Paris, Day 2 – Endless Walking and Shopping at Baby

Warning: looong post!
On Fridaymorning I woke up at 6:30 am and I couldn’t sleep anymore. I had put my alarmclock on 7:00 am, but my eyes were just wide open! Since my mom was still asleep, I decided to take a shower. Taking a shower turned out to be a bit of an adventure. We had a shower and bathtub in one and as soon as I opened the tab, I realised the architect hadn’t thought this through. XD Instead of a shower curtain, there was a glass door, but it wasn’t big enough to cover the entire wall of the bathtub. This resulted into water spraying on the floor, unless I stood in the way. It wasn’t really bothering me though, I thought it was funny. ^^
After my shower I woke my mom up, we got dressed and had breakfast downstairs. I really loved the breakfast so much here (nothing had changed since the first time)! ^^ Especially the chocolate cereal with milk. ♥
A couple of days before we left, my friend Emilie and I had agreed to meet at the Baby, the Stars Shine Bright shop at 2 pm on this day. I met Emilie on Facebook and within a short amount of time we became really great friends! She would be going to the Lolita Tea Parties too, but we wanted to meet in advance.
Of course my mom and I didn’t want to do nothing before 2 pm (we know from experience we are capable of doing a lot within a short amount of time), so we decided to go to Pont Neuf, the beautiful bridge where we had been last time. Our pictures didn’t turn out well back then, so we wanted to remake them. We went upstairs, got our things and left.
In Tokyo, my dad and I took outfit pictures (almost) every day, so my mom and I decided to do that too!

Our outfits of the day! Despite the different colours, we look great together in pictures. ^^
We took the metro to Pont Neuf. When we got out of the station, the weather was very typical: the sky was blue, but there were a lot of clouds and it was a little cold. Luckily, it was better the rest of the day!

The Pont Neuf, from where we just exited the metrostation.
The sky had such a strange colour!
Since we wanted to take better pictures this time, we constantly waited for the clouds to move away from the sun. I’m glad these pictures look nice!

My Baby’s umbrella always adds this beautiful pink colour to pictures!
As you might know, I got a beautiful Canon camera for my birthday and Paris was the perfect place to test it out! I took so many pictures, even more than my mom (which has never happened before).

This is one of my favourite ‘together-pictures’!
We took some pictures of each other and then decided to walk to the next bridge, the Pont des Arts, which has all kinds of locks attached to it by couples in love. While we were walking, my mom asked to walk up to the bridge so she could take a picture from far away. After she was done, she walked up to the bridge too.

I love this shot! I look like a professional photographer!
Multiple people told me I had such a nice camera.
It was so much fun looking at the different locks! But I couldn’t help but hope most of these couples were still together… You never know.

The locks attached to the bridge. Some were over ten years old!
We took a lot of pictures on this bridge. It’s such a nice decor! During our trip, we tried to take some funny and creative pictures too (we always try, but sometimes we succeed more than other times).

‘Je suis le Vainqueur du Pont des Arts!’
My brother gave my mom a beautiful book about Paris for her birthday, in which the writer says that Paris is the most beautiful when you just walk through it. Well, we totally experienced that! We left the Pont des Arts and walked on to Musée du Louvre. When we walked underneath it through a gate, we ended up at a square with a fountain behind the famous square with the pyramid. Despite the renovations on one side of the building (Paris wouldn’t be Paris without its everlasting renovations), it was a beautiful place!

The Louvre is such a beautiful building! Why did Louis XIV ever want to leave?
The sun started to shine more brightly, the clouds became smaller and whiter and the fountain even had a rainbow! We walked on to the big square with the glass pyramid with the ponds around it and made some pictures too. I made a funny picture of my mom, lying on the walls around the ponds to take a picture. The lengths we go to create pretty images… ^^
There was barely a line in front of the museum, but we weren’t planning to go inside. The weather was so nice! It would have been a waste! And of course we were going to meet Emilie. ^^
After taking some jumping pictures (I only post the nicest ones, sorry ^^’), we walked on. The day before we had left to Paris, we watched ‘The DaVinci Code’ again. In the movie Tom Hanks aka Robert Langdon stands on the reversed pyramid. Since I hadn’t seen it last time, I looked up in Google Maps where the inversed pyramid is. It turned out to be in the middle of the roundabout across from the big pyramid, so we walked up to there.

I believe my mom was taking a picture of me taking a picture of her.
We walked around the entire roundabout, but we couldn’t reach the pyramid because of the hedges around it. It turns out (even the book self says so) you can’t actually reach it, it was just for the movie. XD
We decided to follow the road and walked through a gate again, when I suddenly discovered a sign that said ‘Carrousel du Louvre’, which is an underground shoppingmall with lots of restaurants. I had read about it before, but I couldn’t find it (I hadn’t looked that hard, but still). We decided to take a look and took the escalator down. When we got down, we immediately saw the reversed pyramid!

I realise you can’t see the pyramid at all, but believe me:
that bright light is where it’s located!
Before we went down the second escalator, I saw a piano standing. It had a sign on it that said: ‘Play Me I’m Yours’. I had heard about an art project called street pianos: differently painted pianos are spread around the world. You can freely play on them as you like! ^^ I played a little too.

I only played shortly, but it was so much fun! ^^
We walked on and explored the shops a little. My mom especially liked a shop called ‘Pylones’, where they had the most colourful and useful things. They also had a jewelry shop, where the shopwindow was filled with ice cream cones.
Then we walked up to the inversed pyramid!

I love this picture a lot. You can see how ingeniously the pyramid is constructed.
Ladurée was right behind the pyramid and since we had gotten a little hungry, we couldn’t resist buying some delicious treats! My mom bought us each a small, mint-flavoured macaron and a big, raspberry-flavoured one. We left the Carrousel du Louvre again and walked into the Jardin des Tuileries. We walked up to the big pond and took our macarons out of the bag. I first tried the mint-flavoured one, which tasted nice (and the colour was so beautiful) and then I ate my beloved big pink macaron.

I just love macarons so much! They’re so soft and sweet and cute!
While we were walking we decided to take a left instead of following the main road of the park to Place de la Concorde. We hadn’t seen the garden from there, so it would be a nice change. We saw two policemen on horses in the park, so cool!

The garden is so beautiful and perfectly symmetric.
We walked up the stairs and looked down upon a road with the river Seine behind it. A beautiful white dog was fetching a ball. My mom told me it was a Saluki, a Persian Greyhound. My mom knows (almost) every possible dog breed.
We walked up and down a little, enjoying the view. A man was painting a part of the Jardin. He was so good! It was as if he was painting a photograph! We walked down the road and turned right. We decided to cross the road and take the stairs down, where we could walk along the Seine. We first sat down for a while. I sat at the bank of the river, but my mom wanted to sit on a bench: she had read that the Seine is actually a very dangerous river and lots of people drown in it!

I wasn’t afraid to fall in (there was a small ledge underwater anyway),
but I was a bit careful with my shoes!
My mom wanted to go La Madeleine, one of Paris’ most famous churches. I was trying to find out how to get their by metro and I thought I had it figured out (turned out I was wrong, but it didn’t really matter after all). We decided to walk on along the Seine, to where I thought the metrostation was. We walked up a big bridge, called the ‘Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor’, which had a very interesting construction. It also had locks attached to it.

Since this is my mom’s favourite picture of herself, I wanted to put it up here. ^^
I think all the bridges over the Seine are so cool! They are all unique and have their own special features!

Captain of the Passerelle.
We kept on walking, after which we arrived at Place de la Concorde. There, I realised La Madeleine was actually in line with this place! We didn’t have to take the metro at all.
I don’t think you remember, but Place de la Concorde is a square with two beautiful fountains. The downside is: they’re not on at the same moment and every year in July the square is a big mess because of the preparations for the 14th, which is a national holiday. The sun was shining now, so it looked a bit better. ^^
While we were looking at some souvenirs in a small shop, it suddenly started to rain! We looked up at the sky, but we couldn’t really find where it came from. So we took shelter in a book shop we knew from last year, but the rain didn’t last for long.
We followed the Rue Royale, which is a superfancy street with shops like Gucci and Ralph Lauren. And a Ladurée! This shop had actually more merchandise than macarons. They had some gorgeous keychains with macarons on them (although I would never attach them to my keychain, they're way too delicate)!
We crossed the street and walked around to get to Madeleine (with a little effort, there was a lot of traffic), when suddenly a woman pulled my mom’s arm and showed her a ring. She asked my mom if it was hers, but it wasn’t. Then she asked if we wanted to buy it! It turns out the beggars found a new way to get money. -_-‘ First they drop a ring on the ground and then they try to sell it to you! ‘Real gold, only 10 euros!’ Yeah, right.
We got rid of the woman and reached la Madeleine.
Madeleine is a beautiful building, ressembling a Roman temple. At first I didn’t even know it was a church!

La Madeleine with a beautiful blue sky. The weather was getting better and better!
We walked up the stairs and sat down at the foot of one of the huge pillars. Of course there was a renovation going on (at the back wall), but it didn’t really bother us. It was nice to sit down for a while and just look at the traffic that drove around the church. The sun was nice and warm too. After a while, I decided I wanted to take a look inside, while my mom stayed outside.
The church was absolutely beautiful inside! It was huge and so different from what you expect after seeing the outside. To be honest: I always get a little overwhelmed in churches. It’s probably the combination of the whispering people, the grandness of the building and the artwork.
I went back outside and told my mom she really had to take a look, so we went back in. She was surprised too and together we lit four candles on the special table. Then we went back outside.
We sat down for another while and just enjoyed the view.

The view from La Madeleine. You can see Place de la Concorde in the distance.
Then we walked to the building’s side, where a big gallery of pillars created a beautiful background for some jumping pictures.

This one turned out really great!
It was getting time to go to the Baby, the Stars Shine Bright shop, so we headed to the metro. There, we discovered a photo booth (I prefer to call them photomatons, after the company that makes them). Last time we were in Paris, my mom and I made pictures together, because there is an option ‘four different poses’. We wanted to take as many pictures possible during this trip! Unfortunately, the photomaton didn’t take our money. -_-“ So we decided to take the next one we bumped into.
Since I had to go to the toilet, we decided to exit the metro at République, which is a big metrostation. I thought there would be like a McDonald’s near and after some walking, we found one. My mom stayed outside while I went looking for the toilets, but when I found them the door was locked! There was a special code next to it, so I asked a staffmember why I couldn’t enter it. He gave me a receipt from someone who had finished their food, which had a code on it (a pretty long one too). Together with another woman I somehow figured out how to use the code and eventually we could enter the bathroom. I can understand why McDonald’s does this: to prevent people from only visiting their toilets (like I did, ahem), but even for the customers this is hard! Oh well.
We went back to the metrostation and went on our way to Ledru-Rollin. I texted Emilie we were coming and I felt a bit nervous: we had never met in real life. What if we somehow ended up not liking each other?

Lovely metro picture~! I look like I’m wearing circle lenses!
We arrived at Ledru-Rollin. When we wanted to exit the station, we suddenly discovered a photomaton! Of course, we didn’t want to miss this chance and somehow had the machine accept our 5 euros banknote. The pictures turned out great (although my mom started talking during the first one, haha)! We took many more during our trip. Maybe I’ll post a separate entry someday..?
We exited the station and walked on to the shop. My heart was pounding: both to be back at the shop and to meet Emilie. Then, I saw the purple shopfront with the curtains painted on the windows!

I was so happy to be back again!
My mom and I went inside. There were a lot of fully dressed Lolitas! I felt a bit underdressed. ^^’ I just told myself I was going to walk around in the shop in Lolita the next day too! I looked around for a little when I suddenly saw Emilie outside! I made my way to the door and we greeted each other (in case you wondered: we’re not from the same country and we don’t have the same motherlanguage, so we communicated in English)! We just naturally started to browse the shop together and I quickly knew there was no reason to be nervous. We were instant friends! Suddenly, the other Lolitas were gone and we had the whole shop to ourselves! We looked at everything closely and admired the details of every dress. It was so much fun to talk about Lolita clothes with another Lolita! I discovered a dress I really liked: it was a red and pink dress with a Swan Lake ballet print on it and a low neckline. The print is called ‘Pas de deux in the moonlight’ and this dress was the Odette version (there’s also an Odile version, I love it). I fell instantly in love with it! Then I discovered they had it in black too! The black version really reminded me of Angelic Pretty’s Memorial Cake, one of my favourite prints. I also saw the Dessert OP in pink hanging and I took it too. While we were browsing, the shopgirl Claire took the things I wanted to try and hung them next to the fitting room for me.

Me browsing all the pretty dresses. I’m holding the beautiful
'Pas de deux' dresses.
Picture by Emilie.
After we had looked at all the dresses, we asked Claire for our Tea Party tickets! They had to be picked up at the shop.

Claire looking for the tickets with Emilie's name on it!
After we got our tickets (Emilie had number 19, I had number 17), we looked at all the accessories, headbows, boleros and cardigans and I chose three beautiful pink boleros to try on, including one Emilie and I had admired on Baby’s site before.

Emilie and me admiring the boleros we had seen on Baby’s site in pink and white.
Then, it was time to try on! I was a bit nervous, but also excited. First, I tried on the pink Dessert OP. I was afraid it wouldn’t fit me, because it didn’t have shirring. But it’s quite a stretchy dress and it actually fit really well. I asked my mom to help me with the zipper, but she couldn’t get it up! Both Emilie and Claire didn’t succeed either (Claire accidentally knocked over a rack with petticoats in the process). Turns out it wasn’t because of me, but the zipper just didn’t want to zip up! It was totally stuck. Eventually we gave up and I decided this dress was not meant to be for me. XD It looks a lot like my other Baby, the Stars Shine Bright dress anyway. Then, I tried on the black dress. When I walked out of the dressing room, I could tell from my mom’s expression she really loved it and she said so too. Claire helped me with my corsetlacing and then I looked into the mirror. Even though I had kept my bright pink shirt on, I thought the dress looked amazing on me and I instantly fell in love with it! Both Emilie and my mom said I should totally buy it and I secretly agreed too, even though I had fallen in love with the pink and red dress first. I loved the black dress so much, I didn’t want to take it off! Emilie suggested I tried the three boleros over the dress, so I could see how they looked. The first bolero I tried on had long sleeves and cute polkadots and I loved it immediately! It looked really cute and it was even cuter combined with the dress! The second bolero I tried had long sleeves too, but it didn’t look so nice. The third bolero was the shortsleeved one with pearls around the edge of the neckline, the one Emilie and I loved so much. But as soon as I tried it on, we realised it was not as great as we had thought: the neckline with the pearls stood up in a weird way, which made the bolero look a bit stupid while worn. I decided I wanted the first bolero!
After that I tried the other dress too. I must say: I really loved that one too. Emilie and my mom together agreed the black dress was the one for me (XD), but I doubted for a moment. Not for long though: I loved the black dress so much (and I could combine it with my black Lolita shoes too)! I wanted to buy a headbow too, but unfortunately the one that goes with the dress was sold already. Instead, I chose a beautiful black headbow that suited the dress wonderfully (I also discovered the dress goes really well with my black Memorial Cake headbow). It’s funny: when I went to Paris I was hoping to buy a dress, a pink bolero and a headbow. I got all three! ♥
I’ll make a separate blogpost about my purchases later.

Some pictures of the shop. ^^ You can see my new dress hanging in the mirror.
All pictures by Emilie.
While I was paying, Emilie was doubting about buying a cute pink polkadotted scrunchie. She said she would think about and possibly buy it the day after. My mom asked me in Dutch if she should buy it for her, which she did. Poor Emilie didn’t know what to say. ♥
After I decided not to buy a pair of simple white socks, we finally left the shop.

Emilie and me with our purchases!
We had decided to go to Princess Crêpe, Baby’s own crêperie. I had forgotten to bring my Paris folder with addresses, but luckily Emilie knew where it was, so my mom and I just followed her.
While walking through the metrostation, Emilie and I kept talking while my mom walked behind us (she said she didn’t mind at all). We bumped into an entire orkest playing Vivaldi at station Bastille!
We went on to station Saint-Paul, where Emilie led the way. We crossed an amazing chocolate shop where we browsed a little. They had such delicious things! Then, we finally arrived at Princess Crêpe!
The interior was so adorable! Everything was pink and sweet and cute! And it smelled so sweet. They had the most delicious sounding crêpes, I didn’t know what to choose! Emilie recommended the ‘Princess Crêpe’, a crêpe with vanilla ice cream/chocolate ice cream, cheese cake/chocolate cake, fruit, chocolate sauce and whipped cream. I chose the vanilla ice cream and cheese cake one and I can tell you: no regrets! It was delicious!

Just look at my wonderful crêpe! Thinking about it makes me hungry…
My mom chose the same crêpe as me, while Emilie chose the chocolate kind. While I managed to eat without any spilling, my mom got chocolate sauce on her shirt!

The cute window of the shop.
After a while, Emilie’s friends came in and we said goodbye. We would see each other the next day at the Baby, the Stars Shine Bright shop before the Tea Party!
My mom and I walked back and bought some chocolate at the wonderful shop. Then we decided to go back to the hotel, where we got free internet for a day. We read a little, I polished both my mom’s and my nails and I watched James Bond in French. Then it was time to go to sleep. The next day would be an even more exciting one!
A cookie for everyone who read this far!