Shopping in Paris...

This morning we were awake by 6am and wandered down our little street just after 7am to a  very busy traditional Parisian cafe for breakfast (waiters all male wearing long, starched, pure white aprons), with the French version of Manuel looking after us.  Our fabulous breakfast of freshly squeezed orange juice, soft boiled egg, toast, croissant and coffee was ordered and delivered to our table within what seemed like seconds!

Then a visit to the little general store across the road from our apartment for a few essentials (fruit, wine etc) and a long walk down Boulevard Saint-Germain to buy phone cards, metro passes and flowers before meeting our gorgeous landlord Othello for our official check-in at 11am, and heading off on the metro for the 8th arrondissement.

While taking the metro is certainly very efficient with the trains arriving every couple of minutes, we did spend a lot of time walking around the subway system, getting on the wrong trains, changing platforms, and finding the correct exit etc.  We finally popped out of the ground at Concorde, walked around the Madeleine to Place St-Augustin for lunch at a traditional bistro/cafe (sans tourists) where we each had a Croque Monsieur au Chèvre (ham and goats cheese toasted sandwich) with some of those fabulous French fries and salad, and a small bottle of muscadet during a torrential downpour (the only real rain of the day).

Then a short walk to Printemps for some serious shopping until Brian fell asleep in a comfortable leather chair in one of the millions of designer fashion sections!  Galleries Lafayette will have to wait for another day...

We arrived back at the apartment at about 4pm and decided to have a short afternoon nap before dinner.  It was almost 11pm when Brian woke me - but this is Paris.  We found a little bistro a few metres from our apartment and had a simple dinner of fabulous terrine served with some pickled beetroot and a cabbage salad, some good bread and a large bottle of sparkling water! Perfect.

It's now after 1am, our little street is completely silent, we've had a glass of wine each, Brian's finished his diary for the day and we are both completely exhausted. Time for bed.