An Anniversary Evening in Paris...

Exhausted from the Louvre, we took a nap this afternoon, then made our way out to walk around and just take some photos of the area before dinner. This is just a common, ordinary lamp post in front of our hotel. NOTHING is 'common' or 'ordinary' in Paris!

The view down a side street we've walked several times this week...

A business you're not likely to see in the United States anytime soon.

One of the scores of exclusive, high end stores; this one happens to have a Bentley Continental parked out front.

The George V Four Seasons hotel had an enormous crowd gathered out front waiting for some celebrity to emerge. Jane might have stayed for Johnny Depp but in truth we probably wouldn't have recognized whoever eventually came out. I believe this is where much of "French Kiss" was filmed.

Yet another Lamborghini parked out front of the hotel. I've seen a BUNCH of them this month!

The quaint little French Bistro where we had lunch this afternoon...

And the Lebanese restaurant where we ate yesterday. Notice how CLOSELY the cars park. It's like that everywhere. A parking space is GOLD around here. Same in London!

A beautifully restored old Mini Cooper sitting out front another Paris Cafe.

A stunning Citroen Convertible sitting on the Citroen Dealership Floor. This dealership wasn't like anything you've ever seen. It had EIGHT FLOORS of vehicles including a slowly revolving display seemingly suspended in air and all open from bottom to top. The bottom three had famous or historic Citroens (like this one) and the top five floors had new cars. I have NO IDEA how the cars got there. It looked like they would have had to disassemble them, hoist them onto each floating, revolving floor and then reassemble them?!?!

I mentioned that beneath the hotel lobby is an enormous Sephora. We've discovered that EVERYTHING in Paris is theater- including retail stores. While there are street performers everywhere in Paris, the retail stores put on 'shows' every several hours. We saw an Abercrombie & Fitch 'show' with some of their male models (Kinda CREEPY actually!) a block away and twice today Sephora cranks up the music and 8 or 10 employees spill out onto the sidewalk complete with their make-up brushes still in their aprons, etc. They began dancing and interacting with people walking on the street. This guy jumped in and began dancing as the employees and the crowd clapped to the music...

Then this guy joined in the break dancing action...

Several of the employees who had already danced watched and clapped. The woman on the left is holding the hat and sunglasses of a pedestrian who joined in the action...

Now a pedestrian is 'choreographing' an impromptu dance routine with several Sephora employees as the crowd grows ever larger. The performance seems to go on for about 15 minutes every couple of hours.

The store itself is ENORMOUS. This doesn't really show how far BACK the store goes- at least 200' or more.

The whole time we've been in Paris Jane has been scouring menus for Sole Meuniere. This was the first dish Julia Childs ever ate when she came to Paris- and it awakened her to what great cooking ought to be and set her on the course of becoming a French chef. We found it tonight and Jane enjoyed it for dinner. It WAS amazing! Here's a great link about Julia and the recipe...

http://www.katherinemartinelli.com/blog/2011/classic-sole-meuniere/

I've loved all the cool cars in both London and Paris. After dinner we headed out onto the Paris streets again. Here's an old Citroen 2CV Deux Chevaux putting along.

At about 9:45 or so the Eiffel tower lights up- AMAZING! We took the cab over to enjoy it.

 Couples are sitting EVERYWHERE along the Seine day and night...

Amazing, right?

Here's a Tuk-Tuk cab. We couldn't resist taking one back to the hotel at 10:30... (Sorry it's out of focus) More to follow.

The statues were illuminated as well, and at 10:00 the entire tower began to TWINKLE with 10,000 brilliant white flashing (strobing?) lights. I videotaped it but there really wasn't a way to photograph it.

 Ready to head home at the end of a beautiful 41st anniversary day in Paris...

The Tuk Tuk driver took a different route back to the hotel which took us through the *INSANE* circle at the Arch D'Triomphe with it's dozen or so streets all converging from every angle in a chaotic ballet of 10,000 moving vehicles. It was BEAUTIFUL all lit up at night but I didn't have the camera turned on or ready to go. Lovely, as the Brits would say!