Promenade a Paris

When I flew back to Spain from the US a week ago, I had to change planes at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. My flight from Philly arrived at 8am in the morning, and I had deliberately chosen my final flight to Madrid to leave in the evening, so that I could go for a walk around the city centre. If only for a few hours, I got the opportunity to re-indulge in the beauty of my beloved City of Lights.

After a short trip in RER, I went out at St. Michel station and started my ‘promenade’. Along the way, I was greeted by a couple of familiar sights:

As the plane was landing, the airplane crew informed us that the temperature outside was minus 6 degrees Celsius. For me, that’s pretty cold… although maybe not cold enough to justify the presence of a gigantic igloo right in front of Hôtel de Ville.

It was quite unusual, nevertheless, to find that some of the fountains around the city were frozen. I had never seen them like that during the time I lived there (I guess cold winter days have never been my first choice to go sightseeing in a city that I live in). Take a look, for example, at the little fountain which is adjacent to Centre Pompidou:

Or at this other fountain in one of the courts of the Louvre:

The Louvre, by the way, looked as radiant as ever:

Look at this picture of the pyramid, taken right from below the apex!

The walk continued towards Opera Garnier

And ended up at Galeries Lafayette, where I looked for a gift for my mom and was scared to death by the astronomic prices (I blame the euro-dollar rate exchange, together with my lack of common sense in the choice of the shopping area).