Paris: International Shopping Coffee Break Destination

Listen up all you cosmopolitan art farts: the city of Paris has a shopping plan for you.

"Artistic tourists and other adventurous creators," are the beneficiaries of a new creative circuit promising "alternative places, inventive concept stores, designer fashion workshops, old-time hangouts, fair trade stores...a subtle combination of pop culture and artistic expression."

Sounds good, right?

Upon closer examination, however, the plan begins to look a little troubling. The circuit, part of the Soldes By Paris stunt, is not so much a shopping agenda as a death march of twenty-two cups.

Beverage boot camp will begin with an 8am breakfast and continue with a coffee break at 10. Lunch is proposed at 11, an hour when not a single restaurant is actually serving. If you can eat and gulp down your after-lunch coffee quickly, you'll have at least three hours before your next coffee date. Any shopping must be finished before the three scheduled café visits between 3-7pm.

You'll be starving (you ate at 11, remember) and more than a little jittery by the time you arrive at 8pm at "Le" Spring. Beat those empty shopping bags against the glass all you like, but Daniel will not be opening up unless you booked back in October. Skip ahead to your next destination, le Divan du Monde, and hope for some peanuts set out on the bar. Or give up and stagger down the street to join the tourists at the Moulin Rouge.

The worst part about this shopping circuit, aside from the near-absence of shopping, is that the coffee being so shamelessly pimped is among the worst in the world.

More and earnest coverage of these important sales can be found on the site of every other Paris blogger.