Provence, Day 7
For the last day of our trip, we’d planned to arrive in Paris as early as possible, in the morning, so Chris can see a different side of France. But as a result of us moving base from Avignon to Arles, I thought that we’d have to take a regular long-distance train which wouldn’t get us to Paris until the afternoon. Of course the solution was simple - we’d take a train from Arles to Avignon to catch a TGV from there. I only wish that I was the one coming up with that solution 
We arrived at our hotel in front of the Gare de l’Est before noon. After lunch, we started our day of shopping. I’d wanted to start at La Samaritaine, which was centrally-located in the first arrondissement close to many tourist attractions. But unfortunately it’s closed indefinitely for renovation. So we went to the Galeries Lafayette instead. This was on a Friday afternoon and I couldn’t believe how crowded the store was. It felt like boxing day at home! Are these people all tourists? Well, judging from our observation that there was at least one salesperson who spoke Mandarin at almost every department, I’d say that’s a good guess.
While we didn’t really have a shopping list, we thought that it’d be nice if we could get our wedding bands here in Paris. We didn’t see anything that piqued our interests so we walked over to Le Printemps nearby. At this point I really didn’t think we could pick out something in such a short timeframe, as both department stores looked the same to me. Soon after, we casually walked into a Cartier store where a Japanese sales lady greeted us. She showed us the collection and even though we were quickly attracted to the Love collection, we didn’t stay for long. We got a couple of quotes and left the store to continue our search.
Eventually we did return to the store, since we didn’t see anything else that remotely
came close to our liking elsewhere. We were in the store for more than one hour, mostly trying to decide whether to get the rings in white gold or platinum. Or rather, to get them in white gold or not, since they didn’t have the platinum in our sizes. The sales lady, who’s been living in Paris for 10 years, was very patient and helpful. With a little help from her we finally decided to get them. It was now close to 6pm so we hurried out the department store to search for a post office to mail home the packaging. Then we went back to finish up our shopping, applied for our VAT refund and headed for Place de la Concorde, where we rode the ferris wheel before finishing our day with a Japaneses dinner.
So, although this was my 3rd time in Paris, it was very much a completely different experience for me. We told ourselves that we’d come back to Provence to celebrate our 10-yr anniversary. Since we completely missed the lavender and truffles season this time, I can totally see ourselves coming back to catch Provence at a different time of the year. Au revoir!
