Mini Blog: A day to flâner

Daniel and I took advantage of a day on call with no calls to flâner in the Marais and go shopping at Les Halles today. He is looking for some specific things (a suit; shorts with zipper pockets). I am looking for things that are nice to wear and bien soldé.  He was also looking for a cooked breakfast so we went, inevitably, to Breakfast in America. I was not in a hurry to go back--as I've said, I do not go to Paris to eat American food. But he was THRILLED.

(Granted, in this pic he looks more demented than thrilled.)

I've realized that BIA makes me very depaysée. Look around the restaurant, I'm in the U.S. Look out at the street, I'm in Paris. And I cannot figure out what language to speak. 

But the coffee was really good.

On our shopping round we discovered Uniqlo, a store I'd have been better off not knowing about. Something about Uniqlo ticks all my boxes. We also went into the Swatch store where they polished the crystal of his watch to take a scratch out for the princely sum of 0€. We went by the Musée Carnavalet and peeped into the garden; we passed by L'As du Fallafel before the line had started to form. (Unfortunately that was right after BIA, so no falafel for me today.) We tried on clothes and heard many iterations of "So, you are from Québec, right?"

More of the same at Les Halles, a mall that is very comprehensive but also kind of stuffy and airless because it's underground. By midafternoon it was time to take a break for a drink and a snack so we passed through a small pedestrian market and fetched up at a café called Etienne Marcel. Outside it looks like a traditional café but the inside looks like late-series Mad Men with primary colors and molded plastic furniture. It was nice to relax in a quiet place with comfortable seats for a while!

Finally on our way out, I talked Daniel into stopping into St. Eustache, built in the 16th and 17th centuries and then restored in the early 19th after the Revolution:

Chapel of the Virgin

The altar

The organ has 8,000 pipes and is supposed to be the largest in France!

Here is what it sounds like.

The organ keyboard is right out where you can see it.

To cap off this excellent day we had dinner with Dr. Kirk and his wife Betsy at Rouge Pomme, which is becoming our go-to place for dinner/dessert/coffee/a drink. I always get a galette du sarrasin for dinner there but the Kirks both had tartines that looked amazing. Then we bought chocolates at Leonidas for dessert. Say what you want to about Paris but the food is hard to beat. So are the cathedrals and the shopping.

Tomorrow, Vicki and Robert and their kids come over from London. We are going to the Louvre tomorrow night. And on Saturday I am going to see Alvin Ailey at Théatre du Châtelet. It's gonna be an excellent weekend!