One Day in Paris

I ask you, loyal blog readers: You have one day in Paris. What do you do?

Perhaps you ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower. You visit Notre Dame Cathedral. Or maybe take a cruise on the Seine or browse the shops on des Champs-Elysees.

But maybe (if you’re a little crazy and have a sometimes irrational love of food) you would do what I did.

I schlepped half way across the City of Light looking for a grocery store.

In my defense, it was not just any grocery store. It was the mother of all grocery stores. It was the fantasy of market-owners and market-goers everywhere. It was La Grande Epicerie.

Fuzzy map in hand, I set out from the Eiffel Tower to find it.

It was not easy going.

First and foremost, the streets in Paris don’t make any sense – at least not to me. There is no grid; it is like one big, never-ending, albeit beautiful maze. My map was almost not worth dragging around. The sun beat down on me as I walked, turning this way and that, choosing streets instinctively, as if La Grande Epicerie contained some sort of homing beacon that transmitted directions to the feet of food lovers everywhere. When I finally arrived I walked through the doors into another world and stopped in my tracks. I’m not sure I was breathing. It was awe inspiring.

Sprawled before me was an acre of beautiful and exotic food. Even from a distance I could see that it was all unique, all gourmet. My pulse quickened. Was this my idea of paradise or my worst nightmare? Was this a trap set for me? Was I destined to be consumed by this place – stuck inside, unable to leave, my previous life only a vague memory? Was this what the Eagles were talking about in Hotel California?

I grabbed a cart. It was a good, useful cart, with wheels that moved in all four directions, so that I had the ability to drive not only forward and backward, but also (handily) side to side and diagonally. I was wearing flip-flops with no grips. The floors were polished to a shining lustre.

Gripping my cart, I careened wildly around the store, skittering and sliding in whatever direction looked most interesting at any given second. Which was every direction.

Despite my decent grasp of written French, the meanings of names and descriptions on many of the labels eluded me. Everything had a mysterious air of the foreign and exotic about it.

I gaped at sugar cubes shaped like pink hearts and tiny blue and green fish. Handmade bags of pasta that looked like ribbons of confetti or little party hats, complete with multi-coloured stripes. This was not the old tri-colour pasta of my youth - this handmade pasta was striped with pinks, purples, and yellows that looked more like art than food. It was outrageous. But in a completely fantastic way. There was a cheese section so wondrous it could exist only in Paris. I saw truffles and jars with strange, cobwebby looking mushrooms suspended in their airy interiors. Boxes of rice with tiny scarlet roses mixed throughout the pearly white grains. Tins and jars of every type of pate you can imagine, piles of cakes and macaroons (a Parisian favourite) and decadent desserts in a rainbow of colours. There were more varieties of tea and coffee than I had ever seen gathered in one place, and a wine section that would have been breathtaking to even the most hard-core beer drinker.

It was like Pete’s Frootique times a million. Maybe a billion.

I found myself racing through the same aisles over and over again, gaping at the displays, unable to tear my eyes away from them. Armed with my cart, which I employed as a kind of shield, I was a menace to the other shoppers. In my own little world, I skittered this way and that, gawking. A number of times I noticed that my mouth was, quite literally, hanging open.

Paris was outside and I was in there and I didn’t seem to be able to leave. The twinge of regret I felt when I thought of this I beat violently down with the belief that I could never see Paris in a day. But I could see most of La Grande Epicerie.

I snapped out of it to some degree when I realized that I had placed a ten dollar jar of jam in my cart without batting an eye. In a moment of clarity, I forced myself to put it back. Finally, I wheeled my little collection of food to the checkout and paid an embarrassingly large sum of money for the privilege of taking these mysterious items home so I could puzzle over what they were.

Funny thing was, I didn’t even mind.

Such beautiful streets.
The Arc de Triomphe, the largest Triumphal Arch in the world. It is the hub of an enormous roundabout, with twelve major streets leading to it. I read a great description of this roundabout. It said "Like spokes on a gigantic bicycle wheel, twelve streets feed into the motorway that circles the celebrated Arc de Triomphe." It is as impressive as it sounds.

This obelisk once stood outside Luxor Temple in Egypt with a twin, where they were erected in 1300 BC. This one was sent to France as a gift from Egypt in 1833. The other still stands in Luxor.

I was actually (stupidly) surprised to find Paris was such an incredibly grand city. Everything is on such a large and impressive scale! I can't wait to go back and explore it in more detail.
The Paris Opera House.
The Louvre, with its famous glass pyramids.

Thirty-five bridges cross over the beautiful Seine.
Notre Dame de Paris.

Unfortunately, I can't remember what this building is. However, to me it looks SO much like St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia, that I just had to post a picture of St. Isaac's so everyone can see.
St. Isaac's

I stumbled across this lovely little place on my walk. What a neat idea. A chocolate florist!

Not long before I found La Grande Epicerie I stopped for some refreshments nearby. I loved sitting on the sidewalk and watching all the Parisians walk by.


La Grande Epicerie is actually the food department of the classic Paris department store, Au Bon Marche.

I really cannot wait to go back.

And you see, I didn’t spend the ENTIRE day in a grocery store. But such was my first day in Paris, a city after my own stomach. Er…. heart.