le Bon Marche

The cumulative effect of so much walking and so many stairs has really left my knee and my feet in bad shape. I wished I could just sit all day yesterday, but Eva did not share that wish. So I decided we would go on a short excursion, and one we could walk to in order to avoid all of the stairs in the Metro. I decided to go to Le Bon Marche (the first ever department store).



I've walked to the store many times, but never from this apartment. It really didn't look like too bad of a walk on the map. We ended up being gone for four hours! It breaks down to one hour walking there, 1 1/2 hours shopping, 1/2 hour sitting in the nearby park and eating our lunch, and one hour to walk home. Yikes. Not exactly what I had in mind for taking it easy. But it was fun!

Evidently this year marks the 60th year of the Cannes Film Festival, and so the store's exterior windows are celebrating that fact, and they had this elaborate indoor display with theater seating, giant quotes from filmmakers on the walls, and film selections being projected.

Along a narrow shelf on one wall were little Kolo albums, one for each year of the festival, that has the names of all the winners and highlights from that year at Cannes -- along with little lamps to read them by in the darkened room. So cute!


I mostly shopped the stationery and toy departments -- I'm still looking for something for Eva's birthday, and it seems I can never get enough of stationery items. We made a brief foray into the children's clothing -- ooh la la! I saw so many unbelievable little girl's clothes. Too bad the prices were WAY out of reach.

Then we crossed the street to La Grande Epicerie. It's hard to describe the true grandeur of this enormous gourmet food store, and it was so crowded that I decided not to wrangle with my camera -- maybe next time. What an astonishing array of tantalizing choices they have! It was difficult, but I ended up choosing fresh-squeezed orange, grapefruit and raspberry juice and a sandwich of roquefort, pears, and greens on a multi-grain baguette:


Eva had a chocolate-chip madeleine and ate some of my bread:


and rode a Mickey Mouse carousel. She and a little French boy were the only riders at the time, and she chose to sit in the same truck right next to him.


Today I really was forced to take it easy. I laid on the couch this morning while Eva watched Little Einsteins on DVD. I tried to close my eyes, but every time I did she would pepper me with cries of "Mama! Mama!", so no luck. We ventured out only to buy some groceries for dinner tonight and tomorrow, and then came right back here for lunch. Eva took a nap and so did I! Delightful. The only problem is, if I don't do as much walking for awhile, I'm really going to have to stop eating pastries every day.

That would be a very hard habit to break! (although the above, blurry photo doesn't do justice to my cake, with its layers of chocolate cake, pistachio cake, chocolate mousse, and raspberry topping with gold leaf...)

**A footnote, just for you rbc girls: yesterday was pleasantly cool, and then in the evening there was a torrential downpour again. The low last night was 38 degrees! I actually had to close all the windows and turn off the fans, and right now I am wearing my velour sweatshirt and socks! Woohoo!