In which we pretend to be high class

Saturday morning, Blaise suggested that we get out of the apartment for a bit, and see what there was to see in Paris. He bought a Navigo (monthly pass) for December because he figured he'd be doing a lot of things when his parents were here, and was eager to get his money's worth out of it. Next, we needed to figure out what to do. He suggested that since none of us had ever been inside the church at La Madeleine, that we might go there. Also in the neighborhood were two fancy food stores, Fauchon (Unfortunately the site doesn't work if you use Safari as your browser. I was able to get it to work in Firefox though.) and Hediard. Fortunately, the best access to the neighborhood was via the RER E, which meant that we didn't need to deal with the strike on the RER A.

We started by going to the church, which has rather an interesting history. It wasn't originally conceived as a church at all, but rather as a monument to the French Army. Then, it was going to be a church for a while, before someone decided that it would be a good rail terminal. It was ultimately consecrated as a church in 1842. It is now considered one of the more fashionable churches in Paris.

A few impressions:
1) The inside is big, and kind of cavernous feeling. It lacks the cozy side chapels found in many Paris cathedrals.
2) There are a half a dozen large statues along the side walls.
3) There was a very strange nativity set up along one side that included Joseph sporting a Fu Manchu mustache. I've never pictured him looking quite like that before.
4) The statues and columns all around the outside of the church were more interesting.

Next, we headed to Hediard, which sells, among other things, very fancy produce. It was here that I saw my first fresh cranberries in France. (According to Blaise's friends and various websites, they are a critical part of Christmas Eve dinner. I hadn't been able to find them before though.) A bag of Ocean Spray fresh cranberries was 15€ (about $22). I didn't buy them. They also had beautiful confits fruits (the fruit is preserved by replacing all of the natural fruit sugars with table sugar) and chocolates. Evidently they have quite a good wine selection also, but it was all more than then 5€ we'll spend, so I didn't bother to check it out.

Next, we went to Fauchon, which had two shops. The first was candies and cookies and jams and things like that. The second was cheeses and baked goods and prepared foods. And Iranian caviar. If I ever go to Iran, I'm going to go fishing, because clearly if I manage to find a fish with roe in it I'll be set for life.