The drain at the stairs up from the shopping center by the Louvre Museum: how more chliché can you get than a Parisian gutter full of cigarette butts?
After getting my art fix at the Louvre, I decided to head in the direction of Le Marais, a famous neighborhood that has a lot of interesting shops and galleries, at my aunt’s recommendation. Tired of the Metro and unsure of exactly which stop would take me where I wanted to go, I decided to walk. It’s a lovely stretch between the Louvre and Place de la Bastille anyway. I ambled past the famous Pont Neuf, the now-closed-for-supposed-renovation department store of Samaritaine, and a few other lovely sights with traffic on my left and the Seine river flowing past my right.
I turned northward somewhere past the Place du Châtelet, not entirely sure where I was headed but always keeping the direction of the river in mind. I walked past shops and cafes and tons and tons of pedestrians, turning left and right wherever my nose led me until I reached Les Halles. I walked through the park and north again, where I happened upon one of the little passages couverts, this one called Galerie Véro-Dodat.
It was delightfully charming with a checkerboard tile floor and wood panels on the doors leading into little shops left and right, a high-end cosmetics shop here, a vintage bookstore there, until I came upon this: 
I KNOW! What are the chances that I would stumble upon Christian Louboutin‘s boutique and atelier just on a stroll like this? Again, I was dumbstruck. It’s not like I could ever pretend to have thousands to drop on a pair of cruelly sky-scraping stilettos, but it’s still on my bucket list to at least try on a pair of this artfully-shaped red-soled art.
…and it would be across the passage from a shop selling banjitars and pineapple ukuleles. 
I walked further west, finding yet more to see all over.
Why hello, Napoleon! Fancy meeting you here.
Tired but satiated, I got back on the train to Thiais.
