Salut, Paris!

I finally arrived in France and decided to stay the week in Paris before heading to La Rochelle. I have a couple friends who live in Paris, so I was lucky enough to stay with them and they made my transition to Europe so much easier. It's great to walk around and tour a city, but even better to come back to friends in the evening. I also met up with the Notre Dame Alumni group in Paris for the second football game watch of the year. Who knew I could meet up with college alumni halfway around the world?? It's a small group, and half of them were passing through on business trips, but it's nice to have the college family even in France.

Père-Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in Paris and a major tourist attraction as well because of all the famous people buried there. When it was first opened several centuries ago, it was considered too far from city center to attract burials. So as part of a marketing scheme to increase funerals, the administrators moved the tombs of several famous citizens to their cemetery. Sure enough, soon everybody wanted to be buried at Père-Lachaise. Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Frederic Chopin and Edith Piaf are just a few of the famous ones here.
The famous burial sites are numbered on a sign as you walk into the cemetery, and you can either buy a map of the cemetery layout or take down the numbers of grave-sites you want to see. Or, you can just follow the mobs of people as they make their way inevitably to Morrison's or Wilde's tombs. I personally thought it was more fun to just wander around and check out the tombs that weren't surrounded by tourist groups.






(Below) In front of Palais Garnier, also known as the Paris Opera House. Even the dreary day can't detract from the beauty of this old building. It is now used mainly for ballet performances since the was a new opera house was constructed at Place de la Bastille.



I felt very Devil Wears Prada-ish this week in Paris! It was Fashion Celebration Night on September 7, and the fashion and couture shops along Champs Elysees and Avenue Montaigne had an opening night to showcase their new designs for the year. This was the first time an event like this had happened, and concurrent opening nights were taking place in all the major cities around the world the same week. Here in Paris, it was an amazing experience. The couture houses seemed to be trying to one-up each other by serving better drinks, or better food, or attracting more models to show up to their event. So in the end the whole street was completely packed with people trying to get in, and the bouncers were blocking the doors as cameramen ran from place to place.

I'm not really a fashion person and I don't know most of the famous people and definitely wouldn't want to lead the lifestyle, but its amazing to see what goes on in this world. My friend works for Chanel, so we stayed in the Chanel shop for most the evening. It wasn't too crowded (on account of the bouncers moderating people flow for most the time), so we were walking around and sampling the macarons and champagne until suddenly a swarm of people rushed in. And who should be there but...Karl Lagerfeld. Karl is considered as THE man behind Chanel fashion, and he was there with Chanel model, Baptiste Giabiconi, and his fashion entourage.



It's a cruddy picture on the left here, but you can see how packed we were inside Chanel! Cameramen were shoving people around as they tried to get every breathing second as Karl walked into the room. The up-close shot of Karl is on the right. He has been a designer for over 20 years, and is a continual presence in this scene



Baptiste Giabiconi, talking on his cell phone (left); In the picture on the right is a member of Lagerfeld's entourage -- the guy at the top of the stairs. We thought he was another model, but turns out he's only the chauffeur...he's definitely the best looking car driver I've ever seen

With my friends Gwen and Marie-Laure, in Chanel

Jardin du Luxembourg - it's beautiful now that fall is coming around. And it's also one of the spots I hadn't seen in my previous trips to Paris, so I took a day to wander around the gardens and sit outside. They have tennis courts and running trails around the gardens as well, and the massive palace at the front is the Luxembourg Palace (which houses the French Senate). The palace was originally constructed in 1611 by Marie de Medicis, who wanted a place that resembled her palace in native Florence.





And because you can't leave Paris without checking out the Eiffel Tower, it's only right I throw in a couple pictures of it here...