A walk in the 9th

I took a nice long walk in the 9th arrondissement today... that's the area that I live in. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Ile de Paris, it's broken up into 20 sections, or "arrondissements." Check it out here:


<------- I'm up here in the middle








My walk today took me past

• Notre Dame de Lorette - a sadly run-down church named after the Italian city of Loreto
  
• the Gare St. Lazare - many famous artists, including Monet and Manet, lived near this train station-- the 2nd busiest in Europe-- and put the building in their works
• the Church [l'eglise] of Madeleine - originally a church, whose present form is a temple celebrating the glory of Napoleon's army
• the Galleries Lafayette - of COURSE I stopped there-- it's a department store... and a super cool one at that. The store is a very old building that is open in the center under its dome. When I went through, there was a fashion show / dance show going on in the middle of the store-- very cool!
• Opera National de Paris (aka the Opera house) - needless to say it's on my list to actually take in an opera-- I've never seen one, and I think it will be really cool!

Maybe next time I'll bring my camera on my walk and take some pictures :-)