It's such a funny place, so many tourists, so many hawkers yet so beautiful. It's not great weather today, gloomy with a threat of rain. 
We head to the Australian embassy which is not far from the Eiffel Tower. It's our voting day. The building is a Harry seidler building in collaboration with marcel Breuers office. Very much in the same vein as Grosvenor place in Sydney. We head in to vote.
Surprisingly theres over 25 other Aussies doing the same thing. We were expecting to be the only ones here. It's quite a good way to vote, no lines and really easy. I was tempted to ask where the sausage sizzle was but I held my tongue. Didn't want to be rude. That didn't stop another lady though. She asked the polling lady where she could find the australian newspapers. The polling lady said she would get someone to show her. The old Aussie lady was shocked, "I thought they would be readily available".
What a bitch she was. Where does she think she is? It's Paris for Christs sake. Plus the women she was asking worked for the electoral commission not the embassy. I felt like telling her to get an iPad, had she heard of them? Was a reminder for us of the rudeness of Australians. You forget sometimes when travelling as its usually Brits and Americans being the ignorant and rude ones, but we're up there with them.
Voting done we head back to the base of the tower along the river and cross back over into the Trocadero. We visit the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine museum. My boss said I had to visit. Entering in and it's a large and long space, more than 3 storeys in height. Inside on the lower floor it is filled with full scale 1:1 casts of many of the facades, reliefs and sculptures from the cathedrals and monuments around Paris and France. It's quite interesting. Most were done in the late 19th century for a comparative exhibition with Roman monuments. It's interesting because often these sculptural works are high up on buildings, cathedrals and gateways. These casts show the astounding level of detail sculptors went to back in the Renaissance even for works that would rarely be seen from the ground. Quite amazing. Sim makes the comment, why would you travel to see them you could just come here. Quite true. As well as the casts there are amazing scale models of many cathedrals as well as sectional models showing detail of interiors. Really is a cool gallery.
Upstairs is the 20th century modern architecture section. There's some interesting models but the highlight is the full scale construction of an apartment from Le Corbusiers groundbreaking housing project of the 40s, the Unite d'Habitation. It's furnished and fitted out as it was in the middle of the century. Amazing to experience the spatial proportions and open plan apartment living, which is still the predominant form used today.
We wander some more through the exhibits before heading out into the streets surrounding the Trocadero in search of lunch. We head up avenue Kléber looking at all the bistro menus. Again there's not a great deal on offer for sim and the prices are crazy for what you get. I really don't understand how people do this everyday. €15-20 a day for lunch. Yet somehow these bistros which are ubiquitous across Paris are full and thriving. We struggle to find somewhere, walking all the way up to the Arc de Triomphe. Knowing things won't be any cheaper or better here we head down avenue de Friedland which turns into boulevard Haussmann. We finally find a bistro with a reasonable price and salad for sim. Still not cheap but by now we're starving and it's drizzling with rain so we settle on this place. I order a croque Monsieur and some foie gras with toast. It's ok. Nothing to write home about so I will stop there.
After lunch we continue down along boulevard Haussmann all the way down to the famous department stores Printemps and Galleries Lafayette. We head in for a quick wander before stopping at the food hall in galleries Lafayette for some afternoon desserts. We get an eclair from L'eclaire d'Genie by Christophe Adam, some macarons and an awesome sorbet macaron sandwich from Pierre Herme. Really rich and decadent, but good. We stop for coffee and then realise it's nearly 4:30pm. Time to head to the football.
We catch the RER out to Stade de France. The station is a good 15 minute walk from the ground. Going through the checkpoints and baggage searches we enter into the stadium, or so we'd thought. One last pat down and frisk. This takes forever. There's literally only 3 guys doing everyone at each gate. After a good 15-20minutes waiting to be groped and patted down by a sweaty and angry Frenchmen, we finally head to our seats. Our seats are great, from where we're sitting we can see out under the stadium roof and see Sacre Cour in the distance. Such a good atmosphere inside the ground. Spanish and Italian fans are everywhere. Red v blue. La Rioja v Azzurri!
It's the two countries we've been in for the last month playing against each other. Sim sides with Spain but I stick to my Italian heritage and go for Italy.
We're down the Italian end and the constant chant of E-TAL-YA goes up around the ground. 30 minutes into the game and the crowd goes off. A scrappy goal to Italy, but who cares. 1-0 Italia.
The rest of the match is a battle between Spanish possession and skill versus Italian defensive grit and counterattack. In the last few minutes, after an hour of feeling like Spain would score to draw level, Italy swoop on a loose pass and put the ball in the back of the net. Game over.
I really enjoyed that.
Leaving the stadium I lead us astray in search of the alternate train station near the ground. Following the crowd we get a little lost but eventually find the station, only to find were in a huge mass of people being held back from entering in an attempt of crowd control. Again, it's not very well done. When they finally tell people to go there's a huge rush up to the platform. Not very safe really. I feel that Paris doesn't handle crowd management well. Way too over the top and it just frustrates people.
We finally get back to Republique and then our hotel.
It's 10ish and we're both not overly hungry after lunch and sweets in the afternoon so we call it a day.
mat + sim
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