On Monday my mom and I decided to try and have a bit of quiet day. I was quite worn out from the Tea Party and my mom was a bit tired as well. We decided to head for the Champs-Elysées to see the Arc de Triomphe and to just walk around for a bit.
We took the metro to Charles de Gaulle-Étoile and took the escalator upstairs that gave us the well-known view upon the Arc de Triomphe. I love the Eiffeltower, but the Arc de Triomphe keeps amazing me every time.
I suggested to get some good pictures of it by standing in the middle of the road between the passing cars. My mom wasn’t too keen on the idea, but I told her I had done it before during my birthday trip a few months ago. My mom was kind of scared, but I absolutely wasn’t and posed happily in front of the giant building and took some selfies.
We stayed fairly close to the pedestrian crossing as to not get hit by cars accidentally, but there was one guy very bravely (or rather: stupidly) taking pictures much further down. He was squatting close to the ground to prepare his camera when he was suddenly almost run over by a scooter because the driver didn’t see him. That was something. x)
Other than that, the Arc de Triomphe was beautiful as ever and I could stop taking pictures of it! ♥
My mom and I started walking down the Champs-Elysées. We started looking for this lovely indoor galerie my mom liked and actually ended up finding it! They had some lovely shops, including one that sold all kinds of Fabergé-like eggs and statues. It was quite fun walking around there. ^^
We continued to walk down the Champs-Elysées and entered the giant Sephora there. There was a lovely display for the brand Benefit with a Volkswagen minivan and a San Francisco theme. We walked around the big store with flashy commercial screens. My mom tried some perfumes and I took a look at some eye shadow palettes (that I would never buy probably, even though they’re so aesthetically pleasing).
The next store that we entered was the Disney Store. There were a lot of children running around and screaming unfortunately, but we did see some nice things. The baby version of Moana was just too cute for words! My mom found a lovely Beauty and the Beast-themed mirror and I discovered the most beautiful flower-shaped magical wand, but both of us decided not to buy the items. Also somehow European Disney Stores make me miss the Japanese Disney Store. Disney in Japan just has so many amazing items…
My mom and I both wanted to get some fancy tea and pastries somewhere, so we crossed the street and headed for Ladurée. However, since the prices were a bit higher than we remembered and we needed to go easy with our money, we decided to go somewhere else. We had gotten quite tired by this point, so we tried to find the nearest metro. Eventually we found an entrance. While we were waiting for the train, some guy who didn’t want to buy a ticket shoved his suitcase onto the platform and jumped over the entrance gate, after which he was immediately apprehended by ticket controllers who had been hiding around the corner. It was honestly freaking hilarious! XD
We took the metro further down the city and got out somewhere near Tuileries. We were hoping to feel better about going to Angelina, where we had never been before, but when we got there there was a line and we just didn’t feel like it anymore. We were quite tired at this point and decided to… go back to Aki! XD We wanted more onigiri and éclairs!
When we arrived at the bakery we got some food: matcha melon pan and onigiri for me and a chocolate éclair and onigiri for my mom. We sat down at one of the tables outside. The weather quickly changed and it started raining, so we sat down for quite a while. I even went to get an extra onigiri for myself and a yuzu éclair for my mom. It was quite lovely to just sit there for a while.
Finally, after a long time, we got up again and started walking in the direction of Opéra. We entered a Desigual store, but other than that just walked up to the beautiful building. It looked amazing, even with a grey sky behind it and puddles of water in front of it.
We entered the metro station and walked into a picture machine! We hadn’t taken any pictures in a machine before and since my mom and I both love it we decided to go for it! Three pictures turned out quite nice, one is utterly horrifying (which was our aim, so that’s good). XD I don’t remember exactly what we did, but at some point we headed for the Notre Dame, so I suppose we took the metro there. Unfortunately, when we arrived there it started to rain quite badly. We tried to stay under the trees, but it didn’t help much, so we ran up to some of the souvenir shops.
We explored some of them but honestly I was quite tired at this point. We decided to walk on to Quartier Latin, so as soon as the rain got a bit less we moved on. Notre Dame looked impressive as ever, no matter the weather.
We walked around Quartier Latin for a bit, which was very nice. The streets there as small and cosy, it’s a bit as if you’re walking in a village in the middle of Paris! We walked past some nice restaurants, but for some reason none of them really appealed to us. So we just walked on.
The sun started shining again, but I was so tired. We sat down next to the fountain of Saint Michel and though for a while. I was in a state where I couldn’t really make decisions anymore. I am always so happy my mom is there in such moments.
Eventually we decided to look up the nearest McDonald’s, something we always end up at least doing once, haha! It wasn’t very far luckily! When we got there, it turned out we had to order on one of those machines. It was a little challenging, especially since I was tired, but we managed. I was so happy to just sit and eat.
After dinner we returned to the hotel, packed for a bit and just spent a quiet evening, which was very nice. ♥
Thank you for reading! ~☆~
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