A weekend in Paris

I spent a few days in Paris with Diane and Andrea. The aim of our trip was the "salon Marie Claire idées". We were very well prepared: our hotel was 10 minutes walk from the salon and we had prepaid our tickets online, but we didn't take into account the lack of organizations and the total inability of most French people to queue... So, although all our careful preparation, it took us 40 minutes to get inside. I also had to queue (be squeezed would be a more appropriate word) to get our tickets: One would think that with computers nowadays, it would be a piece of cake...well, they had no computers, only the listing of people who had prepaid tickets! Oh, and all that was done with the famous French kindness (for people not familiar with French kindness, you should then read: grumpiness). Although we planned to spend most of the day there, we gave up after an hour and a half and went to the center of Paris instead. The place was mobbed and it was very difficult to access anything. Overall, it was OK, but I was expecting something much better.
Before adding this post I did comment on the Marie Claire idées blog to let them know how disappointed I was (and I was not the only one who had complained!).

On Thursday evening we had a wee wandered on the "Grands Boulevards" and watched the Christmas windows of Galeries Lafayette and Le Printemps.


We also went inside the Galeries Lafayette to see the dome and the Christmas tree.

We ended up in the food part of Galeries Lafayette and it was amazing. I didn't take a lot of pictures there, I hope Diane took some and will post them soon...
More later...