Day 50: The Sorbonne and Pants

My target area for today was in the south part of Paris, around the Sorbonne. The reason for this area is because it contains the largest (as far as I can confirm) comicbook store in Paris, and is the location of Au Vieux Campeur which my sister had directed me too as a possible source of the elusive pants I've been hunting for. It is also the area of a few other neat things (like the Sorbonne itself) so I figured it would be a fun day out.

First was the comic shop, which was actually two shops across an intersection from each other. One of them was entirely French comics, and I was incredibly tempted to buy one of the rare paperback volumes by my favourite writer and one of my favourite artists, but eventually talked myself out of it. The other one was more diverse, containing models/figurines, english comics, and french translations of english comics. It's collection of resin statues was particularily impressive, as was it's diverse selection of Harry Potter wands.

Next, it was just a short walk down the street to Au Vieux Campeur. Wait, it's over there too? And there??? It turns out Au Vieux Campeur isn't so much a store and like 12 stores with identical signs spread over 3 blocks. Not all together, but with random little cafes and other things between them. One of the shops was just dedicated to maps, and another to rope and pitons, but unforunately multiple had pants, so my search wasn't over just yet. After comparing pants in a few shops and walking back and forth between them I finally settled on the perfect pair of pants. Unfortunately the perfect pair of pants was like 200 euros, and I didn't want to spend that much, so I settled on the almost-perfect pair of pants that was only 50 euros. (Thanks again Jessica, your advice on this saved me a lot of time and effort). No pictures yet, but I plan to put them to work in Switzerland, so hopefully I'll get a picture there.

In general, there were a lot of really cool shops in the area. I imagine that a lot of it had to do with catering to a community of young academics, when I myself am somewhat of a young academic. There were bookshops everywhere, board game stores, more comic shops and lots of small independent clothing stores.

I also stopped by the Pantheon, which is now used for French to stash famous dead folk they are fond of, before heading to the Luxembourg park/gardens. The gardens were a pretty cool hang out with lots of people sunbathing and playing tennis. It also contained some intense petanque matches that evoked some childhood nostalgia.

I planned for that to be it for the day, but while hanging out at the hostel in the evening we met a newcomer who is only in Paris for two days and was nervous about heading out at night herself, so two of us took her out on a whirlwind night tour of a few of Paris' most famous sights before getting back just ahead of the metro closing. This also allowed me to see the Eiffel Tower up close at night for the first time, and to see its sparkle show that I somehow missed before.