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kyliemac treated me to a delicious birthday lunch at El Sol y La Luna, and our friend Francine came, and we were ladies who lunched and everything was delicious. Then K and I hung out at the 47 bus stop to go to Censier-Daubenton, but it was freaking late, but that was part of the WIN of the day because K sang many songs to me - including tunes from both the English AND the French version of Once More WIth Feeling, and it was awesome, and I am dying that I didn't get it on video, but I think we're going to have a repeat. Possibly involving a slumber party!
You seriously cannot tell from these pictures how adorable this woman is and they are pretty cute pictures.
Then we gave up on the bus and took the metro, which was fun because I was too busy enjoying the extreme goofiness of us to get all wacked out by how much I do not love the subway in Paris. I was slightly late to my seminar, but not too late to sign the book and to earn a quirked eyebrow from the professor, who doesn't like me much anyway so whatever.
The seminar was deeply painful. It is two hours long, there is rarely anything in it that I didn't learn in one of the four paleography courses I've already had, and the entire lecture is read in a way that makes it easy for the students to write down every single word. Imagine that you are giving dictation of a book to people who are not writing in shorthand. How slow would you have to talk? How long would you have to pause after every three words? For two hours. For the first hour it made me sleepy. For the second hour it gave me a screaming case of the I'm so bored I'm going to scream and I might not be able to stop until the paramedics sedate me. It's a kind of hell.
And as we all know, nothing makes paradise more delicious than a quick side trip through the bowels of hell! Our next stop was Laduree, where we had amazing sweets (I had the plate of 4 mini-macarons - caramel beurre-salee, cassis-violet, chocolat noir, and pistache. Honestly, they were all pretty amazing, but the cassis-violet was so delicious that I think I experienced a kind of mild seizure. All of my other senses shut down for a second while Taste commandeered all the channels to announce: OMG YUM. I think I need more cassis (aka blackcurrant) in my life. I was a little hesitant because I've tried violet liqueur and it was soapy tasting. But backed up against the lush berry of the blackcurrant, the violet was more scent than taste, and the two merged beautifully. Really nice. Evidently Pierre Herme also makes a cassis-violet macaron that he calls "Envie" - I'll have to try it next time I'm in Saint Germain-des-Pres. And I got presents! Julia gave me a gift set from L'Occitane, all wrapped and pretty. She is the sweetest ever. SRSLY. I am moving to Moscow.
We had a moment of total hilarity when my coffee arrived and wasn't coffee. We'd wondered what "cafe blanc, saveur des aromes agrumes" etc was going to be all about - I imagined a cafe au lait in which the coffee beans had maybe been intimately acquainted with some citrus peel? But what actually came was a bunch of citrus peels in a teapot. I pulled on the bag to take a look to see if there was anything remotely coffee like - maybe untoasted coffee beans? I dunno, why the hell is my white coffee totally clear? And the way I did it cracked Julia up so bad that she ended up with tears rolling down her face while she mimicked me doing it over and over again, giggling something about l'Americaine barbare, which got me laughing, and eventually the waiter came back and I asked him why there was no coffee in my coffee. And he told me that my coffee was citrus peels. And I said isn't that normally called an infusion or a tisane? And he said yes. And I said what makes it coffee? Did you put caffeine in the water? And he's like uh NON. Then he said you know, there is dark chocolate and white chocolate which has no color. And I said yes, but they are both actually made from the cocoa plant. There is no coffee in my coffee. And then he offered to bring me some coffee and I said yes please and when I looked back at Julia she was laughing without making any noise and then we cracked up some more. We must have been nearly hysterical with relief to be out of that goddamn seminar, because we sat there and laughed about *everything* for about an hour and a half. I told her about the weird people I saw in the library yesterday (a guy whose research tic is to snap his jaw shut like a bear trap, which is actually a really cringe-inducing noise - and a lady who smelled really good, and it was driving me crazy to not be able to place her perfume, so I finally asked her what it was (yeah, don't do THAT in Paris, evidently it's a really intimate question) and she looked at me like I'd asked her what kind of bra she wore because her boobs looked great! And I just beamed at her with my big round American face and said "I like perfume!" in my Friendly Village Idiot/Foreigner Voice and she relented, smiling - and then held out her hair for me to smell. HER HAIR. Which was long. And I kind of leaned in and smelled (clearly I wasn't going to stick my nose in her actual hair) and she told me it was amber. Amber oil? Non, un parfum a l'ambre. Which went *great* with her hair, I have to say. And when I told Julia that this woman had held out her hair for me to smell she just totally fell apart again, and then when we went into Guerlain she kept spooling out her long blond hair and holding it out at me and wiggling her eyebrows and saying "C'EST DE L'AMBRE" - it was completely hilarious.
You seriously cannot tell from these pictures how adorable this woman is and they are pretty cute pictures.
Then we gave up on the bus and took the metro, which was fun because I was too busy enjoying the extreme goofiness of us to get all wacked out by how much I do not love the subway in Paris. I was slightly late to my seminar, but not too late to sign the book and to earn a quirked eyebrow from the professor, who doesn't like me much anyway so whatever.
The seminar was deeply painful. It is two hours long, there is rarely anything in it that I didn't learn in one of the four paleography courses I've already had, and the entire lecture is read in a way that makes it easy for the students to write down every single word. Imagine that you are giving dictation of a book to people who are not writing in shorthand. How slow would you have to talk? How long would you have to pause after every three words? For two hours. For the first hour it made me sleepy. For the second hour it gave me a screaming case of the I'm so bored I'm going to scream and I might not be able to stop until the paramedics sedate me. It's a kind of hell.
And as we all know, nothing makes paradise more delicious than a quick side trip through the bowels of hell! Our next stop was Laduree, where we had amazing sweets (I had the plate of 4 mini-macarons - caramel beurre-salee, cassis-violet, chocolat noir, and pistache. Honestly, they were all pretty amazing, but the cassis-violet was so delicious that I think I experienced a kind of mild seizure. All of my other senses shut down for a second while Taste commandeered all the channels to announce: OMG YUM. I think I need more cassis (aka blackcurrant) in my life. I was a little hesitant because I've tried violet liqueur and it was soapy tasting. But backed up against the lush berry of the blackcurrant, the violet was more scent than taste, and the two merged beautifully. Really nice. Evidently Pierre Herme also makes a cassis-violet macaron that he calls "Envie" - I'll have to try it next time I'm in Saint Germain-des-Pres. And I got presents! Julia gave me a gift set from L'Occitane, all wrapped and pretty. She is the sweetest ever. SRSLY. I am moving to Moscow.
We had a moment of total hilarity when my coffee arrived and wasn't coffee. We'd wondered what "cafe blanc, saveur des aromes agrumes" etc was going to be all about - I imagined a cafe au lait in which the coffee beans had maybe been intimately acquainted with some citrus peel? But what actually came was a bunch of citrus peels in a teapot. I pulled on the bag to take a look to see if there was anything remotely coffee like - maybe untoasted coffee beans? I dunno, why the hell is my white coffee totally clear? And the way I did it cracked Julia up so bad that she ended up with tears rolling down her face while she mimicked me doing it over and over again, giggling something about l'Americaine barbare, which got me laughing, and eventually the waiter came back and I asked him why there was no coffee in my coffee. And he told me that my coffee was citrus peels. And I said isn't that normally called an infusion or a tisane? And he said yes. And I said what makes it coffee? Did you put caffeine in the water? And he's like uh NON. Then he said you know, there is dark chocolate and white chocolate which has no color. And I said yes, but they are both actually made from the cocoa plant. There is no coffee in my coffee. And then he offered to bring me some coffee and I said yes please and when I looked back at Julia she was laughing without making any noise and then we cracked up some more. We must have been nearly hysterical with relief to be out of that goddamn seminar, because we sat there and laughed about *everything* for about an hour and a half. I told her about the weird people I saw in the library yesterday (a guy whose research tic is to snap his jaw shut like a bear trap, which is actually a really cringe-inducing noise - and a lady who smelled really good, and it was driving me crazy to not be able to place her perfume, so I finally asked her what it was (yeah, don't do THAT in Paris, evidently it's a really intimate question) and she looked at me like I'd asked her what kind of bra she wore because her boobs looked great! And I just beamed at her with my big round American face and said "I like perfume!" in my Friendly Village Idiot/Foreigner Voice and she relented, smiling - and then held out her hair for me to smell. HER HAIR. Which was long. And I kind of leaned in and smelled (clearly I wasn't going to stick my nose in her actual hair) and she told me it was amber. Amber oil? Non, un parfum a l'ambre. Which went *great* with her hair, I have to say. And when I told Julia that this woman had held out her hair for me to smell she just totally fell apart again, and then when we went into Guerlain she kept spooling out her long blond hair and holding it out at me and wiggling her eyebrows and saying "C'EST DE L'AMBRE" - it was completely hilarious.
So right, then we went to Guerlain. There was a freaking mob scene on the Champs-Elysees, and we thought there was some movie filming, because there was this whole thing set up on one side of the street, and we were like "the hell with this" and jazzed across illegally to go around it, and bam - there was Guerlain. We wandered around and she let me go on and on and on about various Guerlain perfumes, and their history, and their notes, and then solemnly gave her verdict on each one: "grandma", "great-aunt", or "handbag of great-great-aunt" - those were the three options. She's not wrong. Saying Guerlain smells like your grandma's grandma is totally not at all wrong. But it would be equally correct to say that it has a vintage perfume quality in the sense that those perfumes actually were formulated around the turn of the 20th century. And I like them! But I suspect Julia was not wrong in speculating that they don't do much for the sex appeal. I even tried her on Quand Vient la Pluie: no dice. Also, no samples. The saleswomen were totally not buying me as a potential customer of a 260+ Euro bottle of perfume and didn't do any kind of salespitching. Which was fine, because we could just run around the store sticking our noses in everything and I oohed and aahhed over the bee bottles, and then we came across the section with the home fragrances, and there was one called Hiver en Russie and Julie gave it a very thorough critique of how not Russian it was, much less Winter in Russia. I actually really liked it - it mostly smelled like tea and orthodox church incense. I think it would be a pleasantly contemplative scent to study or read by. But you know what? For 75 Euros I'm going to pass. I suspect that I can duplicate the scent by melting down a black tea-scented candle, adding a teaspoon or two of Comme des Garcons' Incens Avignon, and repouring the candle. Because I'm ghetto like that. Anyway, while we were upstairs in Guerlain's gorgeous atelier, Paris turned on the Christmas lights! So I got to see them come on from the second floor of the Maison Guerlain. It was one of those perfect, gorgeous, beautiful moments. We left to go back outside and Julie decided the lights were not pretty. I thought the lights were awesome, because they include these TOTALLY ridiculous ropes of lights which are just like those drippy green phosphate characters that spooled down computer screens in The Matrix! It is a Very Matrixy Christmas on the Champs-Elysees. I asked Julia if she would take the red pill or the blue pill. Julia said she preferred romantic movies with Julia Ormonde. I took lots and lots of pictures and a few came out, and also a few videos. We walked back to Georges V and got on the metro which was ridiculously overpacked with people, and separated at Concordes.
I bought some sushi around the corner and came home and took a shower, and read lots of happy birthday messages on facebook and felt loved, and ate my sushi.
Julia is leaving in two weeks and I'm fairly despondent. This Sunday we will have our last runabout, and I am treating her to dinner at an Italian restaurant (TBD - I'm reading reviews).
Julia is leaving in two weeks and I'm fairly despondent. This Sunday we will have our last runabout, and I am treating her to dinner at an Italian restaurant (TBD - I'm reading reviews).
Blurry because I was holding my camera above my head - but that round part in the distance? IS A FERRIS WHEEL. I am so on it. At some point.
This picture does a slightly better job of demonstrating the extent to which the Christmas lights on the Champs-Elysees look like they are celebrating the arrival of our new alien overlords rather than Christmas. Also, I'd like to just say that I'm kind of over white Christmas/fairy lights. They were awesome when they were all new and fresh in the 90s, but I'm kind of ready for color to come back in.
People were pretty much walking out in the middle of the street to take pictures, and then other people were walking even further out to get away from the shutterbugs, and I had to contribute to the problem, because: Arc de Triomphe thingy. Which, I have to tell you: I am so freaking grateful that there is at least one national monument left in France that they have not decided to turn blue at night. YET.
Bonus: previously promised photos actually being posted!
La Sorbonne. I climbed this staircase to get to the room which contains the lady who writes the library cards for the 3eme cycle (doctorants etc.) researchers. I loved how wide and grand the staircase was, but I don't mind telling you that I was feeling a little fatalistic about it by the time I got to the top. Rickety, yo.
I ate in this restaurant and didn't die of food poisoning. Amazingly.
As seen from my bus-stop!
Morning traffic.
GIRL YOU GOTTA WERRRRK THOSE LEGWARMERS! As seen on my bus! Those are legwarmers. Over blue socks. With open-toed black flats with giant bows on them. Candy-striped sweater. Gold lurex and black scarf. Skirt so small I could not see it but got plenty of panty shots while I attempted to get a focused picture, and those I think nobody needs to see, I nuked them. Sadly, this photo does not capture the intensity of this woman's completely day-glo makeup. Day-glo, neon = acide in French. And seriously. This lady was rockin' her own personal style to the beat of her own personal entire percussion section of the Met. And also seriously: GOOD FOR HER. Frankly, after seeing hundreds and hundreds of perfectly coiffed chic black-clad Paris bitches stomping the sidewalk runways, I could have kissed this lady for daring to be fierce. Because seriously, she was fierce. I was kind of dying to talk to her and find out what she does for a living and stuff, but I didn't want her to feel like a freakshow.
Video! In the courtyard of the Sorbonne.
Another totally twisted French advert:
This woman is holding a butcher knife and contemplating a rack of live rabbits. One of them looks at her desperately. "I am a fashion victim just like you!" "1 vest = 20 rabbits. 1 purse = 4 rabbits. TO WEAR FUR IS TO WEAR DEATH."
Guerlain was soooooo pretty.
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