Something (Sickly) This Way Comes

Paris seems to match my mood, recently. It's gray and rainy and perfect weather for staying in drinking tea and convalescing from this ridiculous cold I currently have. You know how in "Midnight in Paris" Gil loves to walk in the rain and everyone else makes fun of him? Well, I'm going to have to join the bandwagon because walking in the rain in Paris is actually zero fun. This past Saturday, I had a make up French class where our professor took us on a little walk around the 1st, 2nd, and 9th arrondissements. It was raining the entire time and, although it did lend a little mysteriousness to the afternoon, pretty soon we were all miserable and anxious to get home. I also think I was feverish the entire time and so I don't really remember much from the walk...But, not to be a total whiner, what I do remember from the walk was quite beautiful! Our professor showed us around the hidden "passages" of Paris. These are basically covered streets which look like the entrance to a building, but are actually normal "rues" with shops and cafés on the bottom level. They were the start of modern day shopping malls like "Printemps" in Paris or "Harrods" in London as the covered walkway provided a way for ladies of distinction to shop and show off their newest fashions out of the mud of the Parisian streets.

Galerie Vivienne-one of the poshest passages with the flagship Jean Paul Gaultier store (which was closed for Paris Fashion Week)

In other news, I saw many a celebrity this past week since it was Paris Fashion Week! Luckily (or unluckily) our school is right in the middle of the neighborhood where many couture brands hold court, so there were models galore all week. They really are like a different species...BUT the only celebrity I really cared about seeing was Jean Baptiste Maunier. Who is he, you ask? Why only the child star of "Les Choristes," the runaway french sensation which swept the world away by song in early 2000's. Of course, now he's quite grown up and looked very Parisian as he waited for someone in a trench coat outside the Mètro Mabillon. But I still recognized him (with a heads up from a friend, that is). 

Until later! (I promise to update more regularly and with more pictures later...technology doesn't seem to agree with me right now)