I bought an oil painting of the Arc de Triumph from Mr. Akhbas, a Turk
After a full nights rest, we decided to check out the shops at the Champs Elysee as well as George V and Rue de Royal. All these are the dreams of many women, because the latest, fashion clothes, apparel like handbags, shoes and scarves are all in Paris. My wife had checked out all the locations of the shops 2 weeks in advance and also the Metro (subway) lines to get to
them. The list of the 'A' list shops are Balenciaga, Chanel (2 shops), Hermes (2 shops), Louis Vuitton, Prada. More of these in a later blog.
Lazing by the fountain in the Gardens - the weather is a perfect 21 deg C and sunny with occasional clouds
In the afternoon, we went to the Jardin du Tuileries which is the main garden within Paris. It covers about 5 football fields in length and is framed by the Concorde on one end and the Louvre Museum on the other.Everyday, when the whether permits, literally ten thousand or more tourists from all over the world descend and wlak through its gardens. I must warn that Paris is a place where they love their dogs and don't eat them (!), so care must be taken not to walk over the dog droppings.
I am glad to say that on 2 consecutive mornings,I ran 5 km and 8 km respectively in the Touleries Gardens and was surprised to see Singaporean (a lady with my Army half-marathon T shirt) and another Caucasian chap with the Merlion T -shirt runners among them. Truly, Singaporeans are very well travelled even though we may only have 4.5 million population.
This waiter, Pierre, wanted to be in the picture so... 3 in the photo !
During the walk in the Gardens, we had a cup of coffee in the same cafe my wife and I had 16 years ago when we were newly weds, so this is a second honeymoon of sorts ! My thinking has matured when I was last here and my expectations of myself as well as the places I visit are now more exacting so the conclusion I came to after just 2 - 3 days staying here is this
as shown below. We also lazed by the fountains which resembled a huge swimming pool but the weather was a perfect 21 deg C so much so that many people were lazing around because it was so pleasant. I cannot say the same for any place in South East Asia.
Having a coffee in the afternoon in summer,in the Gardens of Tuileries
Parisians in general are well groomed and stylish and the French language is very smooth sounding to the foreign ear. On top of that, with almost 1500 years of history and culture in the past, they have many great achievements and are proud of those achievements. However, as a modern city, it is quite backward in the sense that the infrastructure like the airports,the Metro, the buses and even the traffic systems are all 3rd world so much so that many newly industrialised countries like Singapore,Malaysia,Taiwan,South Korea have newer, far efficient (and less dirty and grafitti filled) infrasrtucture,people movers and and make a greater impression so much so that I believe that this Millenium truly belongs to Asia.
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