Shopping in Paris
After our morning at the Louvre, we had to do one of things we had no intention of doing during our Paris holiday -- shopping for clothes. But since British Airways still could not find our luggage in the pile of baggage at Terminal 5 Heathrow, we had no choice but to head out shopping. Since we didn't want Paris high fashion, we headed to the American-style shopping mall at La Defense, which is near Janie's office in Paris. We first headed to Levi Strauss, but we don't pay $120 for jeans in the USA and there was no way we were paying 90 Euros. We were a little discouraged until J. R. stopped in a shop called Celio that was advertising a sale. He quickly found two pairs of jeans in his size (after figuring out the Imperial to Metric conversion), as did Alexander and we picked up socks and underwear as well.
Rebecca's frustration level was reaching an all-time high for someone so small, but we spied a familiar sign, "Toys R Us", pointed it out to her and told her if she could behave, she could get a doll at the store. Bribery worked wonders and she was much better the rest of the afternoon. We wandered around for a little while looking for a store where we could find clothes for the kids and found Auchan, a French department store about on par with Wal-Mart. We quickly found underwear and socks for Thomas and Rebecca and J. R. went off to find some pants and shirts while Janie wrestled with the odd European sizes, which required multiple trips to the fitting room. We found some cheap T-shirts for the guys, as well as batteries for our camera and a big blue rolling duffel to put it all in. While Janie was still trying to find some clothes that fit, J. R. found the cosmetic department and got some real shampoo, deodorant and toothpaste and toothbrushes to supplement the tiny ones British Airways had given us on-board.
Janie finally hit on the magic combination and we got in line to pay. We soon discovered two things. First, you had to bring bags to bag your stuff here. Luckily we had bought the big blue duffel. Two, when you are spending 250 Euros in a store, they want to see ID for your credit card. None of us had brought our passports with us, leaving them locked up in the hotel safe. We thought we were about to have to put everything back when J. R. remembered his Illinois driver's license was in the back pocket of his jeans, where he had stashed it after he picked up the kids from school. We guessed one good thing came out of wearing the same pants for several days.
Our Louvre breakfast was wearing off, so we headed to the food court to have some lunch. We ate at a place called "Hippopotamus". We were struggling our way through the French menu when the waitress came over to hand us English translatons. The food was okay -- typical food court fare. The other four in the party all had chocolate mousse desserts, but J. R.'s sinus infection was bugging him and he just wanted to go.
But first we had a stop at Toys R Us where Rebecca found a doll she liked and we overpaid for it. The boys wanted to get Bionicles but we pointed out the price difference and the exchange rate and they both agreed they could wait until they got home and pick them up then since they weren't even French Bionicles.
We stopped to take a few pictures of La Defense Arch and Janie pointed out her company's office building then we clunked Big Blue Rolling Duffel down the stairs to the Metro. It took a little thinking to slide it through the turnstiles, but it fit and we rolled it onto the train and then back to our hotel.
