside. There even was sort of a small food court thing. And I bought a sandwich for dinner and some clothes and felt much better. Than to finish off I went to Bastille and looked for the foundation but could not see it anywhere. (later on Bart and them told me it's really small and hard to see unless you get out of the train exactly there). I did see these paintings on the way of the station though:

And then Bart and Dan and Emily sees me and goes crazy with laughter. Turns out that Emily saw an asian guy that she thought was me earlier, and Bart and Dan just started pointing out all the asians after saying it was me, and they were doing it to me, and when they saw my face they couldn't believe it really was me this time. So we finished the walk together by getting on line 14, the newest line, which is the only one that is as nice as the one in Taiwan. If all of Paris Metro were like this I would be happy.

We grabbed hot chocolate after and had a fun time gossiping! The walk didn't turn out so bad after all!