mon été à Paris

My time in Paris has officially come to a close.  Theo, my cab driver, comes tomorrow at 10 a.m. to take me to CDG (FYI, worst airport ever).  I had a really, really fun night with Angie tonight.  Cote du boeuf at Robert et Louise and then drinks at some random, albeit very fun bars in the marais! :)  Here are some pics -- I would tell stories but there the "you had to be there" kind...

Ummmmmm...this was weird.  Toilet in the middle of the street?

And then, I have to explain these drinks...they were vodka, curacao and Orangina.  And they were delicious!  The bartender would put a straw in the Orangina and turn it upside down.  So that's all you would really taste but the bottle would slowly fill up with blue liquor.  And he put a sparkler in them.  Fun.  I will definitely try making these for a party!

So that's it.  I'm going out with a sparkler and a fun night with a great friend.  And this is my last post on this blog.  Mon ete a Paris has officially come to an end.  I am sad but so, so grateful. 

xoxo

When I got to Paris, I didn't know how I would ever make friends, especially with the language barrier.  But one of the most rewarding things about this trip has been meeting new people from around the world.  And it's hard to say goodbye.  Especially to new friendships that you know could be lifelong but will be separated by thousands of miles.  I guess I will just focus on how priviledged I have been to meet interesting people and if our paths cross again, I'll consider myself that much more fortunate.

Here are just a few snaps of the friends I have said goodbye to in the last day or two...

Dinner with Elaine at Glou One in the Marais:

Drinks at Cafe Flore with Cece's longtime good friend Nika and her friend David...

My goodbye lunch with my friends Chris and Kelly.  I will really miss our expat lunches.  These two got me through a lot of "French stuff"...

Drinks with the new FR PR team:

I have dinner with Angie tomorrow.  Will be hard to say goodbye to Miss Bliss...

Hi friends -- sorry for the lack of posts.  Honestly, I think I am still a little hungover from the Oktoberfest festivities so other than saying it was a great time (and that I have a whole new appreciation for lederhosen, dirndls, pretzels and spicy mustard), I am going to let the pictures speak for themselves...

The event is done.  Oh thank god.  And it went really well.  I am exhausted and we still have break down tomorrow but you know what?...I am on an 8 p.m. flight to Munich tomorrow night and will be celebrating my first European event.  Here are a few photos of set-up...

I don't have any fun pictures today...work has been WAY too busy for that.  But I do have a semi-embarrassing/funny story.

My colleague Kelly and I were heading over to the event space (we have our Paris Christmas event in 1.25 days - eeeekkkk!).  I have a rule that I have to take the stairs in the metro.  It is literally the only exercise I get so I must follow this rule.  Well, today I fell down a huge flight of stairs.  In the metro.  In front of -? -dozens -? of people.  It was not graceful or pretty.

I sat there for a minute, waiting for a shooting pain somewhere.  I was sure I had to have broken or at least severely sprained something.  But there was no pain.  Until I tried to walk and noticed that I completely broke the heel off of my brand new brown booties.  Damn!

But you know what?  I just happened to have bought a new pair of shoes today for the event.  Hot damn!  So I didn't have to walk barefoot through the metro after all.  And there is a shoe repair shop just a few hundred feet from the stairs I fell down.  Voila!

So the moral of the story?  It's a good thing that I buy a lot of shoes (and that they can be fixed when I am a klutz)...

Saturday night proved to be the fun, last-Saturday-night-in-Paris send-off that I was hoping it would be.  Kelly and I met up in the Marais and strolled around a little...

Then we stopped for drinks and did some people watching before heading to Le Chateaubriand for dinner. 

Le Chateaubriand is one of my favorite places here so I'm glad I got to go there again before I leave.  We had a long meal of razor clams, white fish, beef with beets and lots of other yummy stuff.

And then we hit the town for some drinks.  We went to an area of town I have never been to before (and I can't remember what it was called) but it was crazy.  There were bars and people everywhere.  This is a super random photo and doesn't really show how busy the area was but it's alls I gots.

We didn't stay out for too long but we did miss the metro hours.  Fortunately, we were able to get a taxi pretty easily using the English speaking cab company (I guess I have learned a few things since I got here -- like how to get a taxi at 2:30 a.m.!).

It was a fun Saturday and I'm glad I got one last chance for some Paris nightlife before my time comes to a close...

I met my friends Chris, Liz and their baby, Sophie, for lunch in the 7th today...

I sit across from Chris at work and he has been SO helpful with tips about Paris, translating lunch menus and just listening to my daily gripes about my personal deficiencies with all things French.  So it was great to get the chance to meet Liz and Sophie.  After lunch, Liz took me to a great chocolaterie down the street so that I could do a little more souvenier shopping.

I also wandered around a specialty food store that has fun foods from around the world.  I got a kick out of the Etas Unis / Canada section in particular.

And there was lots of other fun stuff to look at:

Cheeses...

Colorful eggs:

Beautiful fish displays:

And spices:

Now I am getting ready to head out the door to meet my friend Kelly for some dinner and a night out on the town.  It's been a gorgeous day and I have a feeling there's a fun last-Saturday-night-in-Paris in store. 

Whelp folks, I think this might be my last weekend in Paris.  I don't have my return ticket but but I think I will head home sometime in the week of the 2oth and next weekend I go to Munich so this may be it for Paris.  I don't know if I am ready to say goodbye.  There are so many things I will miss.  So I am planning to spend the weekend just enjoying as much of the city as I can.  Here are some photos from an evening stroll in my neighborhood tonight...

I stopped at one of my favorite brasseries and people watched for awhile...

And then I headed home...

My building (my apartment is the one with the lights on (oops) right above the doors):

I just finished a book called "Sarah's Key."  I decided to read it because the narrator is an American woman living in Paris.  So it automatically appealed to me.  And I loved all of the references to the city and what it's like to be "l'Americain."  

But while the book is fiction and a fairly easy, quick read, the underlying subject matter was actually very sad...it's about how one young girl is affected by the "Vel d"hiv," which I knew nothing about before reading this book.  Apparently, while France was occupied by the Germans in the 40s, the French police rounded up ~15,000 Jewish citizens (mostly children), and sent them to Auschwitz.  There were very few survivors.  Most people aren't aware that the French police actually participated in this.  And that's sort of the premise of the book.

Needless to say, I shed a few tears in numerous airports and cafes before I finished this one.  So today I decided to visit a memorial to the Vel d'Hiv victims.  It wasn't much of a memorial and took me awhile to find but here are some photos:

I don't think this guy was very moved by the memorial sculpture...

There is supposed to be a plaque too but I couldn't find it.  Anyway, I would recommend the book -- it might not make quite the impact if you aren't living in Paris but it was a good read and a definite tearjerker.