Le shopping

To be ensconced in Paris by accident is never a bad thing. Particularly in Summer. I found myself there for consular assistance when my passport unexpectedly went missing while in the south of France. The inconvenience of bureaucratic red tape – what the French aptly call “paperasserie” (a proliferation or plethora of paperwork) – paled into insignificance alongside the pleasure of soaking up the sights and sounds of the city of light.

Modern Parisians, twisting the dictum of Descartes, believe that “I shop, therefore I am”. Au Bon Marché, the third oldest department store in the world (after London’s Fortnum and Mason’s and New York’s Macy’s), opened its doors to the public in 1838 and is a temple dedicated to the goddess of shopping. The other landmark Parisian shopping shrine, Galeries Lafayette, is largely overrun by tourists clamouring to take home a piece of Parisian “je ne sais quoi”.

But Paris is best known, not so much for “le shopping” as for the art of “flânerie” – indiscriminate wandering along its cobbled streets and river embankments. It makes good sense, too, in times of economic austerity to indulge in guilt-free window-shopping, or what the French affectionately call “faire de la lèche vitrine” (literally “to do some window licking”).