Aiman in Paris

In front of the playground behind our apartment in La Defense.

Behind is inside Lourves Museum.

In front of University of Leornardo De Vinci.

On top of Monmarte Hill.

Always full of actions. At the playground.

At apartment's coridor.

At Disney Land waiting for father in the toilet.

Pavement in the garden behind apartment.

Holding an Eiffel Tower miniature.

In a bookshop displaying all kinds of post cards and souvenirs.

During display of light at Eiffel Tower.

At Disney Land waiting for turn.

In front of a wall advertisement at the railway station. Train will come at every three minutes.

At a garden at a road junction.

Playing hide and seek.

My burger mind you!

A lot of exclusive apartments in La Defence.

While waiting for the flight at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris.

Spring in the air

In front of a gallery in Monmartre.

Those colourful flowers at the back are just recently planted.

Garden in the making. The plants are still small.

Flower sprouting from old onions in the soil.

Near Eiffel Tower. A cheesy smile for the camera.

Wearing a jacket for motorcyclist bought in Paris. The shoulders are padded.

Monmartre has a few drawing galleries.

With a Bangladeshi that has worked in Malaysia and Indonesia before.

Galeries Lafayette

Galaries Lafayette is one of the shopping spot for the rich like the Arab Sheiks.

Aiman and my husband on the pavement taking the night view. There's a lot of stall outside.

Outside is a medieval building. Inside? A mixture of old and new.

One special thing about this junction in Lafayette is that it is the meeting of six streets instead of the usual four. Can you name another place in the world that have six streets in a junction?

Inside the Galeries Lafayette is a mixture of old and new. Ultra modern shopping complex inside a medieval building, complete with a lush dome.

On the ground floor there's a lot of make up and perfume booths. Paris is famous for its perfume.

The dome that leave me gasping the first time I saw it.

The setting is more like an opera house than a shopping complex.

My beloved husband and Aiman.

At the background you can see a lot of clothes hanging for sale.

At one of the stall outside. Selling favourite items for tourists.

Everywhere are medieval buildings that didn't portray the modern architecture inside. This is Paris - medieval outside but modern inside.

Sacré Cœur on Montmarte Hill, Paris

Montmartre is a hill 130 metres high, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank, primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit.

Along the road to the hill are a lot of shops, including souvenir shops. I find souvenir shops here are among the cheapest in France.

You have a choice of climbing the stairs or riding the Montmartrobus (electric bus of Montmartre).

Mesmerized by all the buildings on the slope of the hill.

Thank you dear husband for a trip to Paris. Anniversary present after 20 years of marriage.

Montmartre means 'mountain of the martyr'; it owes its name to the martyrdom of Saint Denis, who was decapitated on the hill around 250 AD.

Having a nice time.

The name of the building is Sacré Cœur.

La Defense, Paris

The Center of New Industries and Technologies (CNIT) was built and first used in 1958. These "first generation" skyscrapers were all very similar in appearance, limited to a height of 100 metres (330 ft). In 1966, the Nobel Tower was the first office building built in the area. In 1970 the RER line A railway was opened from La Défense to Étoile. In the early 1970s, in response to great demand, a second generation of buildings began to appear, but the economic crisis in 1973 nearly halted all construction in the area. A third generation of towers began to appear in the early 1980s. The biggest commercial centre in Europe (at the time), the Quatre Temps, was created in 1981. In 1982, the EPAD launched the Tête Défense competition to find a monument to complete the Axe historique, which eventually led to the construction of Grande Arche at the west end of the quarter. During the same period, hotels were constructed, the CNIT was restructured, and in 1992 Line 1 of the Paris Métro was extended to La Défense, which made the area readily accessible to even more of the city.

Aiman and my husband inside CNIT.

Infront of Grande Arche. The open lift is in the middle of the building going to the top. A great national design competition was launched in 1982 as the initiative of French president François Mitterrand. Danish architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen (1929–1987) and Danish engineer Erik Reitzel designed the winning entry to be a 20th century version of the Arc de Triomphe: a monument to humanity and humanitarian ideals rather than military victories. The construction of the monument began in 1985.

The Arche is almost a perfect cube (width: 108m, height: 110m, depth: 112m); it has been suggested that the structure looks like a four-dimensional hypercube (a tesseract) projected onto the three-dimensional world. It has a prestressed concrete frame covered with glass and Carrara marblefrom Italy and was built by the French civil engineering company Bouygues.

The two sides of the Arche house government offices. The roof section, exploited by Stephane Cherki, is an exhibition centre. The vertical structure visible in the photograph is the lift scaffolding. Views ofParis are to be had from the lifts taking visitors to the roof.

In Paris, we are staying in La Defense. It was transformed into a commercial area starting from 1958. In La Defense, the scenario is different. No more medieval buildings but modern skyscrapers. Technip building is one of them. My husband is currently working in Technip Paris for a short stint. The Grande Arche you can see in the middle is in vertical line with the historic Arc de Triomphe far away. A splendid town planning.

Aiman and my husband walking along the vast concrete area. There's a few artistic sculpture like the one on the left. Buildings in France are never really square. Either they are triangle or even if they are square, they are not cut at 90 degrees exactly. The edge looks like 60 degrees or something like that. The commercial buildings don't have curtain to cover its glass wall. So everything is transparent. No hanky panky business inside the office.

Aiman and my husband in front of the 'finger'. You can see the details in the sculpture with all the lines. Wonder how they mould it to the exact grid.

There a big railway station underneath all the big buildings. In Paris the trains move underground.

The 'finger' at night. A spectacular sight.

In front of 'The Dome' that housed an ultra modern shopping complex. There's even Bata Store inside selling shoes with European designs. Nice to see the familiar logo.