Paris Highlights

So, in case you were wondering, I headed to Paris this past weekend to visit and stay with Sam and to attend the K&K picnic. I got in Fri night and since the artist was working, I had invited myself, I mean, been invited to Kyliemac's very spacious chambre de bonne with Vivi. We chatted about how "cute" children are and who else in Buffy that K-mac could write her next paper on. Sam finally finished around 23h and I met up with her and she showed me her apt with the fabulous view of the tour Eiffel. We watched a bit of Jay Leno(yay!), I squeezed my a$$ into a French-sized sleeping bag(umm, is that like a fun-sized bag of candy?) and we hit the hay.

On Saturday, we rolled out of the appart around 11 and headed into the city to grab a fallafel and by grab I mean wait approximately 5 hours. Then, we headed quickly over to the Catacombs which neither of us had ever seen before. We got there right around when it opened for the afternoon and waited for another 5 hours(ok, that might be a sliiiight exaggeration) and I'm pretty sure a girl I went to high school with walked by. France is the size of my foot. Anyways, we finally made it down to the Catacombs which was really eerie in the beginning as no one was around and I kept thinking, "Where are the bones? Where are the bones? Are they just going to pop out around some corner?" Luckily, there was a warning engraved above the doorway that kinda gave us a clue they were coming up(see Sam's blog.) I gotta say I felt kinda bad for all the peepz that ended up in the Catacombs all piled ontop of each other and some even had their skulls stolen and probably mounted on someone's wall or something. As bad as I felt for them, though, I did not appreciate the bone water that kept dripping on my head. Eww.

We left the Catacombs about an hour later and headed to Aimee's cafe, L'Oisivethe, to meet up with Karina. Aimee is incredibly adorable and so is her cafe, what an awesome dream come true! There was another blogger, Andie, who was there with her kids. She's in the midst of doing her student teaching year for CAPES, so I really feel for her with all the Anti-Americanism and Pro-Frenchness that I'm sure she's going through. We liked the cafe so much apparently that we ended up staying way too late especially since we still had to pick up goodies for the picnic. Sorry, everyone! We didn't really have any good excuse except that Karina had to pick up a liter of maple syrup, haha, and we haaaad to get some wine, bien sur. We finally made it to the tippy top of the Ile de la Cite and stumbled upon all the familiar, yet new faces. Unfortunately, there wasn't really much plant life to hide behind, so I was forced to talk to people minus a certain Frog who was at the other end of the blanket(the intern competition is still going strong!) I did get to talk to The Late Bloomer, however, for a bit who was adorably clad in a cute red number showing her little baby bump and I was happy to meet because she also writes novels on her blog and in comments just like, umm, someone else we know...

We chowed down on St Moret with Ritz crackers, hummus and bread, Rice Pringles, Mint Slice, Tim Tams(!!!), wine and some other stuff(including cough syrup...or that was maybe just me.) That night, we headed out to the Marais to a few bars. Well, we intended to stay at just one, but kyliemac is very very allergic to smoke, so a few of us went inside another bar where it was smoke-free. I finally got to talk to Katia that night and (attempt to) do my imitation of an Australian accent. Yikes. We met a Welsh guy who had just bought an appart with his bf right near to where we were who claimed that all of the famous Welsh people were related to him. I totally believed him...ish. All in all a fun night with some fun people.

Sunday, I was only there until about 15h and plans to hit up Breakfast in America were quickly squashed when people...ahem...slept in a bit. So, a few of us headed to Starbucks to get bagels and coffee drinks for 9 euros. That hurt the purse strings a bit, but it was def worth it. Next time, I'll have to do B.I.A. for sure, but at least I got my Starbucks fix for now. So, voila, that was my "little" summary of my weekend in Paree. Be back soonish, hopefully with news on what the heck I'm doing with my life. Ya know, just minorly stressful stuff. A+