TacoCat’s Travels #50 (Paris): Luxury Bargain Hunting! 💸

Hey Steemit!

So if you didn't catch the last few posts, this series is about our trip to Paris way back in June 2016 when we went there for summer school! Both of us enrolled in a Luxury Management course at a college called HEC Paris. The course itself was 2 weeks long, but we booked our flight a week earlier so we could travel and explore the city.

In the last post, we finally finished up exploring Disneyland Paris! We had a really great time exploring the 2 parks (Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios) and Disney Village (and taking some of the rides)! It was a long day so there are 4 posts on that if you wanna check it out.

10 June 2016. Friday.

We slept in a little bit because we were exhausted from walking all around Disneyland the previous day. So we decided to take it easy and just walk and shop around.

It was around noon when we left after eating some breakfast. We decided to walk around the suburb where we were staying (Champigny-sur-Marne) and explore our town a little more, since we only knew the route to the train station. Turns out the town has some really cool architecture!

And murals too!

The town was ripe for us to pretend to be instagram influencers XD

It was fun just slowing down and taking a walk through a small town. Especially in a country so different compared to our own.

I think when a lot of people travel, they'll just focus on hitting the famous spots and sights, but it's nice to just see the lesser known parts of your destination country too. But of course, make sure that it's safe first.

For lunch, we checked out what special meals MacDonalds had. Looks like there was some soccer celebration going on during that time.

They had a lot of different stuff than what we have in Singapore, like chicken and bacon McWrap, which sounds really good tbh. Ultimately, we decided on a bacon burger, which was alright if I recall. The patty was a little dry though, and the bacon wasn't as crispy as I would've liked.

We stopped by the supermarket on the way to the train station and found this huuuge bag of pasta! We didn't buy it of course, but we did get some drinks to bring along with us.

Here's a better shot of the double-decker train! I still can't get over how cool it is! It's definitely more for long haul journeys though, so I doubt Singapore will ever have these. That and, our stations don't have high enough ceilings to accommodate another level anyway.

We found out about this place that had outlet shopping not too far from our station that had a huge mall too, so we decided to go check it out.

Thankfully, the mall wasn't that crowded yet, but there were quite a few tourists there as well.

We shopped hopped for a while, and I tried on this cool-looking blazer.

We also checked out some appliance store and had fun with the cameras they set up.

The mall also had this cool roof area with this dome/archway glass ceiling.

And out that exit was the gateway to the outlet shopping place!

As expected, there were a lot of tourists and shoppers here, but we could still walk comfortably. Thank goodness it's not like Harajuku and they had wide paths here.

So if you've never heard of this place before, La Vallée Village is home to more than 120 boutiques from some of the most exciting French and international designers, all offering at least 33% off previous seasons’ collections, all year round. Sitting just 40 minutes from Paris, the Village guarantees the most memorable of shopping days. Its part of The Bicester Village Shopping Collection, which unifies 11 distinctive destinations across Europe and China, each within reach of many of the world’s most important gateway cities: London, Paris, Shanghai, Milan, Dublin, Barcelona, Madrid, Brussels, Antwerp, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Munich, Frankfurt and Suzhou.

I actually went to the original Bicester Village in London when I went on a Europe tour with my family in 2015. And I can safely say that La Vallée Village is pretty much exactly the same. I think the layout might be different but I can't tell. The decor and design is definitely similar though.

My mother and her sisters had a ball of a time at Bicester Village in London, since they love to shop and get great deals. Neither Sean and I are interested in luxury goods, so we just took a walk around.

I think the concept of Bicester Village is genius though; having all these brands in one place and at discounted prices really taps into that impulse response in buyers. They'll feel they just can't miss out on the deals. Truly #fomo right there. I remember my mum practically forcing me to buy a bag in London, to which I just said sure, since she's paying.

The atmosphere of the Village is really nice though, with the neutral tones everywhere. You just feel so calm walking though it. Unless of course, you're in peak travel season and are surrounded by crazy tourists bargain-hunting.

We didn't walk out of here empty-handed though. We stopped by the Superdry store and I saw this really cool dress that I just had to try on.

I've never seen Superdry selling dresses, and this one even had pockets! It looked pretty good, so I decided to get it. It's kinda warm so I don't wear it that often, but it's kinda like my birthday dress, so I wear it at least once a year.

After we made our purchase, and took some more photos, we decided to head back to the mall.

Turns out Vans was collaborating with Nintendo on a new line of shoes! It looked pretty cool, but were way too expensive (and probably not that comfortable), so we didn't get it. The display looked really interesting though.

Geddit, it's like the shoe was in the block!

Anyway, we were hankering for a snack and came across this nice-smelling shop with waffles, so we decided to give it a try.

We couldn't find a place with free seating in the mall, so we sat outside and enjoyed our chocolate waffle.

After that we got tired of walking and decided to head home, and bought the same chicken from the rotisserie again! Since it was so delicious yesterday and we couldn't decide what to eat, we just got the same thing, and it did not disappoint!

That's all for now! Thanks for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #49 (Paris): Au Revoir Disneyland!

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