First Walking Tour

Today Francoise Fromonot took us on our first walking tour of the city. We met at L'Arsenal, wandered through the Ile St. Louis then to the Ile de la Cite, through Notre Dame, then back to the right bank, up into the Louvre. Some of the streets on the Ile St. Louis really reminded me of Charles Street in Boston - similar scale and types of stuff being sold. Of course, this preceded Boston by quite a bit of time.
We meandered through the Palais Royal, site of some serious leftist thought, and down this Galerie. This is one of the first arcades here in Paris - its sort of like a shopping prototype. Francoise's words described it as the "root of the geneology of the modern shopping mall". We saw the unfortunate Le Halles area, before gaining special entrance to the Le Centre Pompidou even though it was closed! When we walked in we even had the bonus of Shigeru Ban walking just past us. His temporary office set up on the building's facade is pretty great.

Shown in the picture is the Galerie.