February 17, 2009: Walking, Talking and Shopping

I got up this morning at 8:00 and enjoyed a great breakfast with Corrie. We talked about all the family connections and reasons that I should make a trip down to South Africa some time. Eric and Kate got up at 10:30. After a shower and breakfast we were ready to head out at noon. This delay is my secret reason that I wisely chose 6:00 departures whenever possible, hahahahahahhaha.

Anyways, after we left we picked up a bagette at a bakery recommended to us by Alec and picked up some brie, spiced ham, wine and chocolate at the nearby grocery store. The first objective of the day was to get Kate’s brother and dad a pin from the Hard Rock Café. Two metros brought us there and Kate got her sought after pin. We then decided that it was lunchtime and ate a picnic lunch on the stairs of the national opera house overlooking the Boulevard de Capucines. The brie is better in France.

Despite me being morally against the concept of shopping for clothes, I shut my mouth and slapped on a smile for the betterment of the group as we headed to Lafayette, a major shopping area in France, to check out some clothes. Eric and I picked up some 8 Euro T-shirts, the cheapest items in the store and we headed out, to do more shopping. We checked out the cheaper stores outside Les Halles; I was psychologically crippled with all the shopping by this point but they decided on one more shopping mall to check out. I did need to go buy some stamps at the post office in the mall so all was not lost.

We took the nearby metro back to Corrie’s house and enjoyed a fantastic lasagna meal that could not be beat before I distributed some hugs and thank yous before I headed to bed in preparation for the inevitable 4:00 wake up time.