Les Vacances de Toussaint

Bonjour tout le monde!
On Sunday I got back from Brittany - I was there a week for fall break, which they call "les vacances de Toussaint". I had 12 days off school, which was nice even if it is kind of random. So I went to Brittany, the northwest region of France. We were in the southern part of Brittany, so it wasn't very cold for the most part, and it was sunny most days. I was really happy because there are actual palm trees in Brittany, so it really felt like vacation. However, it was too cold to go swimming. We did go to the ocean three times. Most of the houses and buildings in Brittany are white with blue shutters and gray stone trimming. They are really pretty.
We were in a town called Crac'h. The house had no computer or television, so that was rough. Also, I couldn't call home because my cell phone can't make calls to the USA. And there are like no pay phones in France. Maybe there are a couple in Paris, but I haven't seen any yet.
On Saturday, the day before we left Brittany, we went to a town called Auray. It was really pretty and had some shops, so I went shopping for a little while. Since it was Halloween, I bought some M&M's. I also bought a t-shirt. There were some kids trick-or-treating around the town, but Halloween is not a really big deal in France I guess.
Today, I went to Paris with Marie-Violaine, Similien, Léonie, and one of Similien's friends. We left at like 9:30 so that traffic wasn't quite so bad. On the way there, Marie-Violaine asked me if I knew who the mayor of New York City is. Only I thought she was asking which ocean was close to NYC, since "la mer" means "the sea" and "le maire" means "the mayor". They are pronounced the same except for the le/la difference. So I accidently told her that the Atlantic Ocean was the mayor of New York, hahaha.
When we got to Paris, we took the subway to the Musée de quai Branly. It's a new museum that was built in the late 1990's and it's right next to the Eiffel Tower. So I got to see the Eiffel Tower up close again. The Musée Branly is a museum with all these old tribal artifacts from all over the world. Like 3000 of them. It was interesting, but tribal artifacts are not really my biggest interest.
After we went to the museum, we were either going to go in the Eiffel Tower or to the Champs-Elysees; they let me pick. I picked the Champs-Elysees since I wanted to shop a little bit and the weather wasn't good. It rained all morning and in the afternoon it was cloudy and gray - not the best weather to go to the Eiffel Tower in my opinion. We walked to the Champs Elysees and passed the houses of Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent, so that was cool. They are where the designers actually design the clothes; they aren't the same as the stores. So you can't go in them.
Then we got to the Champs-Elysees. It is well worth going to because the street is so pretty. It's lined with trees and French Flags on both sides, and at the end of it is the Arc de Triomph. The Arc de Triomph is waaaay bigger in person than I always thought it was. I thought it was kind of small, but it's realllly big.
The shopping on the Champs-Elysees was a definite disappointment. The stores are either ridiculously expensive, or really junky souvenir shops. There are no H&Ms or any reasonably-priced stores, and even the designer stores were a major disappointment. There is Louis Vuitton, Hugo Boss, Cartier, and Kenzo Paris, but there was no Burberry, Ralph Lauren, BCBG, or Marc Jacobs stores. I went in Louis Vuitton, which was packed with tourists who were just going in there to say they went in there. So I went out of it after like ten seconds, and Kenzo Paris was right across the street. So I was like, "okay, I'll go in there". It didn't look crowded but I thought there would be at least a few tourists in there who were just looking around. Well, I was wrong. I walked in the door and in the front part of the store there were like ten employees just standing there, and there was no one else in the whole store. So I walked into the second part of the store to just look at the clothes, and a saleslady came up to me right away and was like "Are you looking for anything in particular?" and I said "No, I'm just looking, thanks", but she didn't walk away. Instead she stood there while I looked through the hangers on one rack, and when I paused for like a milisecond to look at one shirt, she picked it up and was like "Oh this is new, you can wear it with this (she picked up a hanger with a skirt on it) and then you can also do these jeans which are very cute, and this jacket here goes with it...". And I was like "seriously are you ever going to leave me alone?" because even if I had absolutely loved any of the things she was telling me I should buy, the least expensive of all of them was the shirt which was like 160 euros, so I couldn't have spent that on one t-shirt. Talk about high-pressure sales! I guess tourists don't go in there; probably the only people who do are really rich. So I guess I would not recommend going in Kenzo by yourself unless you want like 10 intimidating salespeople to stare at you while you're trying to look at clothes.
After that, I walked down the street and was trying to find a Gap - anywhere that sold clothes for under like 150€, but I didn't have much time left, so I went to Starbucks and got a tall iced mocha for 4€. Starbucks in Paris must make a fortune because it was sooo crowded. Then I walked up close to the Arc de Triomph and took a couple of pictures. After that I went to meet up with the Crestanis, and we took the subway back to the 6th arrondissment where we parked.
It was 6 p.m., so the traffic going out of Paris was horrible. It took like thirty minutes to go 5 miles, but once we got pass the suburbs it was okay.
Okay, that's all for now!
à bientot!