August 9, 2007

Galeries Lafayette, Arc de Triomphe and Petit Palais

On Wednesday we decided to go shopping at Galeries Lafayette, a huge and beautiful department store that has been in operation for over one hundred years. There are seven floors of shopping, if you count the basement, and that is just for women's clothing, children's clothing, toys and the restaurants. Men's clothing and home furnishing are in different buildings.

We thought the glass dome was especially nice.

Galeries Lafayette dome

The main levels are off of the balconies.

Galeries Lafayette balconies

The toy store that takes up most of one floor is amazing. Just the Lego section had nearly every Lego set currently sold. Of course it was nearly impossible to drag the kids out of the toy department.

Here we are on the roof of Galeries Lafayette where we could see much of Paris. There is also an outdoor cafe on top of the store.

Roof of Galeries Lafayette

We had fun shopping in the Galeries Lafayette gourmet grocery store. We bought some fun treats and food for dinner.

On Thursday, we decided to visit Notre Dame. When we entered, there was singing and a picture hanging from the ceiling of a man in priestly robes. As we wandered through the church, we noticed that there was a coffin next to the altar. We soon discovered that we had stumbled into the public viewing of Cardinal Lustiger, the former Archbishop of Paris. Oops. It wasn't quite a mistake, but it sure was interesting. On leaving, we noticed that there were hourly services scheduled all day long.

As an interesting note, we found out later that Cardinal Lustiger was Jewish by birth. We watched part of his funeral on TV which included placing a jar of soil from the Mount of Olives on his coffin and a relative reciting the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning.

Right next to Notre Dame is the Notre Dame archeological museum. It is underneath the plaza in front of Notre Dame. It was very interesting to see the ruins of old buildings and models of how the buildings were situated hundreds of years ago.

Notre Dame model

It was a good museum for the kids because they enjoyed looking at the models and the ruins.

Admiring the ruins

Next, we went to the Arc de Triomphe. We decided that we would brave climbing the stairs to the top of the monument. However, when we got to the front of the line, the employee looked at us with our three small children and sent us over to the elevator. We didn't even know there was an elevator. It sure was a lot easier (and faster) than the stairs.

Here is a rare picture of Scott and Caleb. Caleb, as usual, is asleep. We think he looks very cute with his little French hat.

On the Arc de Triomphe

Here is a panorama with the Champs-Élysées in the center and the Eiffel Tower to the far right.

Arc de Triomphe panorama

For some reason, Brooke and Tyler thought it was hilarious to hang from the bars of the telescope.

Silly kids

Next, we walked down the Champs-Élysées. We bought pain au chocolat to eat along the way. Tyler was very excited to go in the Peugeot store and even got to buy a matchbox car of the green Peugeot 307 we had in Israel. We also went in the Disney store but didn't stay long because it was very crowded and the kids wanted everything they saw.

Halfway down the Champs-Élysées, we saw a park and decided to stop and let the kids run around. They had a swing set, so Scott paid the 1 Euro per child to let the kids swing for 20 minutes. Brooke was in heaven since swinging is her favorite outdoor activity.

Pay to swing

Before we headed home, we wanted to take pictures of the Grand and Petit Palais (the Big and Little Palaces). We discovered that entrance to the Petit Palais is free, so we visited the art museum inside. It was fun to see Monet's impressionist painting of a sunset which is similar to his "Impression: Sunrise" painting.

Petit Palais

Posted by sjbowden at August 9, 2007 10:28 PM