My husband and I were talking to our good friend who's been living in Paris for the last five…read moreyears, and she told us e-commerce is less dominant there because people seem to prefer shopping in physical stores. While malls die all over America, retail still thrives in Paris. Exhibit A: Galeries Lafayette Haussmann.
I've been to this department store a number of times over the years, and I both enjoy it and fear how completely it can suck up precious vacation hours. It's a fantastic place to shop, with a ton of well curated inventory spread out across multiple floors in multiple buildings. The main building features that beautiful domed ceiling, which manages to catch me by surprise every time I walk in.
I haven't had the opportunity to shop for my own clothes here in a long time, but I've gotten some really great stuff on the children's floor, and discovered the souvenir section on my last visit, where I picked up some cool Paris Metro toy trains and magnets. We did somehow get stuck at Galeries Lafayette for over two hours and ended up skipping Notre-Dame, which might have been a better place to spend our last afternoon in Paris. But it was sale season, and my kids look super cute in their heavily discounted Petit Bateau.
Galeries Lafayette is busy and sometimes overwhelming, but it's a wonderful department store. I wish we had something like it back home. I'd much rather shop there than fall for targeted ads on Instagram.