We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program...

today was one of those wonderful epic days that was so good i need to interrupt my drawn-out (nearly finished, i promise!) narrative of paris to talk about. before i delve into the nitty gritty details, there are a few things that i've noticed about days like these:

1) fun always involves tessa chamberlain. (or is it tessa is always fun? eh, either way.) my last great day was with her and sweinkauf floating down the river that resulted in some truly historical sunburns, even on my filipino skin.

2) fun does not always involve a lot of alcohol, but sometimes it does, like it did today. more on this later.

3) fun can also sometimes involve zac efron, whether it's the good natured fun like in high school musical (don't judge, please) or the this -is-ridiculous-and-we-will-now-laugh-at-your-attempts-to-be-an-artist fun.

4) fun isn't always, but usually is expensive. $30 lunch plus lost $80 bet = a lot of money.

it started a few months ago, tessa and i decided that to boost our resumes and to take advantage of at least some of the free perks that come with the misery of working at the 'Stein, we were going to take the ACLS class. i have never taken ACLS, and assumed that we would get similar instruction as my BCLS class, which was phenomenal and led by nursing education staff.

ACLS class for first timers is a 2 day course, on two consecutive tuesdays from 9-5 each day. it was like going to school and studying for something for 16 hours, and let's be honest--i haven't truly studied for about a year and a half now (don't be fooled, just because i just graduated from school doesn't actually mean i learned anything). i woke up and was thankful that at least the start time was late, but dreaded a full day of sitting in class. at least the instructors would be informative.

it turns out i was all wrong. we started half an hour late. the instructor was not informative. in fact, rarely have i ever met an instructor whose teaching style i so disliked. complete disregard for evidence based practice and when i brought it up, he told me not to get fancy. information was haphazardly dispensed, taught without any sort of rhyme or reason, and while i'm sure he knew a lot, he sure sucked at demonstrating it. i'm not even sure what sort of credentials he had to teach the course except for "i'm a retired cop," which i'm pretty sure is NOT a noteworthy qualification. he also kept calling all of us "doctor." "doctor, what do you want to do now? this joker ain't breahing." or "doctor, it's your call, what's next, doctor?" i felt a very strong need to grab him by the face and tell him that i was a nurse, by choice, and so was everyone else in the room except the random pharmacy chick. it was sort of like my entire FNP program revisited. needless to say i was not a super happy camper. the upside to all of this is that we started at 9:30 and ended at... 11:45. yes that's right. 5 hours early. including a 15 minute break.

well the day picked up from there. we picked up textbooks (which would have maybe been a little more helpful beforehand) on our way out, and tessa and i decided to have lunch. with wine. maybe a bottle. no, definitely a bottle. we stopped at this newly renovated lunch place right around the corner that used to be called plum pomodoro and is now called something snooty like columbia social club. or something. who cares? they had alcohol.

we ordered flank steak sandwiches and between the two of us polished off an entire bottle of merlot. by the end of lunch i was too toasted (before 1pm!!!!) to do anything except follow tessa to her house, stopping by a westside market for almonds (to make a cake later; even when inebriated, my priorities are straight) and additional last minute purchases of carrot cake and chocolate and then settled onto her amazing couch to watch charlie st. cloud.

you know, i did NOT think it was that complicated a movie from the commercials, but i just didn't get it. was she dead? was she alive? i thought it was going to be a twist and they'd all be dead like in the sixth sense (a movie that i've actually never seen, but certain brannon morrison spoiled it for me, so now i'll spoil it for everyone else) but silly me, i should have realized that anything with zac efron in it shouldn't ever be that complicated. i bet tessa an $80 dinner that everyone was dead... and lost. the only person who died was the little brother. oops. maybe she won't remember. :D also sorry if i spoiled the movie for you, but honestly, i just saved you an hour and 39 minutes of your life that you can do something productive and rewarding with.

i passed out during the credits and woke up, disoriented and not sure where i was (i swear that's not a frequent thing) to that commercial for pajama jeans and sort of wanted a pair. for $40 bucks plus a free tshirt, that's practically like stealing! good thing i suppressed my impulsive nature, because now that i'm almost sober, they seem like a terrible idea.

anyways now i have a clementine cake cooling on my stove and i am snuggling with clyde who is going to get adopted at the end of this week and i can honestly say that this has been a good, good day. the end.

Paris: Day 3 (Dec 30th)

my third morning in paris dawned even earlier than the second. damn, i was really starting to hate that alarm tone. but getting up early was imperative if we were going to beat out those pesky Other Tourists and go to dave chappelle, ooops make that sainte chappelle so we could gawk at what salina described as a bunch of windows. all i knew was that they better be the best goddamn windows i've ever seen if i was going to wake up at 0745.

sainte chappelle opened at 9, and i was slow waking up (obviously) so we got there by 9:30, salina with her teeth probably set on edge and nervous about the potential line and myself optimistic that everyone would be sleeping still, because that's what normal people do on vacation. and who do you think was right?

...i wish i could say it was me.

not only was the line crazy long, some punkass high school kid sprinted to beat us to the line. "idiot boy," i thought to myself, "he's going to have to wait anyways." little did i know that the joke was on us, because he represented one of what seemed like 50 italian high schoolers there for a school trip. apparently in italy, if one member of a group is in line, the rest of the group consider this a point of insertion and have absolutely no qualms about cutting the line. salina told me that this had happened to her before, also with a large group of italians, and as the number of people in front of us magically multiplied, we pondered what to do. true to form, i wanted to tap the shoulder of the school teacher who was not only allowing this atrocity of propriety and fairness, but encouraging it by being one of the first offenders to cut the line. i had a very clear, yet emphatic speech in simple english planned out in my head, perhaps punctuated with a few ill-placed "no, mami"s so i could mess with her head a little. while i was putting the finishing touches on this little declaration of mine, salina, true to form, silently slipped ahead of the group as the line shuffled forward, effectively remaining true to the chinese principle of "if you do it to me, i'll do it back to you." (as evidenced by my mother's frequent extended family drama, this can include: hong bao, chocolates, paying for dinner, not attending your daughter's wedding, trash talking someone's offspring or their offspring of their offspring, getting someone a summer internship, and taking turns hosting mah jong parties.) we left behind a pair of very perplexed young japanese men who, i learned from eavesdropping on their conversation, did not think it was worth their tour pass to wait in line. at any rate, everyone knows they wouldn't have done anything about the cut-sies those nefarious italians tried to pull, japanese people are too nice. i, on the other hand, consoled myself with saving my scathing lecture for another time.

even after our successful cut-backsies (not to be confused with back-cutsies, that requires some skillful negotiation), we had to wait another 30 minutes in the cold, and when we finally got inside, it was a stone church, so it was still really, really cold. despite all of that, the windows were definitely worth it. huge stained-glass panels that stretched to the ceiling, each comprised of only 5 colors, but still managing to be vibrant and complex. each panel depicted some story of the bible, but only from selected books. you know, the interesting ones with the animals and arks, the incest and rape, the prostitutes and the wars and the killings of fat kings and destroying a whole army with basically a fossil. there was some of the prophetic bits in there, and then the passion of the christ.

i know what you're thinking: damn, kathleen must possess an amazing knowledge of the holy bible. i'm not going to lie--i used to kick motherfucking ASS at bible trivia in my younger days. but i actually just learned all of that from a helpful informative placard inside the church. plus those pictures were way too cryptic for me to decipher. half of them had a bunch of people with swords. that's like, uhm, most of the old testament. anyways. for a really old church, i was really impressed with the amount of detail in everything, from the walls to the pillars, everything had a gilded carving or raised relief or rich paint, still vivid even centuries later.

sainte chappelle was basically one huge room where you crane your neck for as long as you like and frantically snap pictures of this incredible work of art but all the pictures in the world couldn't possibly capture the majesty and holiness of it. afterwards, we took the windy staircase down and ended up in the same entrance room. i looked around expectantly at salina and asked, "is that it?" and she gave me a look that might possibly be read as "you uncultured swine" but she kindly replied, "yup, that's it." and that was dave, er, sainte chappelle.

while we were waiting in line earlier, the clouds decided to let up for a few hours and so we thought it would be a good idea to catch the eiffel tower while it was still sunny and gorgeous. that was probably the best tourist decision we could have made. there's no line to go see the eiffel tower, we had an amazing clear view, and for a piece of metal, it was... gorgeous. a clear day with a blue sky, no clouds, and the eiffel tower in view briefly silenced us into contemplative appreciation, which we shook off and did the next natural thing: buy crepes. but of course french people munch nutella crepes while looking at the eiffel tower; we were just trying to fit in. there was a lot of frantic photo snapping here, after which we noticed yet another holiday market below. more shopping, buying souvenirs blah blah blah blah, sometime between our stroll from the holiday market to the actual base of the eiffel tower, the sun ran away and it got really cold again. the all-too-familiar huddled masses waiting in line to ride the little trolley up the eiffel tower looked ominous, so we high tailed it out of there to hit our third tourist attraction: the louvre.

perhaps we were too greedy in thinking we could do three in a day. the Huddled Masses were also present at the louvre. Salina and I thought we might be able to bypass the crazy line trying to get in through the main entrance (through the pyramid) and tried to sneak through a back door, only to be foiled again: yet another line to get in through the basement entrance. we conceded defeat, promising to be back at opening time (ugh another 0745 morning) the next day, and opted to wait in line outside for angelina's hot chocolate instead.

angelina's hot chocolate is not what americans think of when they think "hot chocolate." for example, here's my word association with "hot chocolate": campfire, swiss miss, powder, watery, marshmallows, church retreat (don't ask). here's what angelina's hot chocolate actually is: rich, luscious, thick, creamy melted chocolate served with a side of unsweetened whipped cream. it was so intense that even i, the designated diabetes fairy, couldn't bear to finish a cup lest i explode from too much goodness. in addition to that we had to order le mont blanc--a towering dome of a confection that was crispy cookie, barely sweetened whipped cream and a mound of--you guessed it!--creme de marron. basically we consumed about 123098235 calories for our "afternoon snack." it definitely beat out our ghetto crepes at the eiffel tower.

after angelinas, we strolled around some more monuments at place de concord (sorry salina i know you're probably cringing) and took pictures with naked mermaids, some obelisk that looked suspiciously like the one we have in washington d.c., and headed home to get ready for Hella Baller Dinner.

to explain how baller dinner was, we had to make a reservation 6 months in advance, before we were really even sure we were going to be in Paris. it was 90 euro a person. i found out about it on david lebovitz's food blog, which i read occasionally and then get inexplicable cravings for random ice cream flavors for WEEKS. he mentioned some friends who were running a private supper club in their apartment, an exclusive meal for 12 people a few times a week. of COURSE i wanted to get on that boat. salina emailed them and we nabbed a rez and tonight was the night for us to eat at Hidden Kitchen.

i at least had the decent sense of mind to pack a frilly top but did not think to bring an accompanying cardigan or something equally girly or fancy. instead i wore a frumpy wool sweater and boots. thinking this was enough, salina and i tromped off in the direction of the restaurant, stopping by to frantically picture snap a billion photos of the gorgeous opera house (which was sadly closed) and yet another apple store where we filched more free internet. (as a aside: french computers have funny keyboards. their q's and z's and a's have done a strange hokey pokey and finished all mixed up. also, i think this is where i discovered how awesome the iPad is but i am resisting.)

we got to the dinner venue, buzzed up into someone's apartment while running into two other people who were there also for the dinner, and when we got to the 6th floor, we were greeted with ambient lighting, a chirpy American waitress and a champagne cocktail. that's how i knew that the evening was going to be awesome. there was some awkward chitchat with what eventually became 14 other people, all of them American, all of them better dressed way better than us (not a frumpy sweater in sight aside from our sorry unstylish asses), and all of them paired off in heterosexual couples. i wondered briefly (silently at first, and then whispered later to salina when i got drunk enough) whether or not they thought we could possibly be lesbian. (salina whispered back later that she mentioned her boyfriend enough so that she thought we were in the clear.)

the chefs were from the States, and the irony of going to Paris to be served food by Americans was not lost on me, but it was truly an incredible meal. 10 courses, all delicious, and all paired with wine that was equally delicious. the company was pretty good at the beginning although predictably they really only wanted to talk about food (boring!-- i discovered that night that i not only hate foodies both in america and abroad, but i also hate american foodies who live abroad), but that eventually became a non-issue with each progressive glass of wine. in short, it was the best fancypants dinner we had in paris (although there was an equally delicious yet completely different meal that i'll describe in another entry) and i do not regret a single one of those 90 euros that we spent. that i managed to make it through the evening with that amount of alcohol without groping someone inappropriately was an added bonus i'd say.

drunk and giggly, i made it home in one piece without getting lost, mostly in thanks to salina and her prudent decision to not finish every single glass of wine placed before her. then we said goodnight to another day in paris, passed out in happy bliss.

Paris: Day 2 (Dec 29th)

the night before, i confessed to salina what basically everyone in my life already knows: i'm a control freak. everyone has a touristy kind of strategy and here's mine: i need structure. when i traveled with soy aka rit my travel buddy, we made a schedule with all of the days available to us, all of the touristy attractions we agreed upon visiting, and then just fit them in based on location and priorities. this worked for me, because even if we didn't hit everything on our list, we could shuffle around and toss what we didn't REALLY want to see and keep what we were burning to see (interesting side thought: i don't think there has EVER been anything i've ever a burning desire to see traveling-wise. oldest temple in japan? meh. the louvre? *shrug* okay. that hugeass statue of jesus in brazil? we'll see. big ben? who's that?) salina, being the greatest tour-friend one could ask for, acquiesced and made me a schedule, which unfortunately necessitated getting up early a lot.

which is how i started the morning waking up to and despising salina's alarm clock. for early morning, it sure was chirpy. also why doesn't salina snooze? i'm accustomed to (and so is clyde--he's very quickly learning that it's going to take several rings til he gets to eat) hitting the snooze at least a few (read: 5 or 6) times before i roll out of bed, but not for salina! it was ring and she'd practically leap out of bed.

at any rate, our differing morning routines dissolved when it was breakfast time. i'm not sure why, but i envisioned going to cafes every morning drinking cafe au lait--the only french word coffee drink i could conjure at the time--and eating fresh croissants, perhaps being served by a waiter who wore a beret, striped shirt, and one of those magnificent meticulously manicured moustaches that curl up at the ends. obviously i would be wearing cute boots that magically disguise my abnormally giant calves (i blame marching band) and maybe a beret myself. here's what breakfast actually was: salina and i dicking around in our pajamas with a couple slices of baguette (and by a couple i mean 4 or 5), our 125 g block of buerre being steadily whittled away morning by morning, a variety of jams plus creme de marron, duh, twinings (of all things! BRITISH?) vanilla tea, mueseli for salina, yogurt and a couple of clementines each.

sound paltry? mundane? un-french? i think if i were to have a similar breakfast in new york, i would agree. i'd also feel boring and like a loser. but it was perfect. i loved that we took time to set the table, that we actually sat down and savored every single bite. i liked eating breakfast with another person. i liked eating slowly and feeling leisurely. it was basically the opposite of my work morning breakfast routine, which is: sleep in late (see: snoozing pattern above) throw together breakfast while making lunch at the same time, feed clyde, and eat standing up in the kitchen over the sink so i don't have to wash dishes. anyways. i digress. this is supposed to be a fake-travel blog, not an examination of my piss-poor eating habits.

salina and i ventured out into our neighborhood, which for paris seemed oddly suburban. our apartment was tucked away in an off-road sort of quiet area, but right around the corner was this amazing market on rue de mouffetard. grocery shopping in foreign countries has to be my most favorite thing to do--there are so many different customs and rituals and food items to be had! it was hard to choose, but we were on a mission: to feed ourselves and cook dinner at home that night. we walked up and down streets, examined clothing all manner of stores, bought more things we didn't need and eventually decided on dinner: roast chicken (not roasted by us, obviously. i've never roasted a chicken in my life and don't really foresee me learning. my mom's roast chicken is perfect--she says the secret is the chinese wine, of course--and if she loves making it for me, why the hell should i ever learn how?), fingerling potatoes, mushrooms of dubious nature, endive salad with freshly cracked walnuts and baguette of course.

in my previous post i had promised to elaborate on my love for baguette, and here it is: i LOVE french baguette. it is dense, chewy, salty, crusty in the right places, and substantial. it serves as a perfect sturdy platform to spread still-cold butter on and not tear up the bread. it is equally useful in sopping up sauces, preferably the kind that are made of lots of butter. it tastes like bread. in fact, so spoiled was i by our daily fresh baguette habit that when i bit into the "dinner roll" offered on american airline's "meal tray" i could actually taste the preservatives. let go of all other preconceptions of "baguette" that you've had in any country: this baguette will blow your mind. go ahead and cry "food snob" on me, i've heard that one before. but for those who are quick to pigeon-hole me into some hipster brooklynite sad excuse for a stereotype, i've got your number: i also sometimes like to eat mcdonald's apple pie. the deep-fried-in-beef-tallow kind (which sadly is no longer offered in this country. so eat your french foodie hearts out.)

i realize that so far i have only managed to describe food that we cooked ourselves--hardly interesting travel blog fodder. moving on. after breakfast and food shopping, we headed to the "christmas markets" which were not much different from the holiday markets here in New York, but more lackluster, since uhm, christmas was sort of over. there were even holiday market type foods, but instead of cider and other tidbits, there was vin chaud (mulled wine), hot chocolate and sub par canellones (cannelones? another one of those things i just don't care about: french spelling). mostly there was just a lot of artwork and winter accessories sold, not anything to get super excited about.

sort of a side note that i fully intend to tie into some kind of a grand theme somewhere in this post: in our search for this elusive and ultimately disappointing holiday market, i urged salina to ask a random passerby for its whereabouts, thinking that if she at least asked in french, we wouldn't get that world-famous french un-hospitality. this older lady we had the misfortune of choosing not only didn't answer our question, she refused to make eye contact, walked faster, and gave us a dirty look. it was sort of like how i would react to a very persistent homeless man except we weren't homeless, even if our hiking shoes were unstylish. in short, this lady was an asshole. who does that to tourists? apparently, the french do.

thoroughly shaken by the experience, salina and i took refuge in the nearest shoe store, where i urged her to take solace in a pair of beautiful blue-grey-black boots. she conceded that this was probably the best course of action and xxx euro later, we were in considerably better spirits, at least enough to start making our way to our first tourist destination of the the trip: notre dame. since i had bought a 10 ticket pack of train tickets, we opted to walk along the seine river, take in the scenery, and of course look at all the junk vendors were selling along the river bank.

it's astonishing the shit that can pass off as "antique" or "art." old newspapers? put it in a plastic sleeve and charge 10 euros for that! paper reprints (not even paint!) of washed out parisian landscapes? FIFTY EUROS. pages that appeared to be torn from old babar the elephant children's books? the one i wanted was 30 euro. i love babar, but i do not think i will ever 30-euro-love babar, no matter how cute a baby elephant he is. there was all sorts of crap lining the road and yet we insisted on a leisurely stroll-by, lingering over old copies of books that i couldn't decipher the title of (of course, i couldn't--i don't speak french). apparently our pace was not sufficiently speedy for this british couple behind us, because the she-devil half of the pair bypassed salina, muttering under her breath, "fucking slow as shit!" without even the decency to make eye contact. say that to my face, bitch! salina, being from suburban norcal, actually apologized. myself, having spent the last year in the bronx, wanted to chase her down and... i'm not sure. bitchslap? kidney punch? good old-fashioned push-her-the-fuck-down-playground-style? however, my passive asian heritage trumped once again and i ended up grumbling about how rude she was. the moral of the story and long awaited theme: rude people do not just come from France. they come from all over Europe. but not America. definitely not America. (in case you, dear reader, are far too obtuse to detect the heavy sarcasm, my daily dealings with rough and tumble American assholes are probably what drove me to therapy.)

impertinent brits aside, the walk along the seine was lovely and we eventually made it to notre dame which was... magnificent. the line to get in? not so much. this would be an annoying re-occurrence at basically every tourist attraction we ever went to, since apparently i am not the only genius who thought that new years would be a great time to go to paris. i consistently underestimated the go-getting nature of my fellow tourists, being thwarted by long lines even at opening time and cursing my naive optimism in the slothiness of other gawking visitors of the city of light. notre dame itself was beautiful, detailed, intricate, ornate. it's hard to imagine that it was hand crafted. the entire interior of the church was alight with votive candles, which was beautiful and somehow mysterious. every single candle represented some person's fervent hope, desire, prayer. it made me wonder at the infinite number of reasons a person might decide to light one of those candles. unless of course, that reason was a punk ass kid's who just wanted to light a candle in a cool old church in paris, which then is a little less wondrous.

after notre dame, we headed to sainte chappelle, which i kept hearing as "dave chappelle" and thereafter insisted on calling it so. however, the line was not only long, but there was a worker there who turned away people at the end of line because it was closing soon. tourist mega line fail. instead we went to a cafe, paid for and reluctantly consumed some sub par reheated crepes in exchange for the privilege to use their bathroom.

at this point, i have a confession to make. at the end of each night i would try to jot down some hasty notes to remember what actually transpired each day. and in this paragraph of cryptic two-word phrases that i thought only i would understand, i came across a phrase that can best be deciphered as "haundery shopping." yes, at times, my handwriting is illegible even to myself. moving on then.

we got home, started cooking dinner as described above and it. was. amazing. it may or may not have been enhanced by some pretty strong champagne that tasted completely like juice (how can you blame me for drinking a lot?). plus the chicken was perfectly flavored and moist, the potatoes were pan fried in butter and shallots, the endive salad tasted great (and i do'nt even like endives). simple yet satisfyingly delicious. it didn't take long for this drunkyface to shower and pass out, which is exactly what we did.

Paris: Day 1 (Dec 27-28th)

while i would love to start right off describing vibrant parisian landscapes, stylish women with enviable, incredible legs, and waxing poetic about their baguette, this recounting of my first international travel since nursing school would not be complete without mentioning snowpocalypse 2010.

my flight was supposed to take off december 26th and i would fly for 6 hours, do a little time zone magic and wake up at charles de gaulle airport at 0630. however, snowpocalypse started the morning of the 26th and just did NOT. LET. UP. until the 27th. i went to brunch that morning with a friend and rushed home to start parking only to find that my flight had been cancelled, a first, unbelievably, given the extensive international flying when i was in college (thanks dad's company for all the free tickets home to singapore/mileage points!). panicked, i gave into my gut instinct: call my mom. 15 minutes later, i was on hold with american airlines for a whopping one hour and 30 minutes. they rescheduled me for the same flight one day later and that's how i found myself getting ready for my long anticipated trip one day later.

from home, i could monitor all of the hubbub and chatter on twitter about jfk being closed, note that my flight was officially delayed to 1800, and decided to go to the airport anyway. thankfully, the ACE was running smoothly and so it was with high hopes that i got to the airtrain terminal in queens, only to find that... it was closed. "just go outside and hail a cab," offered the extremely unhelpful airtrain attendant. this was fucking jamaica, queens. there ARE no cabs in this no man's land. there are, however, gypsy cabs.

i have had a few bad gypsy cab experiences, and i have to say, this one was pretty horrific. he was already taking another passenger to some unidentified location lacking signage, and then stopped to pick up four random passengers going to the airport. desperate and cold, i wormed my way onto the minivan, which is how i ended up sitting with a german, a brit, and a nice lady from vermont. we exchanged stories about what we got for christmas (german: sausages, vermont: books, brit: can't remember, me: a really expensive cast iron frying pan), i briefly considered hitting on the brit and then decided against it, and we eventually made it to the airport. i paid an absurd $25 to get to the airport, but at that point, it was worth it.

or so i thought. as it turns out, my flight was delayed like 17 times. the airport apparently DID reopen at 6 pm, but our gate had a broken jet bridge. of all things! after all the snow and the deicing and airport closures, a minor jet bridge malfunction delayed us for another 4 hours. we sat and sat and sat and sat and kept sitting. the wizened airline counter man looked weary and exasperated with all of the "when are we leaving?" questions. it was sort of like asking "are we there yet?" except the trip hadn't even started. after several delays, at 2130 we were finally allowed to board, only to sit and wait some more on the tarmac until 2230 when SWEET RELIEF we finally took off. at that point i was okay with the plane exploding, as long as something happened.

i sat next to a lovely french grandma, who i eyed with great interest as she was eating her meal. there are books aplenty written about how to stay slim like a french woman, and while this particular specimen wasn't really a great example (old women are given a little leeway, right?), i did want to see if she really savored every single bite and took her time tasting everything. i'm happy to report that i was not disappointed. everything she did about her meal was methodical and deliberate, from the initial spreading of her napkin across her lap (uhm, i always forget that we even HAVE napkins. shamefully, i usually wipe my mouth on my hand. there, i've said it and now it's out in the open: i'm practically a bachelor.) the airline gave out free booze since the delay was so godawful and we both ordered a bottle of red wine. the flight attendant asked me if i was old enough to drink wine. i gave him the stare of death and with as much decorum as i could muster, graciously accepted the bottle from him and tried not to guzzle or spill any. when my little french grandma tasted hers, i asked her with a little trepidation how it was. she made a face, shrugged her shoulders and said, "eh... it's from spain." (ohh burn!)

the rest of the flight was pretty uneventful. i arrived at a much later than estimated time of 1100, and who was there to greet me but salina c. wu, bearing gifts of croissants just like i asked! we took care of some future travel errands for her, managed to figure out how to navigate the ticket machines (which, for future reference, do NOT give change for 20 Euro bills and very unhelpfully do not have change machines either), got on a train and made it to the apartment.

yes, i said apartment. when salina proposed this idea to me, i was completely in. it was like having a home away from home. why didn't I think of that?! so we rented a quaint, charming apartment that was located in the 5th district of paris, extremely convenient, and surrounded by all sorts of shops, markets, boulangeries, fromageries, charcuteries, you name it. it was basically fucking awesome. the apartment itself was pretty well furnished, complete with state of the art microwave/ovens (not that again! i had one of those in japan and it took me the better part of three months to figure out what the hell all of those buttons meant) and this completely novel contraption that was a washer and dryer all at once. i had to sit down and sort of think about that, it was so mind-blowing.

anyways, after a snack of baguette (this will be elaborated on in a later post) and sandwiches (yes, two bread entrees and with absolutely no regrets), we took a much needed nap. the bed, when it's not used, folds up into the wall and suddenly there's a couch in its place. it's not the same as a sofa bed, because the mattress was a full on mattress, not those shitty lame excuses for a mattress that fold up inside the sofa. it merely pops back into the wall, whole. no folding necessary. throughout the entire trip i saw advertisements for similar space-saving furniture installments, including one that lowers to midair suspended on what appeared to be ribbon, completely with a footstool so you can climb into a bed that is hanging from the ceiling. very safe looking. (a completely irrelevant and possibly inappropriate thought: how do people get their nasty on in those beds? does it feel like doing it in a swing? just a thought). anyways, nap time was amazing. it was just what i needed to prove that i do not have jet lag ever, because from that point on, i was good to go.

salina and i were eager to do some damage to our bank accounts, so we went to some random place to do some shopping. oh, there was damage! it was bad, but so gratifying to shop, especially since i'd been (sort of) holding back in anticipation of this trip. after buying a lot of things we probably didn't need, salina wanted to try this israeli restaurant that she took a long time to find. i gazed longingly at mom'n'pop type restaurants whose set menus boasted things like mussels broiled in butter and wine (uhm yes please) and creme brulee but trudged after salina anyway. i was a little put off about coming to a foreign country to eat ethnic food that i can clearly buy across the street from the hospital (shawarma? kebab? come ON) but it was pleasantly delicious and dirt cheap.

i almost forgot! en route to the shawarma'r'us (that's obviously not what it's called, but i can hardly be expected to remember french names of national tourist attractions, much less restaurant names) we stopped at a market to pick up groceries for breakfast. already in the fridge we had this 125 gram block of french buerre (butter, the english name of which is a sorry description for that blissful saturated fat that we ate nearly every gram of, so i will continue to be pretentious and call it buerre), and we needed milk, mueseli, some kind of jam, and on my insistence, we also needed creme de marron.

i'm not going to lie--i completely forgot about my love for all things chestnut since basically college, but a recent smittenkitchen.com post about how hard it is to find this elusive paste made me want it all the more. and my childish "i got it and you don't" instant gratification was entirely worth it. it tastes good with EVERYTHING: baguette with butter, plain yogurt, you get the idea.

loaded with shopping bags full of clothes and food and bellies full of ethic food that is easily accessible in new york, but equally delicious and probably less suspect in terms of vehicles of food-borne diseases, we went home, showered and crashed.

end day 1.