Expensive tea and expensive clothes

Behold, the Hotel de Crillon. This is where people like Madonna stay when they come to Paris. I could never afford to eat here, but guess what I can afford.... tea! That's right, I paid 9 euros, ($12.60,) for dried leaves and hot water. It was fantastic. This went down with my friends Ross and Laura (below, us outside the Crillon.) We were so classy. My tea was called "Marie Antoinette," and it came in a china cup with a silver rim, and the tea was in a silver tea pitcher and they poured it for me and there were three different kinds of sugar. As the French say, it was "tres class." May it be noted that the server wished us "une EXCELLENT soiree." No one has ever wished me an EXCELLENT soiree before; usually it's just a BONNE soiree. Insert opening line from "The Jerk" here.

I snuck a discrete picture of the courtyard where we took our tea.

In other news, I thought this was picture-worthy. I don't know what this car did to get pulled over by THREE police officers, and I also don't really know how you get pulled over by people on roller skates.... I can just picture them skating behind you, waving, trying to get you to stop.... too bad I only arrived after the car had stopped.

Walking home with Ross after tea at the Crillon, I saw this cool door... it's got molding like a wooden door, but it's glass (you're looking inside from the street; it's not a mirror.) Will you make me one, David Graham? K thanks.

And now.... drum roll... some of Ungaro's merchandise and accompanying prices:



Believe it or not, this is from 2009's collection, not 1987's. This one will set you back 1810 euros ($2534).


You can see in the picture how transparent this dress is.


And this beauty... 1370 euros, or $1918. Not the pom poms.


1300 euros, or $1820. Yeah.


I like this trench coat, and it's in a pretty fabric:


... or $3900.


This dress is my favorite item. It looks much better on somebody than on the hanger; kind of Grecian, with the draping. Too bad it's $7250.

Actually, yesterday we had a special sale in the boutique for friends and family of people who work here... you could get anything in the spring/ summer collection (like this trench coat or dress) at 70% off. Too bad 70% off of $7250 is still not remotely in my price range.

Things have been very slow in the boutique lately; we haven't had a lot of clients. However, the aforementioned special sale caused a lot of internal drama yesterday. You see, any day of the year, employees can buy perfume at 50% off. The question was, do they get it for 70% yesterday because of the sale.... technically the email said the 70% reduction was for clothes and accessories (which is not perfume,) though it did not specify. To make a long, dramatic story very short, there was much bickering and conflict, including some yelling. I learned some interesting new words.

And this morning things got interesting with a discussion about men... to sum this one up, you had two women arguing that all men are essentially selfish (they even said that men have a " "selfish chromosome,") on one side, and a man (incidentally, gay,) who argued that if men are selfish, it is because in general their mothers did all the work at home, so they internalized that paradigm and expect it to be continue. I was in the third camp, of the position that ALL people are selfish, irrespective of gender. When I say "I was in the third camp," I mean that I was defending my position in my head, as I couldn't formulate my ideas in French fast enough to slip them in among all the other heated comments. It was a lively discussion of about an hour, during which I also learned some good phrases. To make a generalization about French debates, you can take any position as long as you can defend it with intelligent reflections and examples (and as long as you can think fast enough!) The object is to defend yourself vehemently, but take away information from the other peoples' positions and further refine your original thesis.