What do you do in Paris when it's 35°?  Go shopping, of course!  I've never done that before on a cycling trip but today it seemed appropriate.  The air conditioning in the shops was also a consideration.  Since the shops don’t open until 10 and I knew my room would be hot later, I packed as much as I could in the morning to be ready for an early departure tomorrow.

Thinking that the Tour starts in just over a week, I'd searched online to see where TdF merchandise might be available.  Surprisingly, nowhere in Paris according to the TdF website!  Online ordering only…  Various forums mentioned trying Le Coq Sportif shops or bike shops so I decided to go by one of those.  I must have been using the wrong search terms, because Paris doesn't seem to have any real bike shops!

I started with the Le Coq Sportif “flagship store” since I had to start somewhere.  I took transit to the Les Halles Metro station which turned out to be connected to a big air-conditioned shopping mall.  Info filed for later, just in case, I went out into the streets and found myself across from Église St-Eustace.  Another cool place to spend some time later.

The area was well-suited to my purpose for today, with lots of small, apparently independent, and air-conditioned (!) boutiques.  I had a nice lunch salad in a little Italian place for a surprisingly inexpensive price considering I was in Paris.

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Later I went over to the Latin Quarter to check out Au Vieux Campeur, a big sports store that advertises itself as a “village de 30 boutiques pour toutes vos activités de plein air.”  I didn’t see anything that wasn’t available at home … except stylish particle masks.  It was really too hot at this point and despite my inexpensive lunch, cold drinks were still quite expensive, so I headed back to Le Coq Sportif to get a t-shirt for Al and then it was time to return to the hostel.  The hostel bar offered 50 cl of draft beer including “supplement Picon” for less than 5€ so, for the second time of this trip, I sat for a while with a large beer.  Dinner was at a Vietnamese place a few blocks away.