The Most Romantic City in the world... Paris!

I just returned from a fabulous weekend visiting a good friend of mine in Paris who is also an architecture major, so he was very informative on what was important to see and what was not as important to see. I discovered another form of how the old meets the new while we were wandering around Paris on Saturday afternoon. The building is called the Marce de Sant Honore and it in replace of what used to be an old market in Paris. The building has a passage that lines up with the main road and cuts through the building with multiple shops on either side. The building is all glass and disappears into the surrounsing neighborhood. In the picture above you can see how the building reflects the buildings around it so it does not take away from the old, traditional style of Parisian buildings. I really admired this building because of the fact that it was so modest to it's surrounding context.

I had time to act as a tourist too and see the infamous Eiffel Tower at three different times of the day. First, when it was not lit up at 4 in the morning and no one was there. Second, when it was mid-day and completley crowded. And third, when it was lit up at night and started to sparkle, which it does every on the hour starting at 7 pm. It was beautiful, it looked like crystals!

We went to the Louvre and the Cite Architecture Museum all day Sunday. The Louvre was so much bigger than I thought! And I had no idea it used to be the old royal palace! We started in Italian Art and saw the Mona Lisa and many other beautiful paintings and sculptures. I'm sure one could spend atleast 2 days wandering the Louvre. There is so much to see and just not enough time. A little upsetting... because of course you want to see it all. But I know I will be visiting Paris in the near future (and by that I mean thanksgiving!) and get to see everything that there was not enough time for in one weekend.

The architecture museum was really interesting. There were so many models and beautiful drawings to look at. There was also a life size

model of Corbusier's apartment building that you could walk through! It was really cool not to have to imagine the space by looking at drawings and models but to actually be able to physically walk through it.

To sum up, Paris was incredible. Guil and I were talking, and we both decided that Paris is so nice because it seems more like a villiage. The buildings heights are not high at all and the city is so clean! There are also so many gardens and bridges that cross the river. My favorite thing about Paris was the opera singers and orchestras that sung and played as you walked around the city. Soooo beautiful. I can't wait to return to this city... I completley fell in love!