Paris 2014 - Day 3 - Museum

On our third day in Paris we only had a Museum trip planned. But it was not a normal museum - it was a very special one!

It's called "Musée des Arts Forains" and its exhibition consists of old funfair attractions! How awesome is this ?!?!?! When you want to visit it, you have to order tickets online with credit card. But I saw some people paying in cash, so if you don't have a credit card, I suggest to drop them an e-mail and ask if you can pay by cash.

I found this museum last year when I searched for interesting stuff in Paris. When I saw the website, I fell in love with this museum! Take a look here: >> Musée des Arts Forains <<

You can only visit the museum with a guided tour, which is unfortunately in french only. It is possible to book an english tour if you come with a larger group, but since we were only 2 people, we had to stick with the french tour. However our tour guide was so nice to print out some papers with information in english! So you can still enjoy your tour.

I was surprised that I understood quite a lot of the french from our tour guide. This gave me motivation to refresh my french skills, because I'm pretty sure that this wasn't the last time I visited Paris ^_^

Now some pictures of this wonderful museum!

The entrace area~

The first hall we visited~

In this museum you can actually use some of the attractions! The first one was a carussel, inspired by venetian gondoliers.

 A stage - you can book this museum for events too ^_^

Another stage~

Another attraction we could play with~

Between the exhibition halls is a street with chandeliers hanging in the trees *_*

 They had some really odd exhibits Ô_o

And now my favourite exhibits: the carousels!!!

Did you know that they often had horse carousels because only rich people could afford horses? This was the only chance for 'normal' people to ride a horse in their whole life!

Yes this is a bycicle carousel! The owners of funfairs often used the newest inventions for the attractions, so this carousel was for many people the first chance in their life to ride a bycicle! And this was also the first time that they could experience speed. Because this carousel can go up to 60 km/h, and back then there existed no cars or other things that could go so fast! I could even experience this myself... we were also allowed to use this carousel, and I got really scared when it was at full speed ^^''''
BUT the most interesting fact might be that this carousel works without electricity!! That means it only works when all people actually use the pedals to make it move, just like real bycicles!

Pretty wall decoration - the hall museum had wonderful decoration everywhere!

I wish I could show you more pictures, but the light was really bad for cameras and many pictures turned out blurry. After 1-1.5 hours the tour was over. Our tour guide said that we only saw a small part of the whole collection, there is much more stuff stored in other halls. This museum is a private museum and all this stuff belongs to only one person, can you believe it??

 All in all this museum was really nice, althought I think the entry fee could be a bit lower. A ticket costs 17€ and when you don't understand french, it could be a bit boring. And for this price I want to see more stuff. But it was really great that we could use all the carousels and some of the games. And we also got to hear some fun fair music instrument machines (I don't know a better name for them xD), and some of the information is really interesting to hear!

~*~*~*~*~*~

After the museum we went to Axes Femme, because when we went there on our first day in Paris, they just got delivered some huge packages with clothes, and later they wrote on their Facebook page that they got more new stuff for Japan Expo, which will be also on Sale! So I wanted to see the new stuff and it was a good decision, I bought the long dress I already showed you in my earlier post :)

After this we went again to AP, but the shop was already very empty. We actually only went there to see how empty the store was xD. 

(Just as a side note, we were there the last time on Thursday afternoon, but I saw pictures on Facebook that they put out 2 brand new dresses at the weekend, "Lucienne Dream" which officially was released 1 week later after the Paris store closed, and "Cameo Window Paris", which isn't even released now!! But when I was in Paris 2013 they also had their new "Paris Window" print for sale there, even if it wasn't released yet in Japan!)

After this we went to Laduree. Usually I always buy Macarons at Laduree when I'm in Paris because I think they have the best ones in the world, but I only had a few Euros left and I wanted to buy some lunch ^^''', so only Ami bought macarons. 

Even if we had 3 hours left until our train would arrive, we still went back to our hotel because it was sooo hot that we hadn't any motivation to do something else. So we stayed over 1 hour in the hotel lobby and relaxed in their comfy sofas. But the guy from the reception was somewhat strange... first he was really nice, he brought us some cold fruits. And I think he was really bored so he came over and wanted to talk to us but with his broken english we couldn't really started to talk. But then he started to look at us all the time and smiled, like he wanted "something" from us. And later when I walked past him on the way to my luggage, he whispered to me "You are beautiful" xDDDDD. I really don't want to know what he was thinking xD. But I was happy that we directly left after this xD.

So yeah that was the last post about Paris. Just as a side note, our hotel was in the middle of the wedding shop street for "non-french" people. There were literally at least 60 shops selling wedding dresses, ball gowns, suits or wedding decoration. Next time I will plan more time to check out the decoration shops because they had some really awesome cheap stuff there!

(But on the down-side it was full of... those people. I don't recommend getting a hotel near Sacre-Coeur.)

Thank you for reading,
Miuko~ <3

Paris 2014 - Day 2 - Fashion Walk and Tea Party

Our second day in Paris started quite lazy. I woke up at 8 a.m. and couldn't sleep anymore so I started to try several hairstyles. In the end I needed 3 hours to decide and make my final hairstyle X_X. So even if I started early, Ami and me left our hotel at 13:00h. But we still had plenty of time because the Fashion Walk only started at 15:10h, so we went to the Angelic Pretty store again and then to a small park to take pictures.

After taking pictures in the park, we went to the Gallerie Vivienne, which was the starting point of the Fashion Walk. It was also the place of the Putumayo Tea Party. When we arrived, we saw the Tea Party because they were sitting in the hallway of the Gallerie. It looked like there were many people attending the Putumayo Tea Party, but later one girl told me that they were only 5 (!!!) guests! There were more models and Putumayo staff then guests! Can you belive it, they had a very special and personal Tea Party with Misako Aoki. Now I regret it so much that I didn't attended the Putumayo TP, I even ordered a ticket but I cancelled it later because I thought it was too expensive to pay 40€ for the Putumayo TP and 60€ for the Angelic Pretty TP, which is 100€ just for 4,5 hours of TP.

We met Rosalynn in the Gallerie! She was so nice to take a picture of us, thank you!

But when it came closer to 15:00h, more and more Lolitas arrived and I was surprised how many Lolitas were there which I know personally or which I at least saw at other Lolita events. I was sooo happy to meet all the lovely Lolitas and I also started to talk with Lolitas I didn't knew before. It was no problem because everyone was very friendly and open to meet other people. I was very impressed how nice all the girls were to each other, all of them giving compliments, taking pictures and talking with each other, so it was quite a special atmosphere and a special moment for me.

Also the whole Angelic Pretty staff came to the Fashion Walk (maybe they were also at the Putumayo TP? I don't know). It was really nice to see how Maki and Asuka greeted everyone and were really engaged in taking pictures with everyone. Generally, especially Maki and Mrs. Honda (the owner of AP) always ask for pictures and take pictures of everyone and everything!

~*~ FASHION WALK ~*~

Around 60 people were attending the Fashion Walk, most of them dressed in Angelic Pretty, because they were all attending the AP Tea Party later or just bought some new clothes at the Angelic Pretty Pop-up store.

When the Fashion Walk started, some japanese staff from Putumayo were telling everyone that we would start to walk now. But not many people heard it in the first place, so when Ami and me started walking, we were at the very front of the walk, directly behind Misako Aoki! But honestly we were just walking around Paris so it kind of didn't really felt special that we were walking with Misako Aoki ^^'''' Because we didn't talked with her or took pictures or anything, just walking behind her.

Generally there were a lot of (professional) photographers and also a camera team. We stopped 3 times to take a group picture. The first one was in a small park, the second in a small passage and the last one in front of the famous Opéra! You will not believe how many people photographed us in front of the Opéra. It is a famous tourist spot so there were a lot of people, so it was hard to escape from all the tourists who wanted to take a picture with us xD

All in all it was quite funny to walk around Paris with a horde of Lolitas, thought the best thing was definitly that I could talk to many Lolitas. At the end I also could finally take a picture with Misako Aoki <3

 ~*~ TEA PARTY ~*~

The fashion walk should take 30 minutes, so originally we should have 1 hour for finding the place of the AP TP. But when we looked at our watch after the Fashion Walk, we only had 15 minutes!!! The Opéra is in the middle of a huge crossing with 7 streets, so Ami and me didn't found the right street. But luckily we found some french Lolitas who also wanted to attend the TP and they had google maps on their mobile phone, so we tried to find the way together. But we went in the wrong direction, so we only had 5 more minutes!! The french Lolitas suggested to take a cab and luckily there was one parking just next to us, so we asked him if he could ride us to the Bristol Hotel (the place of the TP) and he said yes and it will only take 5 minutes.
So we took the cab, but when he started to drive, he drove in a complete different direction from what we thought where the hotel was. First, I thought that we really walked in the wrong direction, but one day later I walked the same street with Ami again because we wanted to go to a shop there, and we found out that the cab driver drove some extra streets to make more money!!! He was only 2 corners away from the Hotel -.- But luckily we didn't came too late, only 2 minutes, but the TP didn't started yet because there was still a queue in front of the room, because they checked the Tea Party tickets of everyone and there were around 100 Lolitas attending!

Number 4 means I was the 4th person who wrote AP an e-mail to reserve a ticket *_*

After we entered the room, we had to find a table. We joint a table with a girl from Austria and from France. It was funny because Ami and me thought that we were the only german-speaking people there, but suddenly the austrian Lolita started to talk to us in german. What a coincidence that we chose exactly this table!

Every table was arranged like this - with a plate of sandwiches and cake and rose petals

Our table - the pink girl on the left is the austrian Lolita, and the two in the middle are the french Lolitas who helped us to find the way to the Tea Party.

In the background you can also see Misako Aoki and the Putumayo staff. They joined the Tea Party too!

While entering, we directly recognized some women who didn't fit to the Tea Party. There were some old ladies at one table and younger women at two other tables, all looking snobby and dressed in typical snobby clothes. Everyone was questioning why they were at the TP, but later I asked one of the older ladies and she told me that they are from a university for fashion & marketing in California and they got invited by Angelic Pretty to the Tea Party. The older ladies were the proferssors and the younger ones their students. And she told me that they have a branch in San Francisco with students who wear Angelic Pretty.
But they didn't stayed until the end, they left within the first hour of the Tea Party.

Then, Maki and Asuka started the Tea Party. They greeted everyone and explained that there will be an outfit contest and a raffle. Everyone was given a paper brooch with a number for the outfit contest, and we should vote the outfit we liked the most.

Then it was time for the food! They had étagères with macarons, tiny cakes and sandwiches. But there were not many macarons and cakes! If you weren't fast enough you probably couldn't grab one of the macarons or the delicious lemon mini-cakes. But there were enough sandwiches to fill your body. At this point I was asking myself why they only ordered such a small amount of food, but later they brought two giant cakes, so I got my answer xD

After grabbing some food, it was time to take pictures and to talk to other people. Generally during the whole Tea Party, everyone was moving around for taking pictures or talking, nearly nobody was sitting in their chairs.

The glamorous room - you really felt like a princess here!

Because Maki and Asuka said at the beginning, that they hope to talk to us a lot, I went to both of them to ask a question. First I went to Asuka, but she nearly speaks no english, so when I asked her "What is your favourite dress?" she understood "This is my favourite dress", so she answered with "Oh thank you" xD. Then I went to Maki, she speaks better english. I asked the same question, but she couldn't decide for her favourite dress and said, that currently it is the dress she is wearing (honestly I expected the answer because they are always saying this ~_~). When I asked her how many dresses she owns, she said "Oooh hmmm.... many!". She also said that all her dresses are from AP. Then she also asked us how many dresses we own from AP and where we buy our dresses. Maki is really cute and I like that she understands english a bit so you can actually talk to her!

In the middle of the Tea Party, Asuka started to collect the votes for the outfit contest. She had a very cute box with Angelic Pretty print! How awesome is this!

Suddenly, the hotel staff was bringing 2 giant cakes! They brought a chocolate cake and a strawberry cake. The chocolate cake had glitter and also real gold on it! I felt so rich for 1 minute eating this cake xD. If you want to know, gold tastes very neutral. It just looks pretty and luxurious ^-^ They also served the cake with sauce... I never ate cake like this but it was a nice addition :)

 The decoration was made from sugar and I think the pictures were printed on sugar plates too!

At the end of the Tea Party was the ruffle. My heart started beating so fast because I desperately wanted to win something. And with desperately I mean really really desperately. I really wanted one of those chocolate bags, I saw them in the online store and fell in love with them but they were too expensive for me. But unfortunately I didn't won anything in the ruffle and I was so sad and disappointed. I know it's stupid to be sad because of something like that ;__; I shouldn't have thought so much about the prizes then I wouldn't be so sad about it.
But everyone who didn't won something during the raffle, got a poster. So nobody was left completely empty-handed.

Raffle prices - the dark blue box, the pink cup & saucer and the drawing were the prizes for the outfit contest

After the ruffle followed the announcement of the winners of the outfit contest, and directly after this was the group picture.

 Winner Outfit contest - Credit by Japan-In-Depth

 Credit by Tokyo Crazy Kawaii

Then Maki and Asuka officially said good-bye and finished the event. A nice girl of the Angelic Pretty staff gave everyone a present at the exit. It was a small pochette with Fantasy Theater print.

Yes there is a calendar on the poster...

The card on the left is the other side of the invitation - just wanted to show it ^^

All in all it was a great event, and I hope they will come back next year and make a Tea Party again!!! I'm a huge fan of Angelic Pretty and Maki & Asuka, and during the Tea Party I really felt like a princess. I met a girl at the Fashion Walk and she told me that she doesn't wear Lolita anymore, but she borrowed an outfit from a friend because she wanted to join the Tea Party. I can completely understand why and I would do the same too if I would leave Lolita (but of course I won't anytime soon ^^).

Thank you for reading,
Miuko

Paris 2014 - Day 1 - Shopping

This year, Ami and me travelled again to Paris for 3 days <3 We were there especially for the Angelic Pretty Tea Party, but of course we also went shopping and visited a museum!

~*~ ANGELIC PRETTY ~*~

On Tuesday we arrived at 12h in Paris. This was exactly the time when the Angelic Pretty Pop-up Store opened his doors for the first day, but we had to drop off our luggage at our hotel before we go to the shop, so we only arrived around 13-13:30h. In front of the shop was a queue so we had to wait for around 20 minutes until we could get in. In this time we looked through the window and we could see all the pretty stuff they had! I don't know why but I became very nervous during the waiting time, because I had fear that an awesome item get sold-out before I could enter the store. And it happend ;_; They had a Lucky Pack for 33€ (!!!) with a chocolate-print cardigan, 2 pairs of socks and 3 accessoires. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT ;______; When we waited outside they still had the Lucky Packs, we could see them through the window. But when we entered they were sold-out ;_;

Pic is from the AP website because it wasn't allowed to photograph inside

I was also nervous because a friend of mine wanted blue Crystal Dream Carnival wrist cuffs and the last pair was directly in front of us at the window, so I looked all the time at it and hoped that nobody will buy it. YES, THEY HAD CRYSTAL DREAM CARNIVAL!!! They had the dark blue Crystal Dream Carnival OP and JSK's, and also all other colors and all matching accessoires for Crystal Dream Carnival. I was really surprised that they reserved a stock especially for Paris, since all the dark blue dresses were sold-out within minutes in Japan.

And in addition to that, they also had many other new prints and items. I'm really happy that Angelic Pretty took all the effort to bring some items for their fans overseas. After they closed their international website I was pretty angry, because this was a sign for me that they don't care so much about their foreign customers. But now after I saw this shop, I have a better image of them again :)

The only negative points of the shop were, that the prices were expensive and that they didn't had much stock. For example the Crystal Dream Carnival Chiffon JSK cost 33.264Yen and they sold it for 328€ (actual exchange rate would be around 240€). And we came back to the store on Tuesday evening (and also on Wednesday and Thursday xD), and the stock was already really shrinked. Nearly all the "cool stuff" was gone.

Btw, Maki and Asuka were also at the store. Like always, Maki welcomed all customers, gave nice compliments for outfits, asked for pictures and gave autographes, while Asuka tidied up the shop with her "grumpy" face. (Can someone tell me why she always looks kinda annoyed and grumpy and not happy at all???) 
It was so cute when we asked Maki and Asuka for an autograph. Maki signed our postcard and wanted to give the pen to Asuka, but she went outside to take pictures. So Maki told us to wait a second and went to Asuka to tell her that we want an autograph from her. It was sooo adorable how engaged they were to make all customers happy <3 After this, they also asked us to take a picture with them outside! Awww <3

 I'm holding a signed postcard from Maki and Asuka

I bought a pair of pink Crystal Dream Carnival socks (for my Day Dream Carnival OP xD) and ALL the postcards. Literally. They sold two postcards for 3€, so I grabbed all they had because usually if you look for them 2nd hand, people sell this shit for 5-7€ per postcard !! I mean you get them for free in Japan but whatever, 1,50€ is better then 7€ and I always wanted to have them. Btw they also sold the new summer catalogue for 9€ which you also get for free in Japan but whatever. (But I guess they had to sell this stuff too to cover their costs)

~*~ PUTUMAYO ~*~

Okay Putumayo was in the same store like AP but I want to write about it seperately. Honestly I don't have much to write about it because I'm not interested in Putumayo at all. Also nearly nobody was interested. While Angelic Pretty sold a lot of stuff, Putumayo sold nearly nothing. I think the problem is, that Putumayo is mainly a Punk brand and they have a lot of Punk stuff, and many Lolitas are not interested in this style.

Misako Aoki was also in the store for Putumayo, but with no Putumayo customers she was helping the cashier all the time xD. I felt a little bad because directly in front of her, we asked Maki to sign our postcards and then she said "thank you for shopping" and directly went outside with us to take pictures. Originally I wanted to ask Misako to sign the postcard too and to take a picture, but Maki thought we want to leave directly so yeah we directly went outside and I felt weird to come back again when she already said "thank you for shopping, have a nice day etc.". In the evening we came back to the store but Misako Aoki was already gone T_T

The shop itself was pretty small and looked like they only rented the place for one week, altought in the internet you could read that the Pop-up store was in a "real" store called Discover Japan. But there was no professional interior in it and no other items besides AP and Putu.

~*~ AXES FEMME ~*~

Oh my god, Axes Femme is my new favourite brand!! I didn't expected much, because on their website you can read that only half of the shop is Axes Femme, and the other half are items which are created especially for european girls. So I expected too small and too boring clothes. But it was nothing like it!! All the clothes look like Liz Lisa, but with a more classical touch. I was in heaven *__*

But most important: they had my size !!! Unfortunately I gained weight so I became chubby, but they have an L size and this is european L, not japanese L !!! Many clothes have shirring, so while they had several items only in M size, it could fit everyone from XS-XL. So even if you are chubby, you don't have to worry about the sizes, althought I don't think they have anything larger then XL. The only negative point was that their biggest shoe size is 38/39. I was a bit sad about it because all their shoes also looked like Liz Lisa ;__;

Also the best thing was that they had Summer Sale. While their items are usually a bit expensive, nearly everything was 30-70% off! Many dresses cost originally 75€, but with the sale I only paid half of it for three amazing dresses! I hope next year I have more money, so I will never buy at normal shops in Germany again and just wait for their Summer Sale and then go shopping there xD

~*~ BTSSB ~*~

This year I bought nothing in Btssb. Usually I'm not a huge fan of them anyway but this year they had SO many pretty blouses and dresses I really want! But I didn't had money anyway and even if they had sale, their items were still very expensive. My friend Ami tried on a dress which was sooooo beautiful! But it cost 357€ and this was already the price with Summer Sale discount X__X.  So in the end she didn't bought it. Also the shop was very empty, actually we were the only customers there!

~*~ PRINCESS CREPE ~*~

Now comes the food part! Like always we went to Princess Crepe. I love this cute small store <3 I ordered a simple crêpe with cake cream and whipped cream. I was really curious what "cake cream" is, and it is not mashed cake xD. It looked and tasted like vanilla pudding.

~*~ HIGUMA ~*~

Higuma is a japanese restaurant at "Rue St. Anne". This is the main street of the japanese part of Paris, where you can find tons of japanese restaurants, shops and cafés (waaay more then at the Immermann-Strasse in Düsseldorf). In this street was also the Pop-up store. I write about this restaurant because it is quite cheap and affordable. For example you can get a menu with Ramen soup + Gyoza for 10,50€. There are also other menus and you always get free tap water!

Not my picture - I forgot to take one - >>Source<<

Thank you for reading,
Miuko~ <3