After the long day yesterday we went shopping again. The Tati that we'd seen outside the metro windows seemed a lot bigger so we aimed for it. Boy is Paris different around the Barbès area where Tati is. As soon as we get out of the Barbès - Rochechouart metro station we're bombarded by middle eastern and African people wanting to sell us sunglasses and corn grilled in a shopping cart. It felt as if I'd been transported back to Turkey again.There's an Arab market here on certain days of the week and about 5 blocks north there's an African market too.
The Tati here spans about 3 buildings on 3 floors so it's quite large. The strange thing is that it looks like they took over a bunch of smaller shops because you'd actually have to go out the door to the sidewalk to get to the door to the next section. Each section had cash registers so you could pay before you leave but still it was quite odd. Not knowing what size I wore I took some large and extra large shirts and the largest pair of jeans into a dressing room and attempted to get them on. I gave up on all of them. I can't fit into an XL shirt in France! I did however find two XXL shirts that fit me tightly. I pulled a "woman" and bought a bunch of XL shirts because I liked them, they were cheep and I have no intentions of weighing as much as I do for the rest of my life. Women do this all the time and it doesn't make sense and here I go and do the same thing. I will fit my XL clothes!
From Tati we left and walked to the Les Halles area again to pay for our pans. Walking this is about 3.2km or 40 minutes. We (I) wanted to walk so we could go by Passage Brady which is a street with nothing but Indian stuff on it. I also wanted to see new territory. We got to E. Dehillerin about 10 minutes before it closed and bought the pans. The day before we leave we'll come back and get them.
One of the coolest market streets (if a little busy) is Rue Monteguil that empties out near Les Halles so we strolled down it and stopped at the two cherubs for Gelato. I miss Gelato. It's pretty good in Paris but about twice the price as in Italy.
We did more shopping (read that as Natalya did) and ended up finding little music boxes that played Le Vie en Rose which is so quitisentialy French. I bought one for my friend Sherri back home.
Dinner was provided by some Tibetans and wasn't bad although I wasn't sure what to order and we're still not sure what we did get. I do know that I ordered steamed bread which was strange in that they cook the dough by steaming it so it comes out tasting like gooey wet bread dough. Overall I wouldn't go out of my way for Tibetan food but it's no less apealing than most Chinese food. I do think the lady that waited on us was very attractive though and of course didn't look Chinese at all.