Holiday Time of the Year 12-7-15

Today was dedicated to catching a little of the holiday spirit so we went to see the windows of the Grand Magasins; Galleries Lafayette, and Printemps.
Both stores have their street display windows decorated for the season, Galleries Lafayette is centered on Space, inspired by Star Wars no doubt and Printemps is centered on marionettes doing holiday type things.  Neither is Christmas oriented but the holiday atmosphere is definitely present.
Inside the stores are all dolled up as well, very festive.
The one building, since the stores each take up several buildings, was the Galleries Lafayette department that has their food courts, kitchen and home decorating, and a large grocery store with lots of festive delicacies.  Four floors of interesting things to look at and foods to drool over. It's interesting that the big department stores are only a little more expensive than the regular food stores on many of the same items, because I'm sure the overhead on the big stores is tremendous. Of course the markup on the luxury items will absorb a fair amount of small markups on the cheap stuff.

At Printemps, we ascended to the top floor where they have a little fast food restaurant with glassed in walls and an outdoor walkway around the roof so that one can see the skyline of Paris.  A little wine, a little water, and a shared slice of carrot cake in the sunshine was a quiet interlude before heading back to the apartment.