London, England: Harrods

Ever touch a sports coat that was worth more than $3,000 - at least in terms of sale price?

I did. I must have been in Harrod's. 

The business bills itself as the world's leading luxury department store, and I'm in no position to argue after a visit. It's a huge store, filled with a variety of high-end goods. Even better, there's a good story attached to it. 

Charles Henry Harrod started his retail business in 1825, and moved into the grocery business a few years later. Eventually he turned the operation into something resembling a department store around 1849. That idea took off, and Harrod had a nice run of success ... until the building burned down in 1883. The store salvaged what it could, and offered credit to good customers like Oscar Wilde, Charlie Chaplin, Vivien Leigh and Sigmund Freud. The formula worked, and the facility thrived.

A walk through the store is quite an experience. There's more than a million feet of floor space in the large block of a building, with various companies (designers, mostly) taking over specific areas of their own for sales purposes. In that sense, it reminded me of Galeries Lafayette in Paris ... without the beautiful roof. There's even some food on the first floor; the desserts looked mighty good. And once you get in to Harrods, it's tough to find the exit. Maybe they want you to hang around to increase the chance of a sale. Target, it's not.

This video of the place is a little old, but you'll get the idea.