Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Real Shopping

Soldes

That's your French word for the day.  It's a shopper's favorite word, and in July and January, it may well be the most commonly seen word in the French retail world.  It means "sale".  So we finally dusted off the credit card and headed to the Opera neighborhood, where are to be found Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, two of Paris's most popular high-end department stores.  Now please be forewarned: what follows is a description given by a shopping amateur.

The first target was Printemps.  It is hugely impressive from the outside, but to be frank, on the inside it's a little predictable.  After you've seen one line formed up outside a room with a name like Chanel or Dior, you've seen them all.

And did I mention "big"?  Both of these stores cover a few blocks.  Much to my surprise, we didn't see all of either of them.

Two stores down from Printemps was Galeries Lafayette, the much more interesting of the two.  First, it has a skylight to die for.

The scale is impossible to capture in this picture.  Just realize that in the view of the atrium (next photo), you can see that the skylight covers the whole thing, and there are people milling around on the ground floor level.  Most of the stained glass I've seen here is in cathedrals; I guess one could say that this one is, too, but the cathedral is a department store.



To help you find it, this is what it looked like this July; don't expect the big Soldissimes (Huge Sales) sign next month, but the red awnings seem to be standard.


We decided to have lunch at one of the many dining establishments at Lafayette, choosing a buffet that offered a salad bar and dessert buffet, among other choices.  Anita alerted me to a pecan pie, and if you've ever offered me one, you know I've never met a pecan pie I didn't like.  This one wasn't quite up to my mom's standards, but it was worth the calories.  (Please don't take this as a challenge; when I get home I expect to have some weight to lose.)






Since we were in the neighborhood, we took a look inside the Garnier Opera (I showed you a picture of the outside a few days ago).  The chandelier is worth seeing, not only for itself but also for the Chagall background.  Again, scale is hard to represent--just know that that little bauble of light weighs in at a cool seven tons.  And that means you want to be careful about your seat selection; the chandelier falling in Phantom of the Opera was based on a real event in the 19th century.


We wrapped up our day with the kind of serendipitous event that makes travel a great adventure.  As we were sipping coffee outside our neighborhood brasserie, a very elegant lady complemented Anita on her hat.  We fell into conversation for about an hour, and now we have a guided shopping date with her next week at the top shop in all of Paris, Bon Marché.   But first, a visit to Giverny tomorrow to see where Claude Monet did his best work.