Galerie Lafayette

After my class tour of the Opera Garnier on Thursday (it was so beautiful-I highly recommend visiting), my professor took us to the Galerie Lafayette to see this amazing view of Paris from their rooftop. Galerie Lafayette is a really awesome department store that is know for it's fashion and it's building. Unfortunately, it's a little too expensive for me...

The ceiling. Those red and gold balls are part of the Christmas decorations that are already (!) up. Guess they don't have Halloween or Thanksgiving to stop them from decorating a little bit earlier.

The ceiling again with a view of the floors. This was the first place in Paris where you could buy everything in one place (you wouldn't have to go to the hat stores for hats, the coat store for coats, etc) and where the prices were marked on the clothes, making them the same for everyone. The design of the building, with all the balconies is actually modeled after a prison design and prevents shoplifting because they can see more of what is going on.

View of Paris from the top of the roof, which is open to the public and has a restaurant when it's warmer.

This is the Opera Garnier. The green figure on top is a state of Apollo holding his lyre up and the tip of his lyre intentionally makes the Opera house the exact same height as Notre Dame

More from the roof. Even though it was a grey and yucky day, you can still see the Eiffel Tower off in the distance.

And Sacre Coeur off in the distance.