Texans Take Paris: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!!

Bonjour!
It's Fall, Ya'll!
For those of you from Houston, I'll explain. Fall is the season you may have heard about or seen in movies where the weather feels a little chilly, the leaves turn beautiful colors and blow off all the trees. The air feels crisp and you get excited to get your sweaters and boots on. Here in Paris, we are sporting our favorite Fashion Trifecta: the jacket, the bag and the scarf. You must wear a jacket, because it's cold. You must carry your bag because you will need to shop and French grocery stores expect you to not only bag your own groceries, but provide the bag as well. You must wear a scarf to show your fashion panache and ultra-chic-ness, if chic-ness is actually a word.
For my West Texas peeps, there is no blowing dirt here, only leaves. And, when you are outside walking, you don't need feel the need to immediately clean the dirt out of your ears or braided hair, like we always did back in my days as a high school twirler and trackster. Paris has no "brown-outs" like West Texas, where the dust fills the air around you and makes it so dark, the street lights come on in the middle of the day. Oh no, my friends, the fall of Paris, is the fall of which movies are made.

But I hear it's followed by winter.
And winter here is wet, cold, and gray and lasts until July. So I am a little worried since I've lived in sunny, tropical Houston for the past 13 years. Fall in Houston is like winter, spring and sometimes summer. You step out the door and your hair wilts and all your make-up slides off your face. It could be 90 degrees in November. So, I'm kinda digging the cool weather here. Check back with me in June to see if I'm still enjoying schlepping around everywhere in my rain coat and boots--I might be buying a sun lamp and rolling my eyes about the gray weather by then.
My friend Katie took me and my friend, Diana, to a discount purse store last week. It was fabulous!! (I'll take you, too, if you come to visit and want to buy a purse.) We met at Concorde, which is a great location in itself with the obelisk and Tour Eiffel in sight, along with the beautiful square where the crowds gathered to watch people get their heads chopped off. Sigh...French history, right? Amazing.
Our wonderful guide, Katie, took us all along a great route starting with one of Paris' greatest views of Concorde from the steps of L'Eglise de la Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, then to Laduree, the most famous macaroon maker in Paris; Fauchon, the chocolate maker; countless other designers' stores, ending at the purse place, tucked away in a sort of alley you might walk right by.

L'Eglise de la Sainte-Marie-Madeleine is the church where Chopin's funeral was held on October 30, 1949.

The secret purse store is a 2-story back alley kind of place--sort of like when you go to Chinatown in New York City to buy the good fakes. Except these are all real and you don't have to worry about getting arrested in a sting operation when you go behind the fake wall. They have Lancel, Longchamp, Lupo (an Italian one I had never heard of, but it was beautiful leather!) and many more including luggage, computer cases, and backpacks. It goes without saying Visa called later to alert me to "possible credit card fraud" after my appearance at the purse place.

My new purse--Gabs, an Italian leather brand. It reminded me of A-Ha's "Take On Me" video. I'm such a MTV kid.

The girls had a track meet in Amersterdam, so Paul & I took the opportunity to visit Strasbourg, which is in the Alsace region. This city is only a few miles from the German border and is know for La Route des Vin: the Wine Route. There are over 100 wineries on this 170 kilometer stretch of highway. It was gorgeous--being FALL and all, the leaves were turning and the vineyards were golden. This region has its own language, which is a combo of French & German, "Alsacian"--seemed a lot like German to me, but I don't want to insult anyone (again!) by saying that. We took a tour all day Saturday with our excellent tour guide, Benoit, who drove us to wineries and spectacular little gingerbread villages filled with yummy food and wine. I learned that "Clement" is their own Alsacian sparkling wine (only champagne comes from the "Champagne" region, even though people call other sparkling wines "champagne"--you heard it here first, so now you can be a champagne snob.) Clement reminded me of prosecco, which is Italian sparkling wine (and wonderful!) I urge you to try prosecco and also clement if you see it in the store. I'm a hick, so this was news to me. I loved clement, so we bought several bottles. I'm going to be on the lookout for it more often. It has the dryness of champagne, but less bubbles and wayyyyy cheaper. Yay!!

Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg is known as one of the most beautiful Gothic cathedrals in Europe.

Benoit shows us the stone with markings detailing the size of the weapon you were allowed to bring to the market back in the day. In Texas, it would probably be a picture of how big your gun could be.

Such a charming carousel with small children floating around to the tune of "Take This Job and Shove It!". So much for the lovely atmosphere, but the kids didn't seem to mind. I suspect this lady might have selected that song...