The slideshow continues… With Seine, and Paris at night. Well, but this is the very last post from Paris, so thank you for attention. Merci pour votre attention.

Montmartre

Mouline rouge

I didn’t like Montmartre much. It looked like touristic hill, and two black guys were trying to rob me, so I had to be really very lousy on them.

Seine

Paris is surrounding the river. Although it seems to be peaceful, I saw quite big weaves.

View to Nôtre Damme

Paris at night

Town hall

Nôtre Damme

This part will be more something like a slideshow, and I meant it so. But it’s like always.

Anyway from the beginning. I stayed in the parent’s of Patrick with Zoya and Thomas. And it was great thing actually. Patrick’s mum was feeding us with cheese, crepes, Patrick’s dad with beer and Ricardo. It was a bit outside of Paris (read as suburb), but going to Paris with taxi was ok. Haha, Patrick’s dad is taxi driver, so he was giving me a lift every morning. Just great!

Patricks’ dad in the morning with his big cup of cafe

Thomas, Zoya, me, and Patrick’s dad

Another thing quite famous in France is TGV. Ok, German Velaros are better, but these are also good ones.

Driver less train to Orly airport

Another great thing in Paris are boulevards. The streets are full. They are crowded. But you never feel that. Many trees means there that you don’t notice it. Also there is quite lot of space on the side walks, and everywhere fit cars on the sides. This would be really cool to make in Prague. Make it more peaceful.

Boulevard Saint Germain. One of the most crowded streets. Have you noticed cars going there?

Selling newspapers

The petit palace (small palace) is not really small. And infront, there is a nice golden turtle.

Petit Palace

Chairs in the Luxembourgh garden

Hmmm, like in the french gardens. Geometry! Keep it straight. Be precise.

The next episode from series from Paris are photos from Louvre. Louvre, which royal palace years ago, is now one of the most famous and most delicious museums around the world. It has classical arts, but still offers interesting things to watch, unlike for example Prado in Madrid. In contrast with Prado, French were able to collect more various things, and that makes the museum pretty interesting. To be fair, Madrid has another two huge museums of size of Prado or Louvre – Thyssen-Bornemitza and Reina Sofia which both offer great contemporary things, and in the case of Thyssen-Bornemitza, there is cut of the whole history of arts.

The pyramide at night

However, what makes Louvre quite interesting, as I have never seen before, are arts from ancient ages. The old civilizations of ancient Egypt, ancient Persia, Mesopotamia have quite a lot of arts here, and I was feeling like this is the right thing to see in Louvre. And it was. The oldest arts I have seen. More than 2000 or 3000 years old. Beautiful things, various ornaments and lions of Mesopotamia. All of that was new and unknown for me. I was walking among these very old things, and had no interest in newer medieval arts. Even not in Mona Lisa. However, I went to see this Da Vinci’s painting. How would I feel if I wouldn’t do it?

Exhibition about Babylon

The last noteworthy thing there was the exhibition of the ancient Babylon. It was about the fame and power of the city, about the Babylon tower, and about the historical view on the city in the eyes of Europeans.

Part of Cardinal Richelieu

One warning about Louvre. Because it is so famous, do not go there at weekends! And also do not come in the afternoon. I was there in the morning, and it was quite empty, or let’s say in comparison with the crowd which came later. So you were warned…

Ancient Egypt exhibition

Mona Lisa

I liked these heads. They were above the things, and watching crowds. Although among crowds, they stayed calm and without smile…

View to the park in front of Louvre

Tour Eiffel

Before I came to Paris, I thought that Tour Eiffel is just a stupid tourist attraction. I thought I just look at it as a good tourist, and then I will go to some other more interesting place. But guess how have I end? Going to the very top, and being fascinated by how huge it is. I was really nicely surprised!

But the weather. I complained about it several times, and once more. I was waiting about two hours to get up, and it was raining almost all the time. and it was very windy. And I was so frozen! I should had bring some more clothes to Paris, but that’s just me to bring just as few things possible.

Montmartre

Some bridges over Seine

La defense

Line I had to wait, 2 hours, and it was not in touristic season nor at the weekend

Paris from the very top

Roofs

La defense in the back

La defense

Detail of chimneys

I love French cheese. They make so many different types, so many tastes. It’s so good. Always when I go to France, I import them. A lot of them. I spend every time a lot of money to bring at least some of them back home. Luckily, my roommate told me that they have a good selection of French cheese in Makro, so I finally have a good place for cheese.

Caroline, Patrick’s sister eating cheese

When I was in Paris, and lived in Patrick’s family, his mum was feeding us with cheese, so I felt like in heaven! [-;

I really think that people should care more about quality of food they eat. Cheap food is tasteless. Some time ago I had the chance to taste Tesco branded cheap salami. And it was horrible. I wouldn’t write it further, but I didn’t like it at all. I think in general in the past years, the quality of food sold here is worse and worse. And it is specially caused by big supermarket chains like namely Tesco, Penny or even worse Lidl. You almost cannot find any good shop with vegetables, bakeries are also worse and worse just to keep prices down. Just luckily, there are still some good butchers around. But absolutely the quality is going down.

You can complain that we have that bio thing, but this is bullshit. These so called bio quality foods are just overpriced stuff. They can be good, but c’mon, paying three times more is also not good. I reckon that this mania is caused by lowering the quality of foods in the past years. Just make it nicer looking. Tasteless? It’s ok, it just has to look good. I think that the solution would be if people producing the vegies stop taking care only about how big things do they make, but start care about the taste instead.

Special case of bad supermarket is Tesco. They never have good vegies. I would never buy any meat there. They are always cheating when having something else written on price tags, and something else is charged to you at the counter. I really hate their Tesco branded everything. This food is the worst ever, and just labeled by Tesco to be sold easier. And the saddest thing is that Tesco bought local French Carrefour supermarkets. Carrefour was good! They cared about things at the time. Sadly the business was what they don’t know, so they not really failed here, but rather moved to Asia.

Ok, these were complains about English, but this is understandable. Can you imagine some good English food? I cannot. Fish and Chips. LOL. But sadly German discount supermarket chains like Lidl and Penny are even worse. They even don’t care about normal or let’s say local producers. They just bring the cheapest thing available, no matter other factors. I was in Lidl once. And I had to laugh. I saw some coke bottle. It looked exactly like Coca Cola, but the brand was different. Until you came closer, you couldn’t recognize the difference! Also everywhere labels like “We are cheaper!”. This is horrible propaganda. Specially when thinking that this company is evil. After some affairs like cutting down trees around their shops to be seen better (illegally), or flatting down one historical building in Přerov because of new supermarket on it’s place (again illegally). Or think about Tesco, and it’s policies and how they are to the producers. Horrible! The worst companies here.

Musée du Quai Branly from Tour Eifel

Both build by Jean Nouvel, both in Paris on the Seine riverside. Both really good pieces of what Nouvel designed, unlike his thing in Prague which is rather boring and too common.

View from the river side

The museum is brand new. It hosts some ethnography artifacs, arts of Africa and Oceania. I specially liked the facade from the side of Seine. It is great, not just normal tree on facade, but the whole garden is there.

Garden on the wall

Musée du Quai Branly from Tour Eifel

L’institute du Monde Arabe is a research centre to research relations between France and it’s colonies which are mostly arabic countries. The institute is not any place really welcoming visitors. I spent there about two hours sitting in some tiny lounge waiting for the end of endless rain. I didn’t feel very welcome since there is no entrance welcoming visitors, but there is just a small doors to get into, and very tiny lounge to stay. Maybe it is so because of tradition of houses in the arabic world, I don’t know. If so, it is understandable. I’m just complaining that much also because of weather. The whole day continuos rain! I didn’t like it at all!

Windows with ornaments. These ornaments close and open themselves according to how much light you want to get in.

Back to the building. Nothing really exceptional in the proportion of the whole building, but I came because I wanted to see the traditional ornaments made a bit modern way. These are basically only from the kinda inner side, opposite to the river. But I mean really cool. The main thing are the windows which control the light getting in by automatic opening and closing it’s parts. The whole system is done in kinda arabic style, and is really nice.

Roof detail

This time I want to show some pictures from Citroen show room located on the most luxury, expensive, shiny, known, show-room of Paris, or simply call it number one street in Paris, Champs-Elysées. The Citroen’s show room is a nice example how can design of one branch go straight to the other branch, to the design of the building. The authors of the building got inspired by the logo of the car company, and made the building in the same spirit. Two arrows going up in the red field. The same concepts goes all around the building. Tons of glass, Citroen arrows and blue going up to the red colour. This combination is excellent.

Ciroen C42 show room

View to Champs-Elysées

Inside, there is 7 floors upstairs, and one in the basement filled with exposition of cars. When I came, there was just a normal exposition of Citroen nowadays cars, but as some people told me, there were also some others like historical vehicles, sport cars, etc. Each car is situated on rounded rotating plate, and people are going on the staircase around watching the cars from all the sides.

Roof

As every year, the European K-State branch had another annual meeting. For the third time, and this time in Paris. There were about 15 people together hanging out, eating out, doing some sightseeing, and just enjoying themselves. So this post, and some others about this reunion.

Thomas and Ueli

I flew from Prague on thursday in the morning, and this was a big mistake. I had to get up at 4 in the morning, and as I am not really morning person, i suffered a lot. Next time, there is no way to fly before 7 am anywhere! Also funny enough as Czech got to the Schengen space, I really didn’t recognize that in Paris. France probably still plays it’s own game in some things like Schengen treaty, because we had to wait a lot there, and what more, we were checked. I wouldn’t mind it that much, but we had to wait more than half hour locked in some corridor till policemen in the airport finish their breakfasts!

On the Prague’s airport

I stayed at Patrick’s parents in Marny-Thoriny which is farther suburb of Paris. But the connection was very good, train station was just five minutes walk from their house, and Patrick’s parents were just great offering me alcohol, food, and cheese! I came on thursday, and Patrick, Thomas, Zoya, and Patrick’s sister Caroline came on friday.

Thomas, Patrick and Zoya

Something in the gardens of Louvre

Eifel tower

Ship models

Obelisk

Obelisk

So on friday night we headed straight to Paris to spend the night there. We met with Honza and Dominik drinking some beers on the street close to metro station Pignon. I drunk two really disgusting Hollandaise beers, which was by the way super strong – almost 12% of alcohol, so like wine. And you can imagine what does it mean drinking a liter of wine. Long time nothing, and then it pops up, all the drunkenness was sudden and approaching me very rapidely. After encouraging ourselves with a little of alcohol, we went to the club Duvan de Monde. And as I remember, the club was great. I remember that the music was very cool, some French chanson like music mixed with some electronic, so the stuff I like…

The meeting took place mostly on saturday. At first we went with Patrick, Thomas and Zoya to the town. We made a short sightseeing. We went from Louvre, then through gardens of Louvre. Then we crossed the Seine river and went to Eiffel tower where we met the others.

After it we went to some bar (I don’t know exactly where), and we were drinking some beers, eating some crepes, and some more people were gathering.

Honza and Julie eating crepes

In the creperie

In the bar

The street where the bar was

Ueli, Patrick’s friend, Patrick and Thomas

Later we went to the dinner. It was not bad, but a bit overpriced (for Czechs, not for Parisians, of course). I mean paying 40€ for a dinner is quite a lot for us, specially when you see how the personnel behaves to you, and how do they want to get the money just squeezing more and more people to the place. Well, but no one can ever know before…

My dinner

The dinner was style eat as much as you want, what some people really appreciate, but the rest must be really vert careful to not to eat way too much, or it will end up as horrible catastrophe! I think you know what do I mean. So the dinner consisted from entrée, main dish (grilled meat), cheese, and desert.

I sat in the table with Dominik, and eating with this guy is a real pleasure. Dominik is the person with whom you can enjoy eating. I mean eating, I don’t mean chatting, talking, and having fun. I mean enjoying meal. Picking up the right words for what do you eat is what makes the dinner great. You need think about the food much more, and then you will enjoy it much more. I like eating out more like tasting various flavors and tastes. Of course, meeting people is also as important, but this aspect is a right thing as well, and many people forgets about it!

Dominik eating…

For the entrée I liked the pates, and the salami, and kind of kus kus, but as French explained me, it was not real kus kus, but some French variant, but really good one. There were some other stuff in the bar, but nothing really that notable such as things above. I have to, of course mention lot of fresh vegies all around, and free table wine.

Klára

for a main dish, I had a lamb on the grill, and I didn’t like it much. I think it was a bit dry. Other’s meat were a bit dry as well, so -1 point here.

Cheese

Cheese, what to say? Maybe +1 point? I liked this part the most from the dinner. For the desert we had flan, and I have to say that I am not really fan of flan, so bad luck.

Jana and Klára

Julie and Lukáš

Thomas, Zoya and Ueli eating dinner

After restaurant we were deciding where to go further. So after lot of searching we went to some club, and stayed there till almost 6, so we were pretty tired at the end…

Honza and Dominik

Julie pissing behind the town hall

Julie is done

We got really lucky that Patrick has such a great parents, they served us a great lunch, again with a lot of cheese, so it was great. Later in the evening Patrick and Caroline left Paris to Lyon and Marseille, and we (M+T+Z) went to have a coffee with one French K-Stater from the generation zero. I didn’t even know her, but it’s always nice to meet some nice people. We went to have some coffee and crapes (again [-;).

On monday all of us left. Thomas and Zoya in the morning, and me in the evening, so I was doing just sightseeing, but about this later.