Comfort Food...

...or, “The $25 Chicken”

Well, a malaise has hit.  I knew it would come sometime, but didn’t know when.  Both Diane and I woke up feeling like we need a break from Paris.  We spent the day trying to pretend we are not here.

I did NOT go to the boulangerie today.  Instead, I made toast and drank drip coffee. 

We did not do a Frommer’s walk.  Instead, we went out to La Defense, which is at the extreme end of the #1 metro line.  La Defense is Paris’ Central Business District and has a big plain indoor shopping mall filled with all the usual chain stores.

The only mistake we made at La Defense was eating French sandwiches instead of eating at MacDonalds.  We were looking for hamburgers, but couldn’t find a joint that wasn’t run by pirates.  Sandwiches were 4.50€ and cans of Coke were 1.90€.  We didn’t see the MacDonald’s until afterward.

It was all quite therapeutic.  We felt ready to return to Paris.  We stopped at Galleries Lafayette to check the set-up of Christmas decorations.  It is going quite well.

There we split.  I rode the escalators a bit and Diane went to their Home Furnishings store.  After that, I went to my beloved Bibliothèque Forney for 4 hours of reading and writing.  It is such an inspiring building.

Upon my return, Diane had bought a “Costco chicken” as per plan.  The Costco chicken was purchased from a nearby charcuterie and cost 17€ (25 #$%& dollars!) instead of the usual Costco price of $4.50.  It was good.  As a tribute to the past, we had a bottle of “Chateau Beausejour”.

After dinner, we went out to hunt down crepes.