Something old, something new 1-28-16

I felt good today so we went down to Hotel Drouot today to check out some auctions for tomorrow. I found a couple interesting pieces in the online catalog so we went to look at them.  We're going to a large brocante market tomorrow in the morning and in the afternoon we may very well go back and see if they can be picked up reasonably since the auctions begin around 2:00pm.
After our little discovery trip we walked over to Chartier, the restaurant we have been going to since our very first visit to Paris.  They are open and serving continuously all day long so a late lunch or an early dinner is easy, plus the food is always good and relatively inexpensive.  Today was no exception, they immediately seated us at a table and took our orders.  Then within a couple minutes they seated another man at our table, at Chartier sharing a table is very normal.  He turned out to be quite a nice young financial manager at a company near by who needed a quick lunch before a presentation he had to do later in the afternoon.  We had a pleasant conversation about traveling and a bit about living in Paris before he had to leave.
After lunch Deb wanted to go to a food speciality store that is featured in David Lebovitz's blog now and again.  It's named G. Detou, which is a word play in French for "I have everything".  It's not a very large shop but it is crammed floor to ceiling with edible offering that range from mundane to fairly exotic.  Much of it is geared towards professional food purveyors, so specialty items related to confectionary products are prominent.  You go through
 the store and pick out items you want and take them to the two clerks at a counter and they total up the purchases, bag them and give you a paper.  You take the paper with the total over to another person behind a window and pay, then you take the receipt back to the counter and they give you your purchases.  A little antiquated but totally charming in action.  The payment window is a joke because you can walk into the room with the collector and shop at shelves situated behind her back.  
We're stocking up on goodies to bring back to the U.S., like a kilo of Herbes des Provence.  Deb was going to get two 250 gram bottles that were 2.55 euros each, but the clerk asked if she would like to buy a kilo.  He said the kilo package was 4.40 euros, so you get twice as much for around 60 centimes less, guess what we bought?
As we headed over to the bus to go home we had a brief stop at perhaps the premier cooking equipment store in Paris, E. Dehillerin.  They have been in the same place for over 100 years and stock every kind of kitchen implement a cook could possibly need.  Unfortunately they were closing in 15 minutes so we have to plan a return visit when we can do some indepth looking.