Paris Day 6—Sept. 12

Paris Day 6—Sept. 12

I decided to spend the day shopping since I hadn’t done much of that when I was with John (he hates shopping). My first stop was Bon Marche, one of the world’s oldest department stores. For the Chicago folks, it’s sort of like Marshall Field’s, only without the inexpensive things. I saw underwear priced at over 100 euros and 300 euro shirts. However, the most interesting thing I saw was in the Marc Jacobs section of the store. Apparently, there is going to be a Marc Jacobs show there sometime soon. So, in the store windows, it says “I Love New York” in English. In the Marc Jacobs section, there was a display of mugs that say “I [heart] NY” and next to them, boxes of oreos and jars of fluff. Yes, fluff (marshmallow cream)! I almost started laughing. It’s funny what Europeans think are staples of American culture. The oreos are right on track, but I would’ve picked peanut butter after that. But, I think they were going for a red, white, and blue theme, and peanut butter wouldn’t have fit in with that very well.

On the top floor, there is a crafts section with yarn and cross-stitch supplies! How cool is that? If only Marshall Field’s had the same thing. Maybe I should write them a letter…. Anyway, the yarn selection was limited in terms of brand names—they only had 5—but of those brands, they had just about every type of yarn in every color that brand offers. Although, there were only 4 balls of yarn displayed for each color. I assume they must have more hidden somewhere, otherwise the French only make very small garments. They also had more knitting accoutrements (needles, row counters, markers, etc) than any other store I’ve ever been too. Then, there was a huge selection of ribbons and beads, and a smaller section for cross-stitch. I had the hardest time decided what to buy! In the end, I bought one ball of novelty yarn with which to make a little scarf.

From Bon Marche, I wandered down the streets in the area. There were lots and lots of boutiques on all of the streets radiating out from Bon Marche. It's really different shopping in these little stores in France. First of all, it's incredibly rude if you do not say, "Bonjour, Madame/Monsieur," when you walk in. Second, these stores are tiny. They might only be about 10 feet wide. Seriously. Consequently, they may only sell one brand of a certain thing, but they will have every incarnation of that product in the store. This is the traditional way to shop in Europe. Not everyone still shops this way; there are more and more American-type stores around everyday. Anyway, I was on a mission looking for a yarn store. I found the one I had seen on the internet and it was almost exactly the same as the one in Bon Marche, but with a smaller selection of yarns. They actually just had their own line of yarns. They had lots of colors, and different kinds of fibers, but I was getting tired and I was having a hard time converting the numbers they were giving me so that I could figure out how thick the yarn was, and nobody spoke English, so I decided to head back to Orsay.

Back at the hotel, I took advantage of the enormous bathtub we had to use this bath fizzy thing that I found in one of the shops. Basically, it acts like Alka Seltzer when you put it into water, but instead of medicine, you get nice smelling oils. It was kind of cool. By the time I was done with my bath, John was back from his first day at his conference. The talk went well! (Of course) And he had made some friends with some radio astronomers who we were going to have dinner with. Yep, just me, and a bunch of male astronomers, half of whom were old enough to be our parents, or older.

So, radio astronomers. No, they do not work as DJs on the side. They listen to radio waves coming from space. These waves can tell them about the stars and whatnot in space. Remember the movie Contact? Well, like that. Except they aren't listening for aliens. Basically they are like all of the scientists except the Jodie Foster character. Fortunately, they didn't spend the entire time talking about astronomy. Although, I'm used to that sort of thing so I've gotten pretty good at having a, "I'm totally interested in what you're saying," look on my face while thinking about other things. I reserve that for when they start talking about obscure theories. Or math. Anyway, we ate at a Chinese restaurant, which was quite good and surprisingly like American-Chinese food, which is not at all like Chinese-Chinese food.

So, that's it for Day 6. On to Chartres cathedral tomorrow.