France offers you an enormous choice of goods, but the quintessential French purchase is clothing, especially designer fashions. If you’re on a budget, window shop at the great fashion houses to get a feel of what you want. Then head for the markets and budget shops to do your actual shopping.
Shopping In Paris
Paris is divided into quarters or arrondissements, each with its own shopping opportunities. Marais is the place for elegance, St-Germain for international fashion brands and Montmartre is dripping with romance.
Paris is of course home to the large French department stores, les grands magasins such as Galeries Lafayette and Printemps and you can spend whole days browsing them. But the sheer joy of shopping in Paris comes from visiting the galleries or passages, the 19th-century glass-roofed shopping arcades that just ooze charm and transform rainy days into shopping adventures.
Bear in mind that most stores in Paris close on Sundays which gives you the opportunity to explore one of the citys many flea markets.
Shopping In Bordeaux
Few people outside Europe realise what a shopper’s paradise Bordeaux truly is. There...