Paris 2

The weather in Paris was sketchy. It was either brilliantly sunny or overcast and drizzly. It changed in a matter of minutes and that is evident from the photos.
So, I headed off to Mont Matre and was wandering the streets just soaking it in and trying to avoid eye contact with the million or so sketch artists there who want to draw your picture. Below is the last actual vineyard located in Paris city. It is very old and I am told that the wine is crap but people pay phenomenal sums of money for a bottle each year because it is actually grown and made in Paris. They don't drink it though....
This is the Sacre Couer Church of church of the Sacred Heart. It is located on the top of Mont Matre. It was a beautiful afternoon to just sit on the steps and take in the views of Paris.
These are the views of Paris from the steps of the church.

I took this photo for my niece Laura. This shop is her Mecca. Actually the Champs Elysee would be her mecca because the shopping was fabulous. You name the designer and chances are there was a store here. Actually the shoppping was better on the Boulevarde Haussman which has two department stores. One is Printemps and the other is Galleries LaFayette. Imagine and even more upmarket David Jones. Instead of having counters for Wedgewood etc they have counters for Tiffanies and Ferragamo!!

Oh before I forget, I have a story about the Louis Vuitton store below. As I came out of the store a Japanese woman came up to me and asked me if I would go back inside and purchase her 2 wallets as they had a policy of only selling 1000 EU (or one bag) per customer. I was very curious, of course I knew it was suss before you call me gullible, I just wanted to know what was going on. So she hands me 700EU (which is about $AU1100) and off I go. I go inside the store and immediately go up to one of the blokes who looks like a manager and tell him what happened to me outside with the Japanese woman. I asked him to tell me what it was all about. Firstly, they don't have a policy of only selling one item per person just to particular persons. He tells me that to purchase high end small quality goods is a way to get money out of France and that it is probably drug money. They buy the goods and then take them back to Japan and sell them for cash. They may lose a bit but they still make a lot especially when you consider that one wallet costs about 600 bucks australian. That was all very interesting and I contemplated asking if there was a back door to make off with the money but I didn't really want the Japanese Mafia to be hounding me during my stay in Paris so I returned the money to the woman with the story that the bouncer saw me talking to her and they wouldn't sell me the wallets. Which was a bit of a bugger really because it was the closest I would ever get to buying a real Louis Vuitton piece of anything. Ahhh C'est La Vie!

Below are pictures from the Arch De Triomphe. I climbed all 320 steps to the top!! WOOHOO!! Going up wasn't a problem... well it was but coming back down was so much harder. It is a very small spiral staircase and I kind of got vertigo coming back down but I wasn't the only one because the people in front of me were going even slower than I was so I had to wait for them.

The views from the top were the same from all 4 corners sort of. The buildings on the corners all used to, at one stage, be private residences. The architecture really is amazing and breathtaking. I often wondered whether people who live in Paris think it is as fabulous as the tourists do.

Below is the pond in the Jardin de Tuilleries. It's the garden at the other end of the Champs Elysee from the Arch De Triomphe. I have to apologise for the order of things. I am having all sorts of problems uploading pictures to the blog today.