Nuit Blanche

So let's see... Yesterday Melanie, Lloyd, Emily and I headed out to Les Marche Puces, a huge marketplace just south of Paris' northern border. We walked around awhile, again seeing how the north of Paris is a lot more...urban...than the rest of Paris. It wasn't as great as I had hoped, but it was interesting.

We then headed back south toward Les Halles Forum, a gigantic shopping mall in the middle of Paris. Before we shopped we stopped at Le Centre Les Halles, a cafe where I had some amazing french onion soup, some okay fish, and a pretty good chocolate mousse, my meal for the day. It was a little amusing because the awning for the cafe kept on expanding and contracting, trying to cover us when there was no sun and trying to pull away when there was...but the sun kept on disappearing. Oh, and one other thing - Paris cafes have heat lamps. It's a miracle.
After lunch we headed down into the mall, which was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. And why was it so crowded? And why were there sales everywhere? Oh! It was the forum's 30th anniversary! Well, let's just say I stayed at the mall while Emily and Lloyd went elsewhere so I could shop around, taking advantage of the sales. In one of the stores there was even a live DJ playing dance music...I was in love with Paris again, haha.

My goal before coming to Paris was to maybe get a pair of jeans, one or two long sleeve shirts, a sweater, and a coat...and I was able to get the first three (no sweater or coat unfortunately) for pretty darn cheap. However, I was shopped out after all of that and, since I didn't fall in love with anything else, I decided I needed to go home and take a nap before the night's activities.

After resting up and doing a bit of reading, we all met up (with Benny this time) at 9:30 to take in Nuit Blanche, a yearly Parisian festival that's supposed to have a lot of modern art and galleries and such from 7pm - 7am. We got to our stop and followed everyone who was heading to the Louvre, and I was amazed with how pretty it all was at night. We spent awhile taking pictures there because everything was so lovely. There weren't any galleries or anything there, but I guess everyone just decided to take the opportunity to explore the beauty.
We then continued to walk around Les Halles, not seeing much, yet we finally saw a church that had a very long line and a Nuit Blanche sign outside of it. Well of course Emily was hungry again, haha, and wanted to eat before getting in line, so we headed to a cafe with some really strange food and we all shared a horrible tasting bottle of red wine (I was again the person to test the wine, but didn't have the heart or ability to tell the waiter it was awful) while a few people got food and dessert (I was still full from lunch).

When we finally exited the cafe the line was gone from the church and we went inside only to see a screen playing a video of the international arrivals gate...we immediately left.

After hearing Notre Dame had some cool things we walked all the way over to there. Again nothing really impressive, but there were cool light structures in each of the alter areas, so since I love lights I thought that was kind of cool. Plus, until last night I had never been at or near Notre Dame either, so that was nice.
By this time we were done. People were drunkenly yelling in the streets, Nuit Blanche was nothing like we expected, and we were cold and wanted to go home. Except, it was so busy that we couldn't get a cab. There I was, only in a blazer and boots with heels, and we started walking home. Approximate distance is about 4 miles.

We got almost 1/5 of the way until we saw a giant disco ball hanging from a crane and hundreds of people walking toward it. I kind of wanted to go see it, but we continued on. Finally we were able to catch a cab (yes, Paris was silly enough not to keep their transportation network running last night. They had one line running, but it would take us nowhere near home, and it was almost 3am).

Thank goodness. It was worth me only having to pay 2.20 euros for a cab instead of walking the remainder 3+ miles. After finally getting home I went straight to bed. Such a long day.

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Today I let myself sleep in and then went to get my daily baguette, walking there and taking the tram back. I didn't get as much bread as usual, unfortunately, and I'm still a little hungry, but I still have to study for a french quiz, so I don't know what I'm going to do. After I got back I took a nap because I was exhausted, and now I've just been reading and studying...and posting.

A bientot!