1 Titty to Show the World.

Paris Opera House

     For our morning visit, we headed out to Galeries Lafeyette mall. Lafeyette is a six floor competitor of Harrods in London or Macy's in New York. (I have read that it is actually 10 floors. I must have missed some.) On our way to the mall, we passed by the Paris Opera House. This is where the Phantom of the Opera is set. I could almost hear his voice singing to Christine begging her for her love. I would have died if we could have had a tour of the place instead of walk through the mall. Instead, I gave in and decided to see the Paris fashion.
      Lafeyette is directly behind the opera house. Our main purpose of our visit was the atrium design of the building. On our way over I deposited a post card to my Great-Aunt Mary (she was 95 in 2010 when I traveled to Paris). She the only living sister of my deceased Italian Grandmother. Every city I travel to, I always send her a post card. I could never forget Great-Aunt Mary. Out of no where this man dressed in a chicken suit came running up to us and started clucking. Dr. Fountain loved this because it is a good example of entrepreneurship. Honestly,. if you are going to sell yourself like this good for you. Mer became his target. After getting a picture with the chicken, he demanded money. hahah We ran so fast out of there. So funny. A buck can be made doing anything.

The Atrium Glass Ceiling

Below the Artium: the different floors

     Galeries Lafeyette is at least 2 block long as far as I could see. It could have been more. I don't know if I saw it all to tell you the truth. I know that one building is strictly dedicated to men's apparel. The Galeries were finished in 1912 caped by the stunning Art Nouveau steel dome. The stair wells were designed specifically for this location. The Galeries originated as a small fashion haberdasher shop on this very location. The owners bought up the other shops along these block and developed the Galeries Lafeyette.
     To accomplish the overwhelming feat of Galeries Lafeyette, I focused mainly on buying one bottle of Chanel Number 5. If I found anything else, I would think on buying it. Other wise, just like the Louvre, one can get overwhelmed in all of the options of apparel and trinkets. The guys separated from us girls and we set out on finding something of our liking.  We looked at everything imaginable ranging from lingerie to wedding dresses. I ended up buying my parents a typical Eiffel Tour statue and something else. I did find my bottle of Chanel. The other girls bought various bottles of perfume too. 
   We had seen just about every fashion line for this summer's fashion and started to get hungry. We debated where to have lunch then settled to have lunch outside the Galeries. We found this lovely small place that only had 8 tables. We squeezed into the last table next to a book case all the way in the back. The walls were stained with age. The tables have had countless meals shared on their surfaces. The waiter started yelling at a gypsy boy trying to beg for money outside of the restaurant. I love that we were sitting all in way in the back. We had the best view of everything. We all ordered the croque monsieur and drank copious amounts of water to stave off the dehydration from our eucre game and wine last night. Our little story has now added character to the walls of this little place. I love little random places like this. After lunch we headed back to the Galeries to meet up with the boys to head back to the Hotel and head to the airport.

The Sacre' Coeur in the background from Galeries

 
      On the subway back to the hotel the gypsies were at large again. This time it was a trumpet player and most likely his wife. He wasn't that bad of a player. After he finished the usual extension of the cup was held out to everyone on the train. I always put my hand on my bag when they come by on the trains just so I know they haven't taken it. Some of them are real crafty in stealing your items. The wife was the one heading around to everyone. When she walked over to me I got a glimpse that she had a baby in a little carrier in front of her. I never really realize how tall I am until these moments. I peered down at her. She barely was 4' 5". Immediately, I regretted looking down because the baby she was carrying was attached to her breast. She had her breast out to show the world. The baby pulled away for a brief moment from the breast and started to cry. The mother forced the baby onto the breast. Vomit!!!! At this point everyone in our group noticed. Jenn started to gag. Now, don't get me wrong. I support breast feeding and all but I also would rather not have a show in public. No wonder most tourists are turned off by begging. The bad thing about this is that many tourist make bad judgments about the city. This is how many people get turned off by traveling. There are good things about a city. One just has to be brave enough to look beyond the bad judgments.
       We caught the RER back to the airport. We kind of just jumped on the train because we couldn't find a ticket booth that sold the RER tickets. If we didn't jump on the train we would have missed out flight to Milan. So, we are about 5 minutes away from the airport when the porter comes by asking for tickets. We show him our tickets and they were not the correct ones for the RER train. Needless to say we were fined 100 euros and had to buy new tickets. It was such a funny scene because we are all trying to argue with this man that only speaks French. I come over and try my luck at him (Get this: I don't speak French only Spanish and Italian). He grabbed a student's ticket from a guy sitting next to me and showed me RER compared to mine that didn't have the RER. Bloody ticket porter. Needless to say we all were not happy when we arrived to Charles deGuille airport.
       We were flying to Easyjet to Milan Malpensa Airport. Just like Ryanair, Easyjet is mas chaos and does not have assigned seating. It is like a mad dash to the plane. While we were standing in line to board, Dr. Fountain made his way to the front of the line and motioned us all up to join him. As the plane was going down the runway it started to make this awful noise. Jenn, Steve and I looked at each other and crossed ourselves. We thought we wouldn't make it to Italy. We did make it into the air with no problem. As I was sitting