Le Premier Arrondissement: The Sighting of Kate Moss

Friends!
Paris, on a map, looks chaotic with a ton of tiny streets that go every which way. It's a wonder anyone can get around. Turns out Paris is organized, well... an organized mess. But Organized none the less. The city is broken up into sections called arrondissements. There are 20 of them and basically they are just sectors that divide up the city into chewable bites.

The first arrondissement is in the center and then they spiral out in a Nautilus shape, if you will

On a walk for my class, Paris Walks, I took a little tour of the first arrondissement. Which as you might have guessed is one of the most expensive parts of Paris. This is only affirmed by the presence of department stores that sell only expensive designer brands: Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Chloe, Armani, you know the big names as well has many I had never heard of. But the price tags were enough to make me not want to touch anything. Though I did pick up a $2000 handbag. It was really pretty.

In the Galeries Lafayette. Yeah, that's a department store.

In the Printemps, another swanky department store

The streets are lined with expensive jewelers displaying their wares from store windows. Flaunting diamonds so big they made my jaw drop. I'm not a huge fan of diamonds, I think this makes me kind of a weird girl, but they were really pretty. Also, we passed by an actual Tiffany and Co store. I had a very Breakfast at Tiffany's moment.

That was seriously like a 9 carat diamond. Holy S!

Some more ridiculous jewelry

The walk itself took us by the Opera house, a giant cathedral, St. Madeline's, a very tall green poll that has something to do with Napoleon. I was too distracted by the Ritz Hotel to really pay too much attention to all the victorious battles it was depicting. France and winning wars? It's kind of funny and ironic.

Tribute to Napoleon in the Place Vendome

Looking fab at the Ritz

So, The Ritz, famous for many things which are not limited to: being very expensive, the best room goes for an incredible 8000euro per nigh, Princess Diana stayed there right before she died, and often plays host to celebrities. So when the idea of actually going into the Ritz hit, we all decided, why not. I figured we would get stopped before we even made it to the front doors. But walking with purpose will basically get you anywhere. So we walked in, looked around, used the bathroom, which was ridiculous in itself, in that it has hand towels in place of paper towels and a laundry hamper in place of a waste basket, then we left.

Can you see the stack of hand towels. Is it weird that I took a picture in a bathroom?...

 Upon departing out through the front doors, what do we see? That's right, the paparazzie. Waiting for you, you make ask? Sadly no. So next best thing, we decide to wait and see who is going to come out. And sure enough, a few minutes later, the paparazzie move up, and so do we, and a woman with a couple of big men come out. There are lots of flashing bulbs as the woman gets in the black sedan and drives off.

I promise Kate Moss is in there if you zoom in alot

Kate Moss in her car

So who was this woman? Later that night, Google revealed that the sunglassed and large hat adorned woman we saw depart the Ritz was in fact none other than the Kate Moss. Yeah, I had to look her up on Wikipedia too.

Maddie and Me at the Eiffel Tower- Magical!

Later that night we had a magical moment in Paris because we ended up at the Eiffel Tower. It was loverly. Paris is wonderful. I literally think that every day I am here. When I'm riding the Metro with people standing far too close to me and on the streets with the pigeons and hobos.

From Paris with Love,
Emily!