Saying Au Revoir! (Final France Post)

After our full day of shopping in Paris, and with only a few hours left of our vacation, Dennis suggested we finish our stay in the City of Light right where we began it - the Eiffel Tower!  Perfect suggestion!

When we got there near dusk, it was a Saturday night, and a madhouse.  People EVERYWHERE, and armed military with big guns there to enforce the peace, not that there were any problems, just lots of people.  It wasn't like this at all on Tuesday night when we came the first time. On Tuesday it felt like the tower was ours.  Now it felt more like the tourist trap I had expected.  I was so glad we weren't going up this time, because the lines were really long!  

But even with the crowds, the Eiffel Tower still held it's magic for us, because regardless of the number of people, the attraction is UP, above the din.  When you look up, the crowds disappear, and it is just you and the tower again!

See the beautiful detail in the architecture? Really lovely with the turning leaves.

My own thoughts about France are many and varied.  I LOVED it, and I felt very at home there, much more that I thought I would.  Every single person we met in France was very friendly, and the reputation they have for being rude is completely off!  They are lovely, warm people!  I was afraid that not speaking French would be a huge hindrance, but I found French pretty easy to decipher when written (but forget about it when spoken - Oh my!)  The French people were all very accommodating with speaking English when they knew it and patiently worked with us when they didn't.  But I loved how they sounded when they spoke, and i loved trying to pronounce the words in the fluid, melodic way that they did.  I felt like I could learn French easily if I tried.  I felt like I could live there and be very happy there.  Gertrude Stein said, "America is my country, but Paris is my hometown."  I know just what she means!

Since I've been home, so many people have asked me what my favorite part of the trip was.  That is such a hard question.  I'll think of one thing that was wonderful and think that must be it, then think of another thing, and think that must be it.  But in the end, I had no favorite part.  What I do have, though are favorite themes running through my head.  Here are just a few of my favorites:  Monet and art, gardens, architecture, Marie Antoinette, the royals and the revolution, churches and graveyards, beautiful markets and shops, and of course, the Eiffel Tower.  There is more, so much more, and the pictures will pop into my head, to be sure, for years to come - and I will smile each time they do.  Ahh...France!

The sun lowered on the horizon, and began to set on our vacation as well.

At the end of the day there was nothing left to do but sit on a park bench to watch the sunset - 

broken by the strong lines of the silhouette of the tower jutting into the purple and orange sky.

Then came dusk.  There were people everywhere lying on their blankets, just like the 4th of July, just waiting - waiting for the tower to light up and enjoying the lovely cool evening.

We found the perfect bench just under the tower with a clear view right to the top.  I set up tripod before we enjoyed our picnic dinner - a rotisserie chicken we had picked up on Rue Cler, goat cheese the cheese seller had selected for us at the fromagerie on the same street, and, of course, the heavenly half loaf of fresh crusty round bread from the famed Poilane bread shop we had visited earlier that day.  It was the perfect meal, if I have ever had one (rivaled only by the lunch of bread, Parmesan, prosciutto, tomatoes, plums, and olive oil that we enjoyed in the hills of Tuscany overlooking the Duomo of Florance a few years back!)

 And yes, while I am certain there were better meals to be had in some of the finest restaurants in Paris that night, I am also fairly certain that none of them could have had better ambiance or a better view!!!  

Romance was in the air!

In the end, the sun went down, the lights went up and then...

..BAM...

It was all SPARKLES in the City of Light!!!

Shopping Spree

By Saturday our museum passes and tour bus passes had expired and so we planned to use our very last day in Paris doing one thing we hadn't done the whole trip - shopping.  Besides, Saturday is also market day at the great antique market Puces Saint-Ouen.  I have heard about the Paris antique markets and was so excited to visit, and see what wonderful treasures I could find there that would fit into the extra suitcase I brought.

But as soon as we arrived it was clear that we were way out of our league.  The market is actually fifteen markets with over 3,000 stalls that went on for blocks and blocks.  It was mindbogglingly huge, and without a map we were totally lost!  It is enormous, and such conglomeration of buildings, tents, booths, and everything in between.  We would be walking by booths with some of the finest quality antiques, turn a corner, and suddenly it was only cheap t-shirts, and rock CDs - a completely different (and a bit alarming) crowd.  It was on the outskirts of town, and a very seedy neighborhood. We found our way back to the really cool stuff.

Everything was very expensive, and we realized quick that we would not be making any purchases here that day.  But pictures are free (when I could sneak them - most vendors don't want you taking pictures) and almost as fun, and take up no room in my suitcase.

Just LOOK at a tiny bit of what we saw there!

Anyone who knows me knows I have a thing for chairs!  There were some really fabulous ones here!

The chandeliers and the old bistro table, of course.  

Just look at that gorgeous chandelier!  It was huge (hmm, I wonder if it was the one from the opera house?)  And that huge garden urn, and the statue.  I loved the big metal architectural whatever-it-is around the front of the stall.

LOOK!  This is what I would have brought home if I had a the Euros!  It is an old palette!  I bet it was just like the ones Monet used.  What wonderful pieces of art originated on that?  Wouldn't that be great in my studio?  And the child dress form, and giant clock face.  How cool!  I had a really hard time walking away from this!

So sweet!

Walking around it was like the perfect garage sale I have seen in my dreams, where the there is so much cool old stuff that I don't even know where to begin.  Only this is way bigger than I have ever even dreamed, and the prices are way higher than the quarters and dimes I like to pay for the stuff in my dreams. 

Lots of scrolly metal cafe chairs.

White dresses and choir boy robes and unupholstered chairs just waiting for some toile!

Ya!  I know, huh?!?

So, so very wonderful stuff to look at and covet.

But as completely overwhelmed and lost and intimidated as I was there, I would love to go back someday (only this time with a map of the place and a few thousand Euros in my pocket, and only with my girlfriends.  (Dennis was not much fun here.)  It was fascinating to see what kind of cool stuff is out there!

But after a while we were feeling completely overwhelmed by so much to see as well as so much to pay, that we finally had to call it quits and walk away empty handed.  After all, it was our last day in Paris and we hadn't bought anything yet, and decided that before our time ran out, we better go to a place where we could actually afford something.

That place was the Paris Flower Market - another place I really wanted to visit!  It was just down the street from Notre-Dame and in the Ile de la Cite.

Not only did they sell flowers, but plants, seeds, gardening tools, and other fun French stuff, all in a light-filled covered market.

It smelled terrific in there with lots of French Lavender and Herbs de  Provence.

I about died when I saw these!  As much as I love chairs, I really, really, really LOVE printed tablecloths!!!

These were wonderful!  Just look at those bright colors.  I wanted the lemon one, but ended up buying a red one with lavender and sunflowers (both very French)!  They were not cheap, but definitely more in our price range than anything at the antiques market.

French soaps are the best anywhere, and these smelled heavenly!

This specialty shop sold orchids and carnivorous plants.  See the fly trap pouches hanging down from the plant on the bottom left.  Very interesting.  The orchids were spectacular, and smelled so sweet!

There were also green herbs and colorful vegetables for the garden.

When the sun was shining, it was beautiful!

This shop in the flower market sold flowers outside, and fun Frenchy French trinkets inside.

Ooh-la-la!

We loved the bright colors and graphics of old labels and posters.

A treat for the senses!

It was so wonderful to be in the middle of the city, and be surrounded by green and flowers!

I'm not sure what the purpose of this was, but I thought it was beautiful.

All the seeds seemed to be sorted by color - a rainbow of possibilities!  

Walking through this shop, with all the bird houses and feeders overhead was so fun!  I brought home one of the round birch one's with the thatched roof.  I had to have it because it reminded me of the French countryside.

I loved these big hanging clusters of braided birdhouses!

Pots and planters stacked among the flowers.

The flower market was just so charming and inviting!

It made me want a French garden.

I love the structure of the old covered market!

It was wonderful to walk through the flower market with so much to see.  It was so relaxing and different from the rest of the pace of Paris - a little oasis of green in the very heart of the city!

On our list of shops and markets to see was the bread store that Nathan's French teacher insisted we visit on our trip, so we set off to find it.  We got to the general area on the left bank and found parking under the Saint Sulpice church - made famous in the DaVinci Code - where the albino expects to find the holy grail by smashing through the floor with a huge candlestick.  Well, we couldn't help but peek inside.  Very different from the gothic churches we have been seeing with it's Romanesque pillars, curved arches, and lots of light.

The showpiece of the church was the magnificent organ.  There were posters advertising wonderful organ concerts.

The church was surrounded by scaffolding so we didn't get a good look at the outside, but here is the fountain that was out in front.

We started on our walk searching for the tiny bread shop on an obscure street.  What fun in was to marvel at the architecture!

A cute little cottage tucked in between two larger buildings.

This home was stately.

Great old door.  I want to go inside!


This corner cafe was spilling over the top with flowers.  Love it.

And you could tell by the cars, that we were in  a nicer part of town.

I just love that attic!

This made us look twice.  Wow, talk about cramped living quarters!

These pretty press boxes were all over town.  They displayed movie posters and such.  I just loved the scalloped and domed tops.  Everything is fancied up in Paris!  

I think it is interesting how all the cafe seats face the street.  Perfect for people watching.  See that man and woman running into each other at the stoplight? Oops!

I love details, and wanted to remember all of the pretty details that I just loved about Paris.

Looking into a quiet courtyard.

Fabulous!

But more fun than looking up at the architecture, was looking in the windows of the shops!

Dad had to check out the knives in the Victornox Swiss Army knife shop.

We soon discovered that the only affordable shopping in Paris was window shopping - and luckily we could afford that.  

A chocolate colored chocolaterie!  Yum!

The walls inside are lined with chocolate molds.  How charming!

I thought this was another chocolate shop, but it was a children's boutique.

Behind this pretty blue store front were a variety of embroidered linens and pretty bric-a-brac.


An engraver displays his handiwork.

We were drawn into this store by the bright colors and the crowd of customers, and once we were there, we couldn't leave.  It was so fun!  Everything in the store was a practical, everyday item, that had been transformed into something purely magical and fun!  Hair brushes, pencil sharpeners, soap dispensers, all cleverly made into fun objects of usable art.  Dust brooms that looked like ballroom dancers, staple removers that were crocodiles, and magnetic paper clip holders that looked like little birds, with the paperclips being the wings and tail.

My favorite were the pie servers, top right, that looked like dogs.  I really wanted the fabulous Eiffel Tower cheese grater hanging in the window, but Dennis poopooed the idea.  I'm so glad my parents picked up one though!

It was a fun, fun store, and I was happy to find it online at www.pylones-usa.com.  Take a second to check out the delightful colorful and clever products.  The perfect place to find a fun gift for someone!

Tre chic door knockers!

This sparkling shop also captured my attention.

The black and white home decor was so pretty.

And this fabric shop! Wow!

Stacks and stacks of pretty fabrics!  Stripes, florals, and of course, TOILES!

So colorful and fun!

Another chocolate shop.  Parisians love their chocolate.  Who can blame them?  Their chocolate was delectable.

Another pretty linen shop.
We happened upon the Grand Epicerie of Paris - Au Bon Marche, a huge department store with the entire ground floor being a gourmet food shop!  It was enormous, and had EVERYTHING!  

The Grand Epicure was a delight to walk through.  It had an immense collection of food items from France all all over the world.  We sampled some lemon curd that left my mouth absolutely watering!

Everything was so beautiful!  The pastries looked like worked of edible art.  

We kept being drawn back to the pastry counter just to drool over the sweet confections.

Mini eclairs and petit-fors.

Fruited tarts, and who knows what else.  They all look wonderful!  How would one ever choose just one treat?

The vegetables were plump, crisp, colorful, and beautifully displayed.

And the fruit just begged to be plucked and eaten right from the fruit stand.

I loved how the bread was displayed on the open shelves.  It all smelled so wonderful!

A display had the funnest pasta I have ever seen!  Little rainbow hats, and black and white striped fettucini!  We really enjoyed our stroll through the premier gourmet food store in Paris, the birthplace of gourmet food.  Bon Apetit!

Around another corner this flower shop just stopped me in my tracks!  So very fabulous!

Just look at those rose petals on the ground, and the peeling old cafe tables, and the ROSES!

We finally found it!  Poilane, the bread store that Nathan had begged us to visit.

What a delightful place!  Poilane is  celebrated for their round whole-grain sourdough loaves , and proudly boast that they have never made a baguette.

The loaves are huge.  The dough is made from nothing but stone ground flour, water, sea salt, and slow rising natural yeast then baked downstairs in huge wood-fired ovens, and brought fresh upstairs to the tiny shop.  The crust is thick and hard, and the inside is soft and delicious!

They also sell little round scalloped thin tea cookies called punitions or punishments.  We couldn't help but bring back a big bag of punishments to the boys, who probably deserved them.

The unwrapped loaves were lined up on both walls.  They are marked with their trademark "P" for Poilane.  You don't have to buy a whole loaf.  The bread is sold by weight.  You tell the lady how much you want, and she grabs a loaf off the shelf,  slices off a chunk, and weighs it.  Dad got us half a loaf for later, and we bought an entire round loaf to bring home to the boys.  It was heavy!  It must have weighed 5 lbs!  Good thing there was room in the suitcase.

See how tiny the shop is!  And how crowded!  I read somewhere that this one shop make 20% of all the bread in Paris!  Wow, they really are popular!   

And notice the half loaf of bread on the shelf, waiting for the next customer who can't use a whole loaf.

The bread was so beautiful!  I just love bread!  And Dad who just loves baking bread was fascinated by it all.

Poilaine has a fun website (in English) and they ship.  Check it out at www.poilane.fr.

What a treat!  We were glad Nathan sent us on a wild goose chase to find this place.  Not only was it a real treasure, but the hunt through the fabulous shopping streets was equally as fun!

Another fun, flowery canopied cafe.

Parisian Ring Toss.  Yep, that's a bicycle tire up there.

Fancy, fancy!

This door would look terrific on my house, don't you think?

Mom was thrilled to find her initials on an old building.  We don't know what they stood for.   Zola is a French name, and the French people loved that her name was Zola!

It was getting late on our last day in France, and the shops were starting to close.

Our final stop in Paris was Rue Cler, a busy pedestrian street in an upscale residential neighborhood where we could get a good sense of the everyday life of Parisians in their traditional neighborhood.  It is lined with all the fresh food shops that one would need for daily food shopping.

The vegetable shop had a fresh and beautiful selection of even out of season produce.  By law they have to display the country of origin, and most came from France.

The Fromagerie, or cheese shop was a wonder to behold!  So many cheeses in every shape, size and texture!   Semi circles, sphere, wedges, and even pyramids.  The shapes denote the region of origin.  Pyramids are from the Loire Valley.  With so many choices, how does one even begin to choose?

We asked the vendor in his white lab coat for a suggestion of the perfect cheese to eat with our bread, and he selected a small white cylinder of goat cheese, not too strong, not too mild.  He was very nice, and delighted when we showed him that his shop was features in our Rick Steve's Paris guide.  He read it in English, and it made his day!

Across the street was the Poissonerie, or fish shop.  We went inside and discovered that there was no fishy smell at all.  It was very clean, and the selection of seafood laid out beautifully on the ice was terrific.

There were several flower shops.  I think the French love flowers as much as they love bread and chocolate (I must be French!)  We saw many Parisians heading home with bunches of flowers to brighten their apartments.

Check out the hams hanging in the window of this charcuterie, a deli-type shop.

In an small epicerie (fine food shop) we bought a wooden rake tool for making genuine crepes for only 2 Euros.

We were sucked into the boulangerie where the pretty pastries called out to us.  We knew they must taste as good as they looked by the line at the counter.  Mom and I both picked out some green pistachio eclairs and tiny tarts. We picked Dennis up something that resembled an apple cream cheese danish.  We don't know what it was, but it look delicious.  I just loved how they packaged up our heavenly morsels for us in the little pyramid package with a ribbon handle.  Too pretty to eat!

More flowers, always more flowers!  

Our trip began and ended with flowers, and we saw lots of flowers and gardens on the whole trip!  All of them were wonderful!

That evening, on our drive back to the hotel we made one very last stop at the big grocery store by our hotel.  It was located inside a big modern shopping mall next to Disneyland.  (it was strange to be walking a grocery cart down a shopping mall.)  We shopped there several time on our trip, since we did most of our own cooking.  It is fun visiting a foreign grocery store.  Of course they had huge selections of breads (they sold baguettes in lots of 5 and 10),butcher meats, deli meats, cheeses and vegetables. The milk in France was amazingly good!  Even the grocery store pastries were better than anything I've tried in the US.  Once we bought a sampler pack of different pastries.  They were all amazing!

The funniest thing in the whole store was the international foods aisle.  There was a large rack for each of the different countries, with a large sign above with the name of the country.  On the Great Britain rack there were marmalades and other English delicacies, and on the Italian rack were Italian sauces and such.  I had to laugh when I saw that the huge United States rack was filled top to bottom only with Dr. Pepper and Oreos!  That's our culinary contribution to the world!  Oh my, I wish I had my camera!

There was a whole aisle of chocolate bars.  I was making my selection and a local shopper stopped me, "No,no.  Not that one.  This one.  The BEST!"  she smiled as she pointed out the only brand choice in her mind of great chocolate.  They are chocolate loyalists there in France.

They sold Nutella in huge jars there, and we consumed plenty of that chocolatey stuff.  Mom and I discovered, almost accidently, a white chocolate spread that was just TOO AMAZING for words.  That is what we ran back into the grocery store for that last evening, just as they were closing.  We had to stock up on more chocolate bars, Nutella, and that heavenly white stuff for our trip home.  (How I wish we had bought MORE!)

 In all of our shopping that day, we hadn't bought much, which was fine, but now I regret that we mostly window shopped, and didn't walk into more pretty shops.  As always, shopping with the hubby kind of hinders a girl. He cringed whenever it looked like I might want to walk into a pricy shop,  or kept walking and completely disappeared with the credit card.  He doesn't quite understand my need to linger, look, and get inspired even in stores that I can't afford.   I gather so much inspiration in shops like that, and spending money is not my aim.   Oh well.  Truth is, we didn't have a lot of time, and our trip was quickly coming to an end.  But I will come to Paris again... maybe a museum-hopping, boutique-shopping girls-only trip.  Wanna come?