Top 10 favorite things in Paris

November 24, 2008

I promised several top 10 lists a few weeks ago, and so I thought it might be time for another one for you.

My Top 10 Favorite Things in Paris (besides my friends)

10.  The Eiffel Tower dressed in blue, sparkling at night

9.  The towers of Notre Dame and their gargoyles

8.  The view from the Pont des Arts (a bridge) towards the Ile de la Cite (the island with Notre Dame on it, even though you can't really see Notre Dame from this bridge).

7.  Listening to live music in Place des Vosges.

6.  Reading in the Tuileries garden.

5.  Walking along the Seine.

4.  Eating cheesy chicken with Samurai sauce from my local Kurdish restaurant man.

3.  All the random surprises you can find on any given day in any part of the city that make it so interesting and fun and cool.

2.  Riding public transport.

1.  The Jewish quarter and everything in it: the falafel place, BIA (the American diner), the Red Wheelbarrow (an English bookstore with an awesome adolescent lit section), tiny streets, and bagels in the bakeries!

Top 10 Thanksgiving 2008

In no particular order, and especially since I already have several other Top 10 lists up this month, I'll keep this post short. This year, I am thankful for:

10. My dear sweet friend Kelly, and all the joy she brings into my life.

9. The trip to America: New York! Princess William! Seeing the Suits! Virginia!

8. Getting to go Lanola's wedding.

7. The whole summer in Marseille. SO THANKFUL.

6. That my Mom and Meme came to visit!!!

5. The growth that came out of Marseille in me.

4. The trip to Egypt. Wowzah!

3. The fall in Paris has helped bring some healing in my relationship with Paris.

2. That I'm getting to move to Marseille very soon.

1. It hasn't happened yet--but I'm very thankful that I'm going to get to go to Morocco for Christmas!

If you'd told me six months ago that I'd be staying in France another year, I never would have believed you! I mean, I sent trunks home with my Mom! But Marseille changed alot, and now here I am, sticking around for another year. And I truly am thankful for that.

Marseille

November 15, 2008

An hour before my train for Paris would pull out of Marseille, I ducked into the flower shop across the street from my apartment and grabbed a bouquet of roses for the Chef's family.  As the florist wrapped them up for me, he asked, "Why do you look so sad?"

I was surprised.  First, because I didn't realize I looked sad.  But mainly because that is not a normal statement for a French person to make to a stranger.  Well, at least not for a Parisian to make.  It's way too personal.  I don't know if it's just Parisians who are stand-offish or all French people...but in just three short weeks, I'll get to start learning what is French and what was Parisian, as I'll be living among non-Parisians.

I told the florist that I'm sick (which is true), so I wasn't sad so much as I'm sick.  He smiled and said that I am therefore fully justified to look like I do at the moment.  (Thanks, I think?)  I told him that I was also about to catch a train back up to Paris, and I always am sad to leave Marseille, because I love it there.  We began to chat and I told him I would be moving to Marseille soon.  He complimented my French (shocking, since my French is terrible!) and welcomed me to Marseille and said, "see you soon!" as I left with my roses.

My heart was warmed as I left yesterday.  I spent a sweet two days in the south...I'd gone to my favorite hamburger restaurant, and when I walked up to the window, the workers all saw me and their faces lit up in smiles.  "Hey, bettercountry!  It's been a long time!  How long are you in town for?"  That's the kind of service that'll bring a customer back over and over (that, and the best hamburger and fries for under 4 euros a girl could ever dream of)!

I walked from my apartment all the way across town to visit with some friends.  When I walked into their restaurant and they saw me, the wife said, "I don't believe it!"  After loading me up with kisses, she and her daughter called her husband and told him to come down to see who was there.  After a nice visit over tea, I walked all the way back across town to my apartment.  

Walking...not riding the metro.  Walking in the sun.  Walking because everything is close enough that I can.

I watched the sun set from my apartment balcony as I listened to the seagulls talk to one another and the churchbells announce that the end of the day had come.  The apartment felt insanely empty...without KO or Flower there (my roommates from the summer).  But my heart was full as I left on the train last night.  When I return in three weeks, the Chef and his family will be there.  Flower will be back at the end of the year.  I can eat at the hamburger place whenever I want.  I can visit the friendly florist.  I can walk across town.  I can go to the beach.  I can soak up the sun and watch it set from my balcony.  

I don't know why...but Marseille is home to me.  And I'm ready to come home.

Top 10 Things I'm looking forward to in Marseille

November 12, 2008

I'm headed down to Marseille today (until Friday) to go visit the prefecture about my visa.  I've been making some lists of things, so I figured today was a good day to post one of them.  Here you go...the top 10 things I'm looking forward to in Marseille.

10.  Living in a smaller city.

9.  Sleeping with the windows open.

8.  Having a balcony.

7.  The graffiti.  Marseille has some awesome stuff.

6.  The local cheap eats.  Oh, I can't even tell you.  There are four different restaurants I can think of right now, where the owners know me by name.  Happiness.

5.  The Arab market.  

4.  Hills.  I love em, and Marseille has em.  Yippee!

3.  Water.  Um, who doesn't want to live on a Mediterranean coast town?

2.  SUNSHINE!!!  WARMTH!!!  (need I say more?)

1.  Friends.  (Not that I don't have friends in Paris.  I do.  I'll miss them.  I'm trying to convince them to move to Marseille too.  But I'm excited to be near my friends down there...)

to prove it even further...

November 10, 2008

I said in my last post that I live a little bit in the ghetto.  And today it felt like it again.

Cause I watched a man snort cocaine on the metro.  He didn't even try to hide it.

i live a little bit in the ghetto

November 7, 2008

(This entry is dedicated to my mom.  She tells me I should blog about all the normal little daily things that happen to me.  There are many things I don't blog because I think it would make a mom nervous.  So mom...you wanted to know!)

Paris is set up pretty much the opposite of a typical city in the US--the city is where the upper class live and the suburbs (called the banlieue) is where the immigrants and not upper class live.  There are some banlieue that are well, more ghetto than others.  I live in a less-ghetto-ish neighborhood, but I go over to the more ghetto-ish areas quite often.  I really like the people in those neighborhoods.  

Last week, several of us were hanging out in one of those more rough-around-the-edges towns.  Swimmer and I were standing near a bus station when a man approached me and asked me a question.  As I was answering it, several more of his buddies came up quickly and surrounded me.  One of them grabbed my hand, pulled me really hard towards him, and leaned in to kiss me.  Not French-kiss-me-on-the-cheek kiss me, but what-Americans-think-French-kiss-on-the-mouth-is-like kiss me.  And he had open sores on his face and mouth.  I leaned back to get my face away from his, only to discover that one of the friends who had surrounded us what right behind me so that I could not lean back.

I ducked down and then did a 1980's breaking-dancing type head/shoulder roll to wedge my way out from the two guys and yanked my arm free from Mr.Grossman's grip.  I did not think to smack the man (as Mr.Chef from this summer advised me to do after this had happened twice).  Swimmer gave me some Purell for my hands, but she didn't have much for me to clean off the hibbie-jibbies that I felt all over.

We left and found M#1 of the MMTATI's.  He used to be a cop.  We feel pretty safe when he's around.  Swimmer said she thinks he could kill a man with just his hands...but I don't think he would do it even if he could do it.  But I do think he'd get a Mr.Grossman to get away from me.

Almost immediately, some crazy man comes up to me and starts going off about the best cigars in the world.  Seriously.  He had a book called, "The Best Cigars in the World," and he had a cigar in his mouth.  He began waving his book all around and well...I wasn't really listening, I was just thinking, "Why am I a magnet for crazy people?"

M#1 casually sauntered over to stand as a buffer between me, Swimmer, and the crazy man.  He was pretty cool and nonchalant about it.  Cigarman didn't know he was now going all crazy on a former cop!  Nothing exciting happened, to be honest...except that Cigarman talked crazy to M#1 for about 40 minutes.  Then we left.  Weird day.

The next day, I was hanging with the Teenage Genius, and while trying to get her back home, we had some ticket trouble at the train station.  Mainly, her ticket wouldn't work.  I had already scanned my electronic pass, so I exited, went to help her buy a new ticket and then came back to the scan machine realizing that I wouldn't be able to get back through for 15 minutes.  (They have it set up like that so that you can't scan your pass and then hand it to another person to scan and get in for free.)

Normally I would just jump over the turnstile and go right in without worrying about.  I don't think that is doing anything illegal because I've paid for pass for a year to ride as much as I want.  I hadn't handed my pass for someone else to use.  I wasn't cheating the system.  BUT...there were about 5 cops hanging out just in front of the turnstile.  Who wants to jump a turnstile with cops right there watching and then have to explain in a foreign (to me) language about why what you just did was not, actually, illegal?  I didn't.

So I told the Teenage Genius to be smooth, and I was going to push through the turnstile right behind her as she went through, instead of jumping OVER the turnstile.  The cops didn't seem to notice us.

But I noticed them...again and again and again.  It's not normal to see a group of cops in my little town.  Remember, it's not so ghetto-ish.  (The Teenage Genius' town?  OH-SO-GHETTO-ISH!)  But there were cops in my town.  Then, at Gare du Nord, a gazillion more cops.  Then, more of them in Noisy.  Then, back at my town, (when I came home), there were 15-20 of them!  They'd arrested several guys and looked like they were waiting to arrest a few more.  

I cleared out of the train station fast and got on home.  I don't know what was going down that day...but I didn't want to be around for any trouble!

THEN (oh yes, there's more)...yesterday.

I decided yesterday afternoon to go into Paris for a few hours to work on seeing some of the things on my list (see post a few down the page).  I wanted to get to a particular spot before sunset, so I could photograph it in daylight.  Trouble is, the sun is going down around rush-hour right now.

As I arrived to the train station, I had to sidestep a big group of gypsies just hanging out on the steps by the platform.  While gypsies in Paris are a very normal thing, seeing them in my little town is notsomuch.  As I stood waiting for the train, an announcement came on stating that (a) the train was late and (b) it wasn't going to go all the way to the end of the line, but to one stop earlier.  If you wanted to go to the end of the line, you would have to switch trains at the one-stop-earlier station.  

I stood there and thought...It's Friday evening at rush hour, and there are already problems with the train going INTO the city?  I'm not going to make it over there in time to get my photograph, I don't feel like dealing with crazy trains, I don't feel like dealing with gypsies for the whole train ride in, and I don't feel like dealing with all the crowds of people.  I've had enough crazy ghetto city experiences for the week.

I turned around and left the train station and went to the MMTATI's and held the baby for a few hours.  Sweet little A curled up in my lap and laid her head on my shoulder while I held baby I and that was so much better than going into the city on a Friday night.  I'm glad I left the crazy train station and went into a haven of normalcy.  :)

Catacombs

November 3, 2008

Last year, I read an article on Yahoo on Halloween about the 13 scariest (or creepiest?) places ON EARTH.  The Catacombs in Paris was listed as one of them!  So I thought it would be fun to go on Halloween...but I took a few friends with me since I'm such a big chicken.

There will more than likely be another video when the teenager finishes making hers (cause she had different videos on her camera).  Her video will probably be better than mine, since this was my first attempt ever at making one.

The informational brochure at the catacombs says this.

"The Catacombs ossuary was created at the end of the 18th century due to the closure in 1780 of the largest cemetery in Paris,...which the inhabitants (of the local district) believed was a danger to public health.  ... Bones from every cemetery in Paris were transferred to the site until 1860...  The Catacombs were opened to the public at the beginning of the 19th century, exciting a great deal of interest and attracting large crowds of visitors."

"Visitors walk among the remains of six million people stored in 780 meters of galleries.  The first bones to arrive were simply thrown in a heap.  It was only under Napoleon I...that the site was renovated.  Lone bones and skulls were arranged in neat rows to provide a wall behind which the rest of the bones were piled in a jumble."

I had a great time hanging out with my friends down there being silly and shooting videos and such.  I enjoyed watching Parker (who has studied Latin in the past) and Kaley (who is studying Latin now) reading the signs throughout the catacombs with reflective passages about life and death.  I wasn't scared or creeped out at all...however, if there had not been a million people there that day, and I hadn't been with a large group of friends, I would have been severely creeped out.  It was dark down there (if you can't tell from the video).  There were random doors with a metal locked gate in front of them--what's behind those doors, eh?  Trolls?

It was definitely not the typical tourist site in Paris, but I'm glad I went.  

cakes

November 1, 2008

For Reformation Day (yesterday), a bunch of us threw a Reformation Party, where all the food was named according to the theme...This was the Wittenburg Church Cake that I made...note that the candy corn nails are holding up the 95 Theses that Luther nailed to the door!  :)  

While I was making that cake, I went ahead and made another cake for the dinner party I'm going to tonight, where we will watch the Auburn/Ole Miss football game.  There will be 11 Auburn fans at that party, one Alabama fan (he's new here and we're still trying to educate him...), and one neutral person.  So I made this cake just for fun!  :)

moving!

November 1, 2008 (All Saints Day here in France)

Well, it's official.  I am moving to Marseille, probably within about a month or so.  I've known for about two weeks, but wasn't allowed to make the news public until today.  Sue-Wee left right around the time I found out, and so I went straight into exit mode as she was packing up and figuring out what things she wanted to do one last time/make sure to see before leaving Paris.

As I prepare to leave the city that has been my home for the last two years, expect several lists to pop up on the blog.  I love me some lists!  I feel like my leaving is a little different than hers, because (a) I'll still be in France and (b) I figure I'll be back to Paris many times for the rest of my life...so I don't feel compelled to do everything that I haven't gotten to do yet.  Save some for future trips...

So, here's the current list of things I still want to go do/see.  

1.  Museum of the Middle Ages (with audio guide)

2.  Jacquemart-Andre Museum (with audio guide) I'll get both of these done tomorrow, since it's free Sunday at the museums!

3.  Jewish Art and History Museum

4.  St. Sulpice on a Sunday morning to hear the organ concert

5.  Petit Palais (it's free!)

6.  View from Hotel Concorde-Lafayette (it's free!)

7.  Photograph the Porte Dauphine Metro

8.  #92 Champs-Elysees (Thomas Jefferson lived here!)

9.  Visit a store called 2 Mille et 1 Nuit on #13 Rue des Francs Bourgeois

10.  Climb the dome of Sacre Coeur

11.  Cafe le Procope at #13 rue de l'Ancienne Comedie

12.  Cafe Vagenande on St. Germain (for the Art Nouveau)

13.  Take a Fat Tire Bike Tour

14.  Go to Chartres

15.  Chateau de Fountainbleau

16.  La Defense

17.  Go to a ballet at the Opera Garnier

18.  Visit some of the award-winning bakeries (I have a list of about 15!)

19.  There are a few sculptures I want to go find

--of Les Halles in St. Eustache

--of the giant on rue de la Tombe-Issoire

--of people behind a wall on rue Quincampoix

20.  Compare the macaroons at Pierre Herme to Laduree's

--72 rue Bonaparte (6th)

21.  Eat at the Creperie Beauborg on the corner of Brisemiche and St.-Meri

22.  Buy some bagels at the Jewish bakery 

(Also--the list included going to the Catacombs, but I did that yesterday, on Halloween, and a video will be coming soon to show that little escapade!)