This famous Christmas song, jolly as it may sound, couldn’t have been more appropriate. The winds were howling two nights before Christmas and raining for all of our first day back in Paris. It wasn’t any better on the day before Christmas as well, ominous being the word of the day. Inasmuch as the view from the Printemps rooftop was enviable, it couldn’t make up for what nature had in mind.

While the weather outside was indeed frightful, the atmosphere inside Paris’s famous shopping haven was more than appropriate for that ultimate past time. I was again introduced to where only a few dare tread – the rarefied world of luxury.
Even if only for the packaging, the experience was on another level altogether.

Back in my poorer days, I would have kept the shopping bags in pristine condition because they looked too nice to simply throw away. Despite being the extreme exceptions, it couldn’t be helped that at the end of the day – lugging these beauties in and around the mass of humanity though the Paris train system – function had to give way to form, bumps, bruises, and all. Beauty truly is so fleeting at times.