Last fall, on my fourth visit to Paris, I realized that there was an important part of the city that I was completely missing. After the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and hourly stops for pain au chocolat, there is really only one thing left to do in the French capital. No, not stand in line behind oddly coiffed German tour groups at the Louvre. It's shopping.
My problem, brought on by a combination of laziness and financial incompetence, was that I only knew of one place to shop in Paris -- the Champs-Elysées. Each trip to Paris, I would start at the Häagen-Dazs Cafe, and feeling optimistic from the sugar rush provided by a large cone of dulce de leche and a few newly purchased Francoise Hardy CDs, I would stroll down the grand boulevard in a daze looking for the kind of clothes that I would see around the city -- beautifully crafted jackets and skinny trousers.
The problem is that the Champs-Elysées is designed for people like me -- schlubs who don't know any better. Ditto for the stretch of tackiness known as rue de Rivoli. As I later found out, Parisians avoid these streets like ant-infested jars of Nutella. Armed with my "Rue Etienne-Marcel," scrap of paper (a life-altering note I keep carefully tucked away between my passport and Social Security card), I located the Place des Victoires roundabout.
Holy mother of Edith Piaf, the shopping gods smile upon me at last. Surrounded by the kind of boutiques I never saw near Notre Dame, I'm hopeful that I'll no longer look like I've just stepped out of a dressing room at Monoprix, essentially the French version of Wal-Mart.
At my first stop, an Italian chain called Energie, I try on a pair of over priced, skinny jeans while a flirty sales clerk convinces me that they look "fan-taaas-tique." Needless to say, I buy them and wear them the rest of the trip. This is followed by brunch at a nearby cafe simply called Etienne Marcel. I feel like I'm dining in the middle of a 1970s modern art exhibition. This is the city I have been searching for.
