More lights and requested pictures

Hi everyone! First of all, I wanted to show you some more of the views I see every day...

Here's the view from my apartment on a clear day. Sometimes you can see into the neighbor's windows at night, but I haven't seen anything juicy yet.

Here's a view from Monica's apartment. She lives on the 2nd floor with another girl from Canada.

(Side note: 2nd floor in France = 3rd floor in the U.S. The French call the bottom floor the 'rez-de-chaussée' and the next floor up starts the count at 1. I'm used to the system now, but when I first got here, I couldn't keep track of all the times I'd been surprised and disappointed that whatever floor I was trying to get to was always one more flight of stairs up.)

Another view from Monica's apartment.

More Christmas lights! They put these up on a street near my apartment.

More lights in the square close to my place. The building lit up in the background is the Mairie of the 11th arrondissement (it's kind of like the mayor's office for that section of Paris).

Here's the same picture but not as blurry.

And now for some pictures that have been requested in the past:


This first set is for my Great Aunt Lou, who asked to see pictures of outdoor markets. This one is the Bastille market and it's open on Saturday mornings until around 1pm. They sell mostly fresh fruits and vegetables, and there's a stand towards the front that sells seafood too (but it's really expensive). I went this past Saturday with Monica and we bought about 6 kilos of food for about 6 or 7 euros! Pretty good for a student budget. :)

Bastille market!

Mmm potatoes! I bought some red ones.

Very busy.

This next set of pictures is for Kelly, who asked to see a really cool hair salon if I saw one. Well since it took me so long to put some pictures up, I decided to show a series instead of just one or two pictures:

So the 3 major things I've noticed about hair salons here versus the ones in the U.S. is that...
1) people get different hair cuts, sometimes a bit more fashion-forward,
2) they stay open later during the night. I've seen people getting ther hair cut at 8 or 9pm before, and
3) the salons are usually named after people, like the one I found below.

This one I found close by my apartment. I swear I've seen another salon with the same name somewhere else in Paris, so maybe this is like the French version of Great Clips or something...

Another salon named after a person.

Here's the inside of that salon from above. It's not much different from what I'm used to seeing back home. By the way, I think I might have looked a little odd taking this picture because when I was done, the lady cutting that guy's hair turned around and stared at me like I was insane (ha ha). :D

Here's a salon in the rich area near the Élysée Palace (where the president lives). The word that's cut off on the left of the picture says 'coiffure' and that means 'hairdresser' in English.

Not every salon is named after a person. Here's one I found by Monica's apartment.

This was probably the coolest looking salon I've found so far. It's also close to Monica's apartment.

Like I said before, the haircuts tend to be a little more fashion forward here. I've seen people all over Paris sporting styles like the ones you see in the picture.

People gettin' they hair did! :D

Like I also said before, they stay open pretty late. I took this picture around 7pm and they were still busy.

It's been really cold here for at least a month now, but yesterday it finally snowed! It wasn't that much snow at all, but still worth mentioning. Here's my attempt to capture the event:

Bisous XOXO