Place des Vosges

Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 062The weather here is gorgeous: cold and crisp under a clear, cobalt-blue sky.  And it’s forecast to stay that way all week.  Youpi !  (that’s Yippee in French.)

Yesterday I had the day off work.  I met my friend, Monique, for lunch.  She’s off to New York for Christmas, I’m off to Antwerp.  Here’s what we ate – a rather uninspiring mound of mashed potatoes with a chicken breast and gravy on the side. 18 euros.Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 012Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 013After lunch we walked in the sunshine and made our way to the Place des Vosges.Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 049Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 040Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 045The Place des Vosges is the oldest planned square in Paris. Located in the Marais district, it straddles the dividing-line between the 3rd and 4th arrondissements of Paris. The Place des Vosges was built by Henri IV from 1605 to 1612. A true square (140 m × 140 m), it embodied the first European program of royal city planning.Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 051Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 054Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 065Later on, Monique went home to pack her bags and I did what I like best:  wandered the back streets.  I came across this tiny shoe boutique at number 19 rue du Parc-Royal. (the boutique is tiny, not the shoes.)  I’ll return in January when the big sales are on.Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 071Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 070Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 072A few doors down is the divine Maison Meert. The original Meert was founded in Lille in 1761. You must try their small and delicate waffles filled with vanilla from Madagascar.Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 073Paris Marais Dec 9, 2013 075

I then left the Marais and took the metro to the 8th arrondissement.  My final destination was the flagship NESPRESSO store on the Champs Elysées.  As one of their valued customers, I had a voucher offering a 50 euro discount which is nothing to sneeze at.  I purchased a new Nespresso machine at half the price and lugged it home on the metro. All in all, it was a pretty good day.

2 thoughts on “Place des Vosges

  1. Juliet,
    After e-mails from my children, yours is my favorite e-mail to find in my inbox. Please consider compiling all your posts into a book. I would be one of your first customers. Thank you for sharing your wonderful city.

    • Heidi, thank you for your encouraging message. I would consider compiling my posts and photos into a book, however due to a full-time job I don’t have much spare time. All of my weekends are devoted to writing another kind of book: my memoir (which includes Paris, of course.)

      Best wishes for 2014.

      Juliet

Leave a Reply to julesparis2013 Cancel reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s