Friday, January 28, 2011

From Tourist to Shopper

We slept until 9 and then took a Metro ride to Galeries Lafayette downtown to shop!   Sorry Scott.  I held her off as long as I could.  Galeries Lafayette is a most interesting place.  It was filled with shoppers and gave us a bit of crowd anxiety.  There are 9 floors of shopping.  Each floor is wide open with various stores / designers but no walls.  It's like a department store layout but made up of different vendors.  The high end names like Cartier, Rolex, Tiffany, Prada, LV, Chanel are on the lower levels.  By the time you reach the top floors, you're down to silly souvenirs like flashing Eiffel Towers.  We shopped on level 5 or so and got some cute clothing that was bon marche (inexpensive).   We also got Mandy a house coat/robe and house shoes/slippers for her new home.  Wearing shoes inside is frowned upon. I knew this from growing up in Cottonport, La.  Plus, she will now be sharing a home with a family, so she needs a robe for walking about in the night or morning.

On top is a cafeteria-type dining hall and the very top is an observation deck where you can look out on all of Paris.  That was really nice.  Pictures will be posted on Mandy's FB wall soon.

The next adventure of the day was to find a Carrefour which turns out to be similar to Target or Wal Mart.  There she was able to get a pay-as-you go card for the cell phone the Cahn's loaned her.   We found the Carrefour in Boulogne (via subway) and returned to a friendly bar we had discovered there near the deRostolan's.  The bar is called Bar des Amis and became our own version of Friends or Cheers when we hung out there on Monday night before our dinner date - we didn't want to be late and had arrived in Boulogne early.  We made friends with the owner Ronnie and a restaurant owner named BouBou.  Our best times are when we spend time with locals.

We're back in the hotel with our baguette and comte cheese for dinner.  There's only so many dining experiences we can handle.  Luckily we walk and walk and walk to burn some of the calories.

And now for our lists of French likes and dislikes....

We love...

  • all the food
  • dogs in restaurants and stores
  • menu items with prices that include tax and service charge included
  • Nutella
  • wine that doesn't give you headaches
  • two kiss greetings
  • compliments
  • people who speak English
  • tiny coffee cups
  • French bread / baguettes
  • comfortable shoes
  • scarves
  • relaxed meals
  • small markets with fresh flowers and fruit on the sidewalk
  • leather gloves
  • the efficiency of the subway system
  • no expectation of tipping - 5-10% is adequate
  • King Cake - a gallette
  • art everywhere!
  • roundabouts
  • magnificent churches and cathedrals
We dislike
  • dog poop on sidewalks
  • the weakness of the dollar
  • French TV
  • rain and puddles
  • gray skies and cold weather without snow
  • loud drunk French couples leaving bars at 5 a.m. near our hotel window
  • numbering ground floors as 0 and second floor as 1

There's not a lot to dislike here.  If we think of more, I'll update.

Everything went very well with Mandy's visit to the Cahn's Thursday night.  They'll pick up her luggage here Saturday at 5:30 p.m. and then she'll show up there Sunday morning to live when I leave for the airport at 8 A.M. or so.

One more day here.  We're both getting a little sad as my final day approaches.  Oh what to do?

7 hours ahead of my dear America...
Lisa

3 comments:

  1. That sounds so wonderful, Lisa. So glad you got to enjoy this special time with Amanda.

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  2. Flashing Eiffel Towers, how cool is that? Sounds as neat as a Texas snowman snow globe. :-)

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  3. Love the updates and can't wait to hear from you live!! Sounds like Amanda is going to be just fine. It's amazing what God has in store for you.

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