Europe 2011: Part 6, Shopping in Paris

Time to return to my Europe series... I think this is going to be a long and recurring theme at this point. I did so much, it's going to take a while to finish blogging about it!

For this installment, we take a visit to the Au Printemps department store, beginning with the observation deck on the top of their tallest building. The department store consists of 3 entire buildings for Women, Men, and Children/Home/etc. It has numerous restaurants and sub-boutiques for more luxury brands than I even was aware existed! My friend Estelle clued me into the awesomeness of this place, and I'm very thankful to her!

The architecture of these buildings is fabulous.

Tour Eiffel in the background

Yours truly enjoying the sunshine and traveling :)

It's a long way down! Oh look... that's the metro entrance!

See... here's a closer look... Paris Metro

At the other end of the patio, here is the view

Closer up!

One thing I noticed about Paris is that they really managed to do a good job with integrating buildings, trees, traffic, and people.

The spires you see at the other end of this picture are where I was originally standing

There was even an AstroTurf lawn with deck chairs up here on top of the building! An outdoor patio seriously called for ice cream, which I had while being blinded by the sun, lol.

In case there was any doubt as to the scale of this... check out the floor plan! Those are three entire buildings!

This is the plan and list of departments for one floor in context!

Some of the buildings seen from one of the bridges

Yet another angle showing the buildings

What is a shopping trip though, without shopping? I wish I could have taken pictures of everything... it was amazing what they had. However, I did find something that I liked enough to buy on the spot. I found a bow tie from Alain Figaret. The real kind, that you actually tie yourself (not the childish clip-ons that are so often sold)! Plus, as an added benefit it was handmade in France!

Wearing the Alain Figaret bow tie recently (January 2012)

Close up of the bow tie... it has a woven pattern of dots within circles, here I have paired it with a navy blazer and ecru shirt.