Sunday, May 23, 2010

I ♥ Paris (2)...

Champs-Élysées, a name that few of us pronounced correctly, unless of course if you speak French :) It is pronounce as "shahn-zay-lee-ZAY".

Wikipedia has this to say about this famous 2 Km avenue in Paris:

"The Avenue des Champs-Élysées (French pronunciation: [avəny de ʃɑ̃zelize] ( listen)) is a prestigious avenue in Paris, France. With its cinemas, cafés, luxury specialty shops and clipped horse-chestnut trees, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets in the world, and with rents as high as €1.1 million (USD1.5 million) annually per 1,100 square feet (92.9 square metres) of space, it remains the most expensive strip of real estate in Europe.[1][2] The name is French for Elysian Fields, the place of the blessed dead in Greek mythology. The Avenue des Champs-Élysées is known in France as La plus belle avenue du monde ("The most beautiful avenue in the world").[3] The arrival of global chain stores in recent years has slightly changed its character, and in a first effort to stem these changes, the City of Paris (which has called this trend "banalisation") decided in 2007 to ban the Swedish clothing chain H&M from opening a store on the avenue.[2] In 2008, however, American clothing chain Abercrombie & Fitch was given permission to open a store."