paris 2015

We took the Metro and to our surprise we saw a poster of Salvatore Adamo a famous French singer. We grew up listening to his music but have not seen a picture of him the Mid '70's.

L'église de la Madeleine-Madeleine Church is a Roman Catholic church located in the 8th arrondissement. The Madeleine Church was designed in its present form as a temple to the glory of Napoleon's army.

The Madeleine is built in the Neo-Classical style with fifty-two Corinthian columns, each 20 meters high, are carried around the entire building.

Uyen Thuong's office is just around the corner so we stopped by to surprise her...

It is fashion week and she is swamped with work. We just stopped by a few minutes to say hi.

Then we stopped by the Faubourg Saint Honoré where all the high end boutiques are located.

La Durée is a French luxury bakery and sweets maker house created in 1862. It is one of the top premier sellers of the double-decker macaron, fifteen thousand of which are sold every day. They are still one of the best known makers of macarons in the world.

Fun trivia: Ladurée made the pastries for the film Marie Antoinette, directed by Sofia Coppola; its famous macarons can be seen in a scene between Marie Antoinette and Ambassador Mercy.

Long line inside the shop. I was told there is always a line as soon as the shop is opening.

Ladurée's rise to fame came in 1930 when his grandson, Pierre Desfontaines, had the original idea of the double-decker, sticking two macaron shells together with a creamy ganache as filling.

Desfontaines also opened a tearoom at the pastry shop. In those days ladies were not admitted to cafés, which were the exclusive domain of men. This was a big success with ladies, who enjoyed meeting in the freedom of the tearoom rather than their homes.

Printemps meaning spring in French is a High end French department store located on Boulevard Hausmann in the 9th arrondissement along with an other well-known department store les Galeries Lafayette.

Art nouveau stained glass dome. This cupola was constructed in 1923 and contains 3,185 individual pieces of stained glass.

In 1939, to avoid the risk that it would be destroyed in bombing attacks, the cupola was dismantled and stored at Clichy. It was restored in 1973 by the grandson of its original designer, using plans that had been kept in the archives of the family business. In 1975, the façade and cupola of the building were registered as historical monuments. Their slogan, invented in 1996, is "Au Printemps, nous avons des vêtements!", which is sung as a catchy jingle on advertisements.

We were hungry and ate pretty much the whole bowl of Pho. With a full stomach we are now ready to shop..

Hoa has been searching for a messenger back for a few years now and never found what he was looking for. He was so happy to finally a messenger bag that fit his needs.