Kyndall,Russell, Joanna and I met up in Paris for New Years fun.
First stop, Boulangerie. Boulangerie can only be called such if they bake all of their own bread in-house and if the bakers have magical control over the crunchyness-to-gueyness ratio of their baguette. This place was magical, and the people were so nice!
Then we decided we needed to find something awesome to stand in front of for pictures. Paris has one or two. We stuck with just one:
I was super impressed by the tower- it's very beautiful in some weird way. I had low expectations for a giant piece of steal, which made it all the better.
At some point you may be taking too many photos:
But maybe not:
The winter-sunsets didn't fail us:
This Arc was built to celebrate the completion of the worlds most absurd street of shopping:
We escaped the crowd that was amassing and headed for the Louvre.
Paris is pretty.
Proof that I went:
This is considered Paris' most beautiful/romantic view (Pont des Arts (sp?)). Unfortunately it was very cold and all of the "love locks" were covered up, so you couldn't really see them anyways.
But we were all still happy:
This may have been around mile 5... we were hungry. Here, Russell, delusional from lack of food, attempts to blend in with Parisian style.
France joke aside, everyone we me in Paris was suppeeer friendly and not critical of our bold disregard for their language. We had Pizza with fried eggs on top and amazing cheese. A German-French family friend once told me (paraphrased and butchered), 'Napoleon said, "how can I rule a country with over 350 different types of cheese!?' ". That anecdote probably needed a segue... Nightime!:
We returned to our old friend to further establish its superiority as a photo-background.
We bought Champagne (Actual!) and waited for everyone to start counting down for the new years...
It never happened. We had gone to the more relaxed part of town and missed the epic light show. Nevertheless, we had a great time hanging out and being with the crowd of people yelling "Bon Anee"
We then went to a bar, where Russell taught Kyndall his number one dance move:
In the below snapshot, you can sense Kyndall's doubt about the effectiveness of said move:
From this point, we were only at mile 7 of 13... you can imagine what happens next. We decided to leave this bar in search of a cooler bar, in the opposite direction of home. Simultaneously, Paris decided to shut down public transit -- and to turn the thermostat down.
We had an adventure though. At one point in the night, somebody really had to go to the bathroom, which turns out to be pretty much impossible in some neighborhoods after 2am. After getting turned away from several "booked" venues, we started begging people in the street. A group of men who were smoking gave each other the old raised-eyebrow-side-eye, blinked Morse code to one another, and then pointed us to the door. We walked in.
"Scat, Cat, Rat with a french Hat!" My god we had been ushered into an underground poet societies New Years celebration! As we were waiting for someone to use the restroom, a spotlight turned on and a woman walked from her seat to bask in the fluorescent warmth. She then delivered a 3 minute poem that nearly brought me to tears (despite not understanding a single word). French is a truly beautiful language and I imagine that French poetry can be quite good. When everyone was reassembled, we were ushered out. The second we touched the sidewalk we were all laughs and thankful for the bizarre glimpse of Parisian life we got to have.
First stop, Boulangerie. Boulangerie can only be called such if they bake all of their own bread in-house and if the bakers have magical control over the crunchyness-to-gueyness ratio of their baguette. This place was magical, and the people were so nice!
Then we decided we needed to find something awesome to stand in front of for pictures. Paris has one or two. We stuck with just one:
I was super impressed by the tower- it's very beautiful in some weird way. I had low expectations for a giant piece of steal, which made it all the better.
At some point you may be taking too many photos:
But maybe not:
The winter-sunsets didn't fail us:
This Arc was built to celebrate the completion of the worlds most absurd street of shopping:
This is Kyndall's reaction to Champs-Élysées:
I made everyone look at beautiful Mercedes:
We escaped the crowd that was amassing and headed for the Louvre.
Paris is pretty.
This is considered Paris' most beautiful/romantic view (Pont des Arts (sp?)). Unfortunately it was very cold and all of the "love locks" were covered up, so you couldn't really see them anyways.
But we were all still happy:
This may have been around mile 5... we were hungry. Here, Russell, delusional from lack of food, attempts to blend in with Parisian style.
France joke aside, everyone we me in Paris was suppeeer friendly and not critical of our bold disregard for their language. We had Pizza with fried eggs on top and amazing cheese. A German-French family friend once told me (paraphrased and butchered), 'Napoleon said, "how can I rule a country with over 350 different types of cheese!?' ". That anecdote probably needed a segue... Nightime!:
We returned to our old friend to further establish its superiority as a photo-background.
We bought Champagne (Actual!) and waited for everyone to start counting down for the new years...
We then went to a bar, where Russell taught Kyndall his number one dance move:
In the below snapshot, you can sense Kyndall's doubt about the effectiveness of said move:
From this point, we were only at mile 7 of 13... you can imagine what happens next. We decided to leave this bar in search of a cooler bar, in the opposite direction of home. Simultaneously, Paris decided to shut down public transit -- and to turn the thermostat down.
We had an adventure though. At one point in the night, somebody really had to go to the bathroom, which turns out to be pretty much impossible in some neighborhoods after 2am. After getting turned away from several "booked" venues, we started begging people in the street. A group of men who were smoking gave each other the old raised-eyebrow-side-eye, blinked Morse code to one another, and then pointed us to the door. We walked in.
"Scat, Cat, Rat with a french Hat!" My god we had been ushered into an underground poet societies New Years celebration! As we were waiting for someone to use the restroom, a spotlight turned on and a woman walked from her seat to bask in the fluorescent warmth. She then delivered a 3 minute poem that nearly brought me to tears (despite not understanding a single word). French is a truly beautiful language and I imagine that French poetry can be quite good. When everyone was reassembled, we were ushered out. The second we touched the sidewalk we were all laughs and thankful for the bizarre glimpse of Parisian life we got to have.
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