Paris in 40 hours - can it be done?

I had the super awesome opportunity to play tour guide again this weekend when my friend Helena came to visit! She's studying in Valladolid, Spain (about an hour outside Madrid). It was a whirlwind trip - she arrived at my apartment at 5pm on Friday and left Sunday morning at 9:30am - so we had to have our best walking shoes on and appetites ready.

Helena is great at Spanish, so she was able to follow the signs from the airport and take the bus to meet me at the train. We took a couple of hours to catch up and relax, then walked over to Fizz (my favorite crepe restaurant just a couple of blocks down rue St. Jacques) for dinner. It's always so fun to introduce my friends to buckwheat crepes ("galettes") and the hard cider traditionally served with them. Helena got one with tomatoes, cheese and ground beef and seemed quite satisfied after exploring the new form of food :) Of course, to top it off, we had to share La Creole - bananas and dark chocolate inside, ice cream and whipped cream on top. Heaven. We headed home and had Skype dates with Marissa and Ali, who jumped on the opportunity to get both Helena and I at one computer! I then took Helena to the Cite Universitaire dorms, where my friend Connie very generously offered to let her stay while she was in Strasbourg for the weekend.

The next morning, we set off at about 9:30am for a very full day of exploring! We decided to do the whole day on foot in order for Helena to fully take in the sights - and save some metro tickets... Luckily the weather was the most beautiful and warm we've had in the city for weeks! First we walked to Notre Dame and took in its inner and outer beauty. It's definitely my favorite historical sight in Paris, and even though it's often rather crowded there's something very peaceful and reflective about being inside that I don't always find in other cathedrals.

Next we walked west, past Hotel de Ville (the Mayor's residence and City Hall) and the Centre Pompidou to the Louvre and the Jardins de Tuileries, stopping for coffee at Cafe Verlet. It's famous for its quality of coffee and a local favorite, and I first went last week and LOVED it! We both enjoyed lingering over our cafe cremes and then set off again, stopping at a boulangerie nearby for croissants and mini versions of pain au raisin and chausson aux pommes (because of course I had to make sure Helena tried everything!). We walked back along the Seine eastward to the Marais, where we had a delicious falafel lunch at Chez Hannah and took in the bustling neighborhood. Next we criss-crossed back to the left bank and the St. Germain area for more culinary delights. We had to make a pilgrimage to Pierre Herme so Helena could try her first French macaroon (a classic dark chocolate that rendered her speechless for a minute) and I could show her my school and the surrounding neighborhood. We did some shopping for a picnic dinner and then stopped for hot chocolate at Christian Constant. Splitting a pot was perfect - not enough to be overwhelming but still a wonderful full cup of warm chocolatey goodness. When we finally arrived back at my apartment it was 5 pm - 7 and a half hours after we first left! Not bad...

We rested and recharged for a bit before packing up our picnic dinner at heading to the Eiffel Tower. Our shopping had yielded quite a delicious spread - deli chicken, a baguette, cheese, a mini quiche lorraine and a tartelette au citron. We happily parked on a bench and watched the light show while munching our delicious smorgasboard of French delights. Worn out after a long day, we called it an early night. This morning, we met up for breakfast at a nearby cafe - after discovering it was the only one open that early on a Sunday morning! - and enjoyed a "real" French breakfast of cafe creme and a tartine (toasted baguette served with butter and jam). Then it was off to the metro station so Helena could catch her bus back to the airport! I still can't believe we fit it all in - but I think I did quite a thorough job of showing the best of the city in a day and a half. Of course, Helena was quite a trooper and made a valiant effort to eat everything I threw at her :) Such a great way to spend a weekend!

I'm getting to the point where I've literally checked off everything on my very extensive tourist "to see and do" list and I find myself wondering what I can do with my free time now! It's a weird feeling to see the next month as just living in Paris, not necessarily going to destinations to see and do things. I have favorite restaurants, cafes, parks and stores and a routine that I'm really comfortable with. I'm starting to miss the comforts and people of home, so it's going to be a bit harder of a last few weeks than in the beginning when I was overwhelmed by the newness of it all! It's going to be sad leaving here, but I also have so much to look forward to with Christmas at home and the start of a new quarter at UCSD. Hopefully I'll continue to have little adventures along the way though, like this little video I took at the metro station! I love pleasant surprises :)

Oui, Chef!

Last night, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a cooking class at le Cordon Bleu! Yes, that hallowed ground of Julia Child and the most prestigious cooking school in the world. Obviously, we didn’t go to a class with the actual students, but the school offers classes for the public that are not hands-on and instead consist of two hours of observation and note-taking as the chef prepares the menu, and then sampling it after! The school is on a very non-descript side street in an outer arrondissement – I totally expected it to be right in the middle of “expensive Paris” but it was a modest facility. We were given a folder with the recipes and a Cordon Bleu pen (!) and ushered into a room set up like a lecture hall, with theater-style seating to allow everyone a clear view and rows of chairs with flip-out desks. Just what I’ve been missing :P

The front of the room was set up with an entire working kitchen, with a large island countertop with electric range built in, ovens in the background, etc. Above the island was a giant mirror that reflected everything the chef did below it and allowed us to see his technique and what exactly he was doing. We sat down and the chef, two assistants and a translator entered and started the class. The chef’s name was Marc Thivet, and his bio listed an impressive array of awards and positions as head chef in many famous and expensive restaurants. He was instantly likable and friendly, always cracking jokes and joyfully telling us his “little secrets” and giving us “little gifts” like adding black truffles and mushrooms to the salad which only called for apples. The translator was SUPER annoying because she talked like a bad news anchor and was totally distracting from the chef. I was very proud that I essentially didn’t have to listen to her, and it was fun to laugh at his jokes with the French people right after he said them and not having to wait for the English translation like the Americans.

It was hilarious to watch him interact with his assistants, two young Japanese students whom he called “mes enfants” – my children. Out of deeply engrained protocol in the patriarchal kitchen system, they had to respond “oui, Chef” to his every request. Apparently “non, Chef” is not part of the vocabulary… He explained to us that in the kitchen, the chef is like the general in the army and the cooks are his soldiers; it is essential to respond to him as the commanding officer!  To his great joy and amusement, he had us practice shouting “oui, Chef!” as a group.

The menu for the evening was cappuccino de carottes au cumin et croustillant de canard confit avec confiture de roscoff et pruneaux – a carrot puree with cumin topped by whipped cream, followed by a mixture of duck confit with Roscoff onion and prune jam wrapped in a thin crispy shell, drizzled with port wine sauce and served over a lamb’s lettuce salad with apples, truffles and mushrooms and a lemon vinaigrette. Oh yes. It was so interesting to see all of his tricks, and also depressing because there’s no way you could be that good at slicing stuff unless you literally sliced for 3 hours a day for 20 years. Which he has.

Anyway, we watched impatiently while he took the full 2 hours to prepare the meal for the group of about 28 students. I realized pretty much instantly that we were not going to get a meal at the end, just small tastes, which was not what I had anticipated and what had been described to me. Sooo I hadn’t eaten since lunch and was absolutely dying of hunger, which made the 2 hours rather tortuous, especially when the room was full of the incredible aroma of duck and onions!

We finally got our tastes, and unfortunately I wasn’t a huge fan of the carrot cappuccino. It was spicy, which I wasn’t expecting , and what I love about carrots is their sweetness. So, it was very pretty and a good idea but not my cup of tea. The duck croustillant however, was FABULOUS and I could have eaten about 10 portions. The shredded duck meat was mixed with the onion and prune jam (really a reduction of very thinly sliced onions and prunes) and wrapped in a filo-like dough, then buttered and baked until crispy. It was essentially a duck egg roll and the flavor was rich, complex and pretty much unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. The port wine sauce just topped it off, and the salad was a great contrast with the crispy apples. I tried to appreciate the truffles, but they didn’t taste like anything to me! Guess I’ll be able to save some money :) They also served us a glass of wine, which was probably my favorite wine I've tasted in my whole life! It was a Brouilly and apparently it's proper to serve it slightly chilled - I guess it can be done!

I’m kind of in love with this whole duck thing – the other day I had an appetizer of thin slices of duck breast served on top of a caramelized apple puree on a crispy pastry base with an herb cream sauce and almost died. Now this? I am now making it my goal to try duck in every possible form. Why don’t we eat it in the states?

I’ll leave you with this thought – if you find duck confit in California, I will make this recipe for you and hopefully capture some of its greatness :)

Malouin first, Breton sometimes, French never!

This weekend, my program took a trip to Mont St. Michel and the town of St. Malo, both located on the northwestern coast in the region called Brittany (“Bretagne” in French). It’s about 3 hours by TGV outside of Paris, so we once again had to leave the apartment at 6:30 am to catch our train! It never gets easier…

We arrived in St. Malo before lunchtime and loaded onto a charter bus to drive for 45 minutes to the small fishing village of Cancale. Bretagne is famous for its seafood, especially oysters and mussels. It’s right on the beach so it was ridiculously windy – probably the strongest wind I’ve ever been in! We were blown about the street until we found a cute little restaurant that didn’t only serve shellfish, although Connie and Maddie ordered oysters (“huitres”) for their entrées. They are braver souls than I… For dessert, we had a piece of “far breton,” which is essentially a slice of cake with a flan-like texture, made usually with prunes on the bottom. It was very good – not as sweet as many desserts but hearty and yummy!

After lunch we drove another half hour and across a long bridge to Mont St. Michel, where we trekked up to the top of the mountain to take a tour of the abbey. It was built in 708 when a bishop had a sanctuary built to honor the Archangel Michael. In the 900s, Benedictine monks settled in the abbey, expanded the building and a city sprang up behind its walls. It was a French stronghold during the Hundred Years’ War against the British and it became a symbol of French national identity. I thought it was an amazing feat of architecture and its location on the mountain on an island was beautiful and very remote, but the actual structure itself is not that impressive. A LOT of gray stone with no adornments of any kind (I guess the monks weren’t big on interior decorating, and if they were, it wouldn’t be in such good shape after 1000 years), so we all finished the audio tour rather quickly! We had another hour free to explore the town, but it turned out to be a giant tourist trap with tacky souvenir shops and overpriced crepes and waffles. We decided a nap on the bus would be the best use of our time.

After visiting the island, we drove to our hotel (in the middle of NOWHERE) and had dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was not exactly great food, and reminded me of all those awful meals on band trips. It’s kind of comforting to know that the French can have cheap, bad food too :) The next morning, we took our bus to the town of St. Malo to spend the day touring a maritime museum and the old city and have lunch and free time. We all kind of grumbled, “St. Malo? I’ve never even heard of it!” but surprisingly, this was my favorite part of the trip!

St. Malo was an island first used as a retreat by a Welsh monk named Macloud who came to convert the inhabitants of the nearby mainland to Catholicism. Sometime later, the town on the coast was moved to the island to better protect it, and in honor of the monk it was named St. Malo de l’Ile (“St. Malo of the island”). Our guide explained that it was hard for the locals to pronounce “Macloud,” so it deteriorated quickly to “Malo!” Anywho, St. Malo eventually turned into a HUGE trading port that was the object of envy of the English (just 200km across the channel), Bretons and French (at this point Bretagne was still an independent duchy). They obviously had a lot of clout and a LOT of money, so the Malouins toyed with their larger competitors and were at one point Breton before agreeing to join France – ONLY after the king converted to Catholicism, they were exempted from taxes, and they were given the privilege of flying the Malouin flag higher than the French national flag. Hence the well-known saying that is the title of this post :) Bretons in general, although they are technically French, really don’t identify that way and they have a very strongly rooted independent streak and their own distinct culture from the rest of the country, especially Paris. Every other store in the city sold regional products such as butter cookies, hard apple cider and salted butter caramel (spreads, candies, crepes, waffles, you name it!). I asked our guide why the caramel was so prevalent, and she explained that in order to hide their salt from the tax collector – it was a precious commodity at the time that was highly taxed – the Malouins mixed it with their butter! I was in the town that invented salted butter!! Truly a historic moment and a very important marker in modern history, don’t you agree?

We had a guided walking tour of the city, during which we learned that it was 80% destroyed in a three week long fire caused by American bombings aiming to free the city during WWII. I’d call that a failure of planning… But they rebuilt the city in 6 years and did a very good job of making it look very old. Could’ve fooled me! The ramparts are the only original structure that remain, and they make a nice elevated walkway on which to see the ocean and the island forts that secured the city. We also got to see the dramatic tide change – at 2pm the nearest fort was connected to the city by a strip of sandbank, and by 6pm the water level had risen to completely submerge the land and rose up to the top of the rocky hill the fort was set on. Apparently St. Malo sees the largest tide change in all of Europe, with a difference of 30 meters of depth between high and low tide!

Low-ish tide at 2pm, high tide at 6pm!

Anywho, the old town of St. Malo (inside the ramparts) was ADORABLE and didn’t feel as cheaply touristy as Mont St. Michel. There were chain stores such as Esprit and Subway, but also We found a tiny creperie for lunch where we enjoyed lunch and a crepe covered with warm caramel sauce for dessert, and spent a leisurely hour and a half inside a café with tea and a regional pastry called “kouign amman” (pronounced “koogamen”). It’s hard to describe but is basically a spiral of dough layers that’s brushed with sugar syrup before baking and can come with thin layer of apple baked in. After a long but relaxing day that I found very interesting and informative, we hopped back on the TGV to Paris and I finally got home at midnight last night! Whew :)

It’s hard to believe that I only have 34 more days left in Paris! After this weekend, when my friend Helena is visiting from Spain, I don’t have any more full weekends in Paris! I honestly have no idea where the time has gone, but when I think about all I’ve done and seen and eaten in the past 2 months I’m quite proud of myself. I’ve completely checked off my original “to see and do” list, so I’ve added a couple more, smaller sights and will probably start to revisit some of my favorite places. Thinking of you all and hope you’re having a great November!

It’s weird not having any Thanksgiving here to mark the time between Halloween (which actually doesn’t really exist here either…) and Christmas, so I’m guessing I’ll really start seeing “Joyeux Noel” (Merry Christmas) at the beginning of December. The street decorations are starting to go up, so I feel it’s appropriate to begin playing Bing Crosby and Dean Martin Christmas songs :)

This is pretty representative of the weather at Mont St. Michel. Also why there are few to no pictures of any of the girls on the trip.

Free day frolicking

I love days off :) On Wednesday, Jen and I investigated the Jardin des Plantes (botanical gardens) next to the mosque, and it was kind of sad because all the flowers that I imagine would be there in the spring and summer were dead... But it was still nice to walk around - it turns out that there is a natural history museum, a menagerie and several other buildings within the park, so it reminded us of a mini Balboa Park!

Then we stopped for tea at my favorite local joint - Jen hadn't been to the mosque before, and their mint tea is the perfect mid-day snack!

On Friday, Jen and Connie and I met up at Berthillon on Ile St. Louis. The shop is FAMOUS in Paris for its ice cream, and we had to try it! It definitely surpassed my wildest dreams, although the scoops were definitely not generously sized for the price :P I could easily eat 3 scoops, which would definitely not happen at Baskin Robbins! I tried caramel au beurre sale (salted butter caramel), apricot and vanilla with chunks of flourless chocolate cake. I almost died, they were all so good! Berthillon is especially famous for its fruit flavors (all of its products are made on-site and with all-natural ingredients), and the apricot literally tasted like I was eating an apricot. YUM!

Friday afternoon, Connie and I walked around the Montparnasse Cemetary, where lots of famous (or just well-connected) people are buried. We passed the grave of Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Serge Gainsbourg (the most famous French pop singer like, ever), and just took in the beautiful fall colors among the crazy assortment of headstones and crypts. Kind of a weird field trip but made for some good pictures :)

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre share a grave

This person isn't famous but he had my absolute favorite headstone EVER. A giant clay pelican? I like this guy.

For dinner on Friday night, I met up with Breanna! Ironically, she was scheduled to come to Paris with her program from Spain two weeks after she visited with Julia and Alex, but I was gone to Bretagne the rest of the weekend. We decided to try a restaurant called Pomze (like "pommes" or apples), which is apple-themed and makes all of their dishes with some kind of apple. It was just lovely to see Breanna again, and the meal turned out to be hands-down the best food I've eaten in Paris! Not cheap, but AMAZING!

We started our meal with creamy apple butter spread on delicious rolls (that even had a hint of apple!) and a glass of hard apple cider, followed with salads topped by chopped fresh apples, goat cheese and cashews. Our plat was "croustillant de saumon," a salmon filet layered with thin slices of apple, baked inside a crispy filo dough crust and surrounded by a citrus-apple sauce. For dessert we split "pain perdu" (basically French toast but WAAYY better) with vanilla ice cream and caramel apple sauce as well as a chocolate mousse made with Calvados, an apple liqueur. I was in an absolute food coma at the end and I will absolutely be returning with my Paris friends before I leave!

Dining in the dark

Last Thursday I took a small pilgrimage to rue Cler, the street where my parents and I stayed the last time I was in Paris. I don't have any reason to go anywhere near that area so it was out of my way but I met up with Jen, who has class nearby, and walked around. We visited the Ecole Militaire (France's military school since the time of Louis XV), the restaurant Aux Marmites d'Agnes where my family ate (unfortunately it was closed until dinner time so I couldn't show Agnes the picture of her with my family), and the Hotel Londres Eiffel where we stayed. What a blast from the past. I didn't remember most of the area but certain stores jogged my memory and I had crazy flashbacks to almost 8 years ago!

In front of the Ecole Milita

rue Cler - already has its Christmas lights up!

The hotel where we stayed oh so many years ago

Agnes wasn't home :( But I had to commemorate the moment anyway!

That night I had, hands down, the most unique experience of my life. It's completely impossible to do the meal justice, but I'm going to try very hard to! My friend Connie turned 20 yesterday, and for her birthday she wanted very badly to try a restaurant called Dans le Noir ("In the Dark"). The concept of the restaurant, which started in Paris and has been copied around the world, is that you eat completely in the dark. COMPLETELY. The wait staff are all blind, so they teach you how to navigate the room and are the only people really qualified in the slightest to be serving food in the pitch black! They have only one seating for brunch, lunch and dinner, so we made our reservation early. We arrived and were told to put all of our belongings in a locker and wait in the bar area with the other guests (lighted room). A host came around and took our "orders," except by order, he meant whether we wanted 2, 3 or the full 5 course meal. You don't get to choose your food. You don't get to know what your food is! We decided to go for the entree, main course and dessert. After ordering, the six of us lined up in front of a black curtain, where we were greeted by our server Sarah. She instructed us to put a hand on the shoulder of the girl in front of us, took the leader by the hand and led us into the darkness! I'm not exaggerating when I say it's the blackest black I have ever experienced. There was absolutely no difference between when my eyes were open or closed! She seated us at a table and told us she'd be back with the entree. The first few minutes was absolutely terrifying and my brain was literally having a panic attack while the rational part of me was trying to calm it down. One of the girls started crying! But we all realized that it was going to be like this for 2 hours so we had to get used to it :) There were no concessions made in terms of drinks - if we wanted water, we were given a carafe and glasses and told to pour it ourselves, like usual! The trick is to put a finger in the glass to feel when you've reached the top. By the end of the meal, we were pros! Conversation was very different because we couldn't use visual cues to tell when someone was done with a thought and kept interrupting each other. Or, we couldn't tell who was talking to who. My sense of hearing was so enhanced that I had trouble focusing on the person I wanted to. Our entree was delivered, and we tentatively tried to use forks and knives. That approach was quickly abandoned in favor of our fingers, which helped us to know what it was we might be putting in our mouths... The chef had put three items on the plate with various temperatures and textures, so with each bite we would comment and try to guess what we were eating. It turns out we had a roasted fig stuffed with goat cheese and honey, salmon and cucumber rolled in zucchini like a sushi roll, and a "vol au vent" - a puff pastry shell with sauteed shallots on top. The main dish ("plat") was a whole other adventure! We quickly determined it was fish, from the smell and the taste/texture, but debate raged over the type. There was something we thought was mashed potatoes, sauteed mushrooms were a given, there was a crusted potato thing and mussels or oysters of some kind. It turns out we had salmon with saffron-oyster sauce, pureed zucchini with coriander and lime and mushrooms in a meat sauce. Dessert was much easier to identify: pear sorbet, lemon tart, meringue cookie and a crumble of some kind. Turns out it was squash! By the end of the meal, I had gotten much more comfortable with the situation but it was still uncomfortable. I feel like throughout the night, although we had been laughing and talking, our brains were quietly freaking out! We did have some good times picking our noses in unison and other very mature behaviors, because we were completely hidden - except for the infrared camera that was watching the room! The poor guy who had to watch that all night definitely got a show... We didn't discover what we had eaten until after we had been led, squinting and rubbing our eyes, back into the bar. There was a book prepared with photos and descriptions of the food, but our host quizzed us first to see how close we were. The debate raged, and we still didn't believe him on some of the dishes. Squash?? Really?? All in all, it was an experience I'm very glad to have had but I don't think I need to repeat. Although the food was very good, it wasn't spectacular (and NOT cheap). However, it did spark some philosophical conversation about what it would be like to be blind. I would highly recommend it if you have the opportunity - I think there's one in San Francisco and LA - but it's probably a good idea to have a glass of wine before and during the meal to keep the panic attacks to a minimum :)

Me, Maddie, Connie, Emily, Kristen and Tenny

Birthday girl!

Meet my friends!

I have had a request from the parentals to specifically identify the people I talk about in my blog so they can pick them out in photos! So here goes... Tenny: My roommate, originally from Palo Alto (went to Gunn High!). She's taking a "gap semester" before starting at UC Berkeley as a bio major in spring semester. Connie: 3rd year Cultural Studies major at Columbia College in Chicago, originally from Detroit/Ann Arbor. Will be spending next semester at University of East London! Maddie: 4th year International Studies major at University of Georgia, originally from Nashville. Has a German boyfriend who she met while he was studying at UGA, now she gets to visit him here! Jen: 4th year International Studies major at UC San Diego, originally from around Pasadena. I had coffee with her before the school year ended last spring and I adore her! She's taking class at the Sorbonne instead of the Catho so we have to plan around conflicting schedules Dorene: 4th year Environmental Systems/Economics major at UC San Diego, originally from the LA area. She's a member of Delta Delta Delta at UCSD and actually talked to me during rush last year! She's here with a different program but we're in the same fashion class and we stared at each other for a while before realizing how we knew each other!

And VOILA! From left, me, Tenny, Jen, Connie and Maddie! I love these girls

More art. More food.

After a successful oral presentation on the history of French pastries, Thursday marked another delightful excursion with my fabulous friend (and fellow UCSD student - small world!) Jen. She and I have become good friends over the past month and a half, facilitated greatly by our shared love of yummy desserts and long conversation :) In Parisian gourmet lore, much ado is made about the hot chocolate at Angelina's, an historic salon de the on the rue Rivoli just across the street from the Jardin de Tuileries and a block from the Louvre. We decided to make it our dessert date for the week and had a joyful reunion after being away on our respective vacations for a week. Anyway, after a long walk from Notre Dame to the restaurant, we made it inside just as it began to rain. Yay Paris. Luckily there was no wait to be seated, so we sat down in the beautiful dining room dating from 1901. Ornate gold molding and wall murals abounded! We told our waitress that we wanted to split a pot of hot chocolate and a dessert, and she quite rudely spat back that if we were splitting hot chocolate, we each had to order a dessert. When we didn't have a second order ready, she stormed away and said she would come back when we decided. When she came back, she literally stormed away from the table after writing down our order. We sat there SHOCKED but almost chuckling at the absurdity of it all, and then Jen almost did start outright laughing when she returned with our order and - I am not exaggerating this in the slightest - SLAMMED our cups and plates and food on to the table, stuffed the check under a plate, and stormed away. You'd think she had better things to do :) But besides the atrocious service, the hot chocolate was indeed the stuff legends are made of! It was less intensely dark than the one Jen and I had at Christian Constant, but we also had whipped cream to add to it so I'm sure that made a difference. However, all in all, the price, the hike and the super accommodating service makes it probably a one-time stop in my Parisian life :P Friday was a great day for exercising my legs and my brain, and of course eating to offset the intense calorie burning! I started off the morning by walking to the Centre Pompidou in the Marais, which takes a little more than a half hour and is an essentially straight shot from my apartment past the Sorbonne, across the Seine to Notre Dame, past Hotel de Ville (Paris' city hall) and into the heart of the Marais. Even I couldn't get lost - although I might actually call my sense of direction "decent" after all of my walking for the past couple of months.

The view down the Seine from the bridge to Notre Dame (you can see it on the left)

A view of Ile-St-Louis in the middle of the Seine

I met Connie at the entrance to the museum and we there right when it opened - no crowds! The best part is now that I have my Catho student ID, I get in free to all the permanent exhibits at essentially all museums in Paris! Sweet deal :) My experience in the Pompidou completely solidified in my mind that I don't like modern art. I find it hard to appreciate canvases painted in one solid color, and I often find it disturbing to watch videos of naked women mud wrestling. However, there were rooms with Matisse and Picasso that were a lot of fun to see, because I actually think they made art! Connie and I passed two school groups taking tours in the museum, one from an elementary school and one from a high school, and we discussed how great it was to see art education beginning so early. It's a shame that we miss out on a lot of that in American schools, due to budget cuts as well as just I think less of an emphasis on the arts. Two hours was totally sufficient to feel like I had seen the museum, and it was the perfect time to set out in search of more falafel.

Picasso!

Matisse!

Connie and I met up with my friend from fashion class, Dorene (who is a senior at UCSD who I met during rush my sophomore year!) and decided to try the other "best falafel in Paris" at L'As du Falafel (The Ace of Falafel). It's essentially next door to Chez Hannah and we had to compare the two. We sat down inside, avoiding the long line at the window, and ordered falafel special sandwiches. I had a little heart attack when I saw the HUGE pita stuffed with red and white cabbage, tomatoes, fried eggplant, tomatoes, tahini and a big handful of FALAFEL BALLS! There's no way to describe it other than heaven, so I'll let the pictures do the talking. It was a tie between here and Chez Hannah in my mind, although I didn't have the sandwich at Chez Hannah so it wasn't a scientific comparison :P Either one, you can't lose! We decided to investigate the Jewish bakeries on the same street, which alongside croissants and baguettes sold strudel, bagels, rugelach, and all sorts of other Jewish delights. Obviously, we had to pick some goodies up for dessert. I didn't fully realize the crazy mix of people who live and work in the Marais until today, when we passed by a gay bar, an Orthodox Jewish man and his sons, a falafel stand, and an exclusive and expensive tea salon in literally a span of 5 minutes. Just another sign of hope that we really can all coexist! It's definitely my favorite area of Paris, there's so much diversity in restaurants, sights and shopping that it would be impossible to do everything I want to. On Saturday, Connie and I made a date for afternoon tea at Mariage Freres, a Parisian institution and world-famous for its teas. They have a few tea salons throughout the city and many upscale restaurants serve their products, but of course we chose the one in the Marais! We walked through the store to get to the salon, passing by floor-to-ceiling displays of hundreds of varieties of tea, tea paraphernelia, books and candies and jams made with tea. The dining room was beautiful, decorated in an Art Deco style with pale yellow walls, palm fronds and antique posters advertising travel to Africa and other exotic destinations. The waiters (all male) were quite classy in ALL white - starched suits, shirts, bow ties and gloves! In the background, a tea "barista" stood behind a bar and churned out perfectly brewed pots of tea for the waiters to bring to their customers. Connie and I each decided to order Tea Time, which came with a pot of tea of our choice and an assortment of desserts and pastries. Choosing a tea was harder than it sounds - the tea menu took up five pages of tiny print (see left)! I finally settled on Fall in Love, a black tea with vanilla. Let's just say I definitely did fall in love when it arrived, already perfectly brewed and at that all-important temperature that won't burn your tongue but still is hot :) To our delight, we then received a plate with miniatures of a madeleine, financier, macaron, creme brulee and panna cotta. They would have been great anyway, but all of Mariage Frere's pastries are made with some kind of tea; that means our madeleine was Earl Grey, our financier was green tea, our macaron was some kind of rose, and the creme brulee and panna cotta were also infused with the flavor and scent of a Mariage Freres tea. Connie is a total foodie too, so we had a fun time guessing each flavor! All in all it was quite a splurge but completely worth it - I could get used to a life that allowed for fancy afternoon tea every day with my friends :) We broke character, however, when we noticed that the two men next to us who had ordered the full brunch had left a WHOLE SCONE on one of their bread plates. That is seriously one of my pet peeves - that scone probably cost literally 4 euros! When we got up to leave, Connie casually snagged it and handed it off outside. Let's just say I enjoyed a cup of tea and a warm, delicious scone with pumpkin jam this morning :) Today I'm spending a lazy Sunday catching up on writing my film paper and TV shows. Last night a group of us went out with one of the girls' French friends to a bar and then a dance club, but since the French don't eat dinner until 8 they don't even leave the house on Saturday nights until 11 - and when I left to go home at 2:30 I met with much joking disapproval. I think sleep ranks a little higher in my book :) But it was absolutely hilarious to hear the music at the club, ranging from (I'm not joking) Sweet Home Alabama and the Macarena to the Black Eyed Peas and techno. Who would've guessed? It's getting very cold now, especially for this California girl, so I'm definitely finding more ways to stay inside and letting myself splurge more often on a hot cup of coffee and a croissant. I think it's worth it :)