The Wacky World of a Lazy Pig (AKA Simon)

Eurotrip Day 9 - Thank God for another good day so we can go to the Arc de Triomphe and buy LV stuff

For the past few days, we have gone to the Arc de Triomphe during the day to take pictures from the bottom on a nice day and rainy day (during the day time) and also once during a rainy night. Never have I actually gone up the Arc de Triomphe. Some may say that it isn't worth it since it isn't even higher than the Eiffel Tower, which I do agree. Then again, we only have to pay the student or youth fee (4.80 euros) so it is hard to say NO to a bargain.

That is what we did, but before we got to the Arc de Triomphe, we visited the Tuilieries garden which is right in front of the Louvre Museum. Though not even a close rival to the Chateau de Versailles garden, it was still a nice piece of work in the city. The garden is well protected as people are not allowed to ride bikes in the park or even step on the grass. The second you violate any of the rules, someone will blow a whistle REALLY LOUD so that everyone around can hear. You would be amazed at how many people get whistled at while we were there. I thought that since I wasn't from Paris, I might as well try my luck, guess what, I got whistled and then yelled at.

The Arc de Triomphe is within walking distance of the Tuilieries garden (around 20 minutes walk). One thing we didn't know was that there was a special event and parade on the same day. There were tons of royal guards (I think) on horses just waiting on the side. Steve and I went to go pet some horses after we saw some other tourists pet the heads. The horses were really nice about us petting them and none of them tried to bite us. I didn't want to try anything funny this time because the guards had swords and guns.

As we made our way towards the Arc, we were interrupted by 2 chinese people who got Steve's attention. Roger and I just kept walking thinking that they were somehow his relatives. Anyway, after some talking, Steve walked up to me and asked me if I could help them out. Apparently the 2 chinese people wanted to buy some sort of bag which they didn't know how to describe in words. One spoke Mandarin and the other spoke Cantonese. They said something about them having problems with buying the bags because they would have to pay taxes at customs or something. Anyway, after some talking, they told us that they wanted to buy a type of wallet and showed us a few pictures. I didn't see the brand from the small pictures, but each was around 300Euros. At that point, I was thinking either Burberry or LV. Steve and I agreed to help them buy the wallets. I didn't have to use my own money if that is what you were thinking, they gave me a total of 660 euros to go get 2 of the wallets. Steve also got the same amount.

The brand of wallets they were getting turned out to be LV. I went in there and looked around for a long time to find the wallet. The whole store had so much security, which makes a lot of sense if you are selling such expensive merchandise. Anyway, they would only allow a certain amount of people in the store at a time (I counted around 30-40 customers). A service agent would only work with one customer at a time to avoid any type of stealing I guess. After about 20-30 minutes, Steve came up to me and told them that the didn't take cash payments. Which was weird I thought, but oh well, if we can't get it then we don't get it. We left. Roger and the 2 chinese people were waiting outside across the street. We told them that they didn't take any cash. Roger got lucky here as the 2 chinese people bought him a drink while they waited for us.

Roger told us about the scheme after we had separated from the 2 chinese people. Apparently they were doing this for a living and were selling the LV merchandise to Japan for a higher price and making money on the mark up. I was so surprised that those 2 chinese people even entrusted 1320 euros in our hands. We could have run off with the money, but Roger would have been held hostage. We were dumb to help them out, but we didn't know about that at all. The good thing was that they weren't going to harm us anyway. The bad thing was that they wasted some of our time.

To make up for lost time, we rushed to the Arc de Triomphe and went all the way to the top right away. You would be quite surprised at the amount of steps you have to climb in order to get to the top. Thought the top didn't give the same type of view that the Effiel tower gave yesterday, the top of the Arc let us see the beauty of the local area and all the large streets that lead up to the Arc.

Once we had experienced enough, we decided to leave and head to the flea market on the north end of Paris. The flea market is supposed to have around 200+ shops selling things at cheap prices. For any one that is remotely interested in this if they come to Paris, I would not recommend coming here unless you are looking for hip hop style clothing and regular priced apparell. I was looking forward to buy something from her but ended up buying nothing. Steve did buy something, though I don't think it was for him. By the time we left, it was time for dinner so we headed home and had some indian food (it was ok food).

Steve and I didn't want to waste our day passes for the day so we decided to head out to Moulin Rouge and hit the Red Light District!!!! I thought there would be a bunch of hookers out at night (9:30pm) but there weren't any. Instead, we saw a lot of XXX shops and video stores and XXX movie showing stores or whatever. A bunch of men did come up to Steve and I and ask if we were interested in watching some Sex videos. I wasn't interested, but I did find it funny how so many people asked us that. Moulin Rouge seemed smaller to me when we got there. The price to go in was around 97 euros for just a show and drink. Steve really wanted to go, but I ruined everything by reminding him that we had other obligations (drinking with Roger).

We all drank some beer before the night's end. Too bad Steve didn't want to get some more booze because I was expecting to atleast get a buzz. Getting to sleep wasn't difficult after all that beer, hehe.

Labels: eurotrip

posted by lazypig @ 12:16 PM