On Saturdays, the Bastille open-air food market becomes an art market. The artists are not quite the caliber you'd find in the galleries in St Germaine or on display at the Louvre, but their stuff is a lot cheaper. I had to give these people credit for even coming out this morning, because it was cold and windy.
I was looking for an indoor activity to get out of the cold, and found out that the Carnavalet Museum is only a block away from my apartment. An added bonus was that admission to the museum was free. This museum is housed in two "town houses" that look more like mansions. Most of the displays have to do with the history of Paris. There were some scale models of the Bastille, which were interesting to look at, since there are no actual remnants of the Bastille around.
It finally warmed up a little in the afternoon, so I walked up to the Tuileries Garden to do some painting. Trouble was, the wind was still blowing pretty strongly, which kept drying my paint and flipping my paper. As I was leaving the garden, I decided to check out the area under the Louvre. There is an inverted glass and metal pyramid below ground that is the mirror image of the sculpture being used as the entrance to the Louvre that you see above ground.
I found out they've built a whole shopping center under the Tuileries Garden. Most of the shops were high-end souvenir shops (perfumes, jewelry, scarves). They even had a food court, like a US mall, though this food court looked more like an expensive bar. I did notice several people with McDonald's sacks, so it must have been concealed in there some where.
