Shopping, the Seine, and Stairs

We started our day as we do every day, with the impossibly steep spiral staircase to the ground floor of our apartment building.

Three Metro stations later (more stairs) and we were at the Galleries Lafayette! It puts every other mall I've ever been to to shame. I didn't even really look at any clothes for a few floors because I was so overwhelmed. Also because the first three floors of the store were shoes ($$), cosmetics and bags ($$$), and haute haute couture ($$$$).  The whole store was on the out-of-my-price range side, but quelle surprise that all French stores have MASSIVE sales all throughout July. I mean every item in the store, and I do mean every single item, is marked down between 30% and 60%. So naturally not only all of Paris but all of Europe and Asia was shopping on Bvd. Haussman today :) And the strangest thing was that they had the clearance bins, where everything is just sort of thrown in there and you have to sort through it, for the stuff that was 60% or even 70% off, but in some of the departments the things in the bins started out at 450 euro! At SouthPark anything over $100 practically has an armed guard! It was very weird.

But with the sales and the benefit of shopping with my grandmother, I managed to put together a very cute and francais outfit from LaFayette and Au Printemps, the even more upscale store next door. Around our apartment theres alot of more reasonable stores that I will definitely be meandering through later in the week :)

After shopping we headed over towards the Seine with the intention of going to the Musee d'Orsay, but it was ridiculously hot today (Sarah ma chere you lied about the weather!!!!!) and Granny was tired so we decided to take a boat tour of the Seine. Didn't learn a whole lot that I didnt already know (I'm probably not the best test subject for educational benefit. I'm a sponge.) but it was a great way to see the sights. I got some phenomenal pictures of Notre Dame, and we got to be quite close to the Tour d'Eiffel without being attacked by storms of stampeding tourists. One thing that I did learn is that everything in Paris was built for the 1900 world fair, and that is le fact. Well everything that was built post-1500 was built for the 1900 world fair.

So all in all we had a relaxing and very enjoyable day. Tomorrow we go to Versailles! I'm already doing so much better with my French! I can pick up conversations around me, which I couldn't do at all at first because the people here speak sooooooo fast. My thinking is also much more French-oriented, and I don't have to concentrate quite so hard to understand. For example, on the boat tour today she said everything in French first and I wouldn't have even needed to hear her speak in English. But unfortunately everyone can tell that I'm American, and absolutely everyone speaks English, so even if I go up to someone with the intention of speaking French they automatically switch to English! How am I going to practice?? Haha I think I need a name tag that says, "Bonjour. S'il vous plait, ne faites pas attention a ma grandmere. Je suis americaine, mais je promis que je parle bien francais. Je veux pratiquer!" or, "Hello. Please disregard my grandmother. I'm american, but I promise that I speak French well. I want to practice!"