Food and La Bon Marche

2 April 2008

First thing this morning I went off to do the shopping which meant going to the fish shop and trying to explain in fractured Franglais that I wanted two nice pieces of Salmon for dinner. I must have gotten it right because I came home with the salmon! One of the joys of shopping in Paris is that while there are large grocery stores like Monoprix, there are also lovely little fromageries, charcuteries and boulangeries. We can get beautiful vegetables at any one of a number of greengrocers and, of course, we buy our bread fresh every day. Yesterday, for example, I was down at the boulangerie getting croissants au beurre at 8.00 am for our breakfast.

But today we went to one of the great department stores of Paris, Le Bon Marche. We took the bus which went through many of the best sights in Paris, including the area around the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay. The store has a remarkable food hall which takes up one whole floor on one building. It is not as sumptuous as Harrods, but the prices are much more down to earch and it is the kind of place where one does not need to mortgage one's home for a kilo of cheese or a packet of biscuits.

Nonetheless, we must confess to dissapointment. As we wandered around we saw a section labelled "Australian." Needless to say our hope rose that here we would find that national icon and absolute requirement of travellers from the antipodes; Vegemite. No, no Vegemite. Bovril, yes; Marmite, yes; mais pas de Vegemite.

While we have been travelling we have been looking for a birthday gift for Amelia who is about to turn twelve and who told us she wanted a dressing gown. The dressing gowns for adult women are beautiful and provocative and those for small children, very cute, but there is a huge gap in the market for children between about the ages of 11 and 15 years. If someone out there could come up with an imaginative line in nightwear (as well as other clothes) for this age group they might well be on a winner.

We were also looking for cards for Amelia and had some real difficulty finding any. When I was in Monoprix I was amazed to see cards labelled "retard." "How offensive" I thought. While I am certainly not a person who could be characterized as "politically correct," this did seem a bit over the top to me. A couple of seconds later, it clicked. These were cards that were "slow" in remembering birthdays (i.e. late cards). So much for the vagaries of language!

After leaving La Bon Marche, we took the bus to the Rue de Rivoli where, on an earlier visit, we had seen some very imaginative ties and I found myself getting a couple so, when we are back in Hobart, look out for the Paris ties (actually made in Italy) that I will be wearing.


In the late afternoon, while Virginia was doing her e-mail, I went for a walk around the cemetery in Montmartre. One of the most interesting graves is that of Louise Weber, better known as La Goulue and a favourite model of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.