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Tue, September 7

Jetlagged...

It was way too short. J and I left for Paris last Wednesday, and arrived on Thursday morning. That automatically kills half the day. We had enough energy to check in to our hotel, which was a cute little place in the Latin Quarter (the "student" area of Paris, that caters to the Universities there). We had a clean, tiny room, with two french windows and a balcony. The building across from us was so close, we could see what the attractive neighbors across from us were having for dinner each night...But basically, we just liked spying on them because the woman was hot and the guy had a great body. We even saw a twenty-something loungin on his couch eating a sandwich, wearing a T shirt and nothing else. All the lights were on! There wasn't much "to see" but occasionally he'd rest his hand on his balls while the other hand fed himself the sandwich. There was also a big cat that watched us from his perch on a little table in another apartment across the way, and his owner, a very old woman, occasionally teased him with string. J liked to tease that there was "a big fat pussy just staring at us through the window, just out there, staring." It took me a moment not to slap him (I thought perhaps he was having some fantasy about the hot neighbor, watching us), and realize he was joking, and referring to the cat. The balcony also served for some great spitting contests too. Romantic, no? But let's leave this balcony scene and talk about the rest of Paris...

One restaurant we ate at only printed its menu on a chalkboard. Sadly, my semester abroad did not prepare me for comprehending the haute french cuisine before us...(On my student budget my Junior year, I had survived on bread and cheese, and occasionally some sort of salad.) J and I barely escaped from ordering veal brains (the Australian girl at the table next to us told us she had made that mistake), and I actually enjoyed my plate of sardines on a frisee salad. I knew that "canard" was duck, so my order was delicious.

People smoke like fiends in Europe and I always forget this. We've been blessed with those great new no-smoking laws in NY, so it was really hard to be around chain smokers all the time. This, my friends, is the secret to the french being thin. We actually witnessed two women with impossibly long torsos, lounging in a park by the Seine, get approached by an extremely buff, tanned and moppy haired french guy...He offered them melon and they refused, happier to puff on their cigarettes. Either their standards are super high (they were somewhat attractive, but not really--just super thin); or, they couldn't stand the thought of a refreshing melon on a hot day, interfering with their enjoyment of a smoke.

Another enigma, was that between the hours of 6-10:30pm, barely anyone ate dinner in restaurants. Yes, there were hordes of people in the restaurants during the dinner hours, but they were just drinking kirs, and beer and wine. And kitchens in all the non-touristy places closed at 10:30!!! Please explain? We think that they must eat big meals during the day, and just sandwiches or something small at night. Our hypothesis.

The best meal was at a little restaurant called Fish, that we happened upon during one of our many walks (we took a subway only once, and that was because there was no way we could walk from Le Marais to the Arc de Triomphe in less than two hours, and time was limited). We attempted to eat there each night, but each night we were turned away for one reason or another. On our last night, we decided to go early, and skip our routine nap before dinner. We got to the restaurant, at 7:00, and sighed with relief: only two tables were taken. When we asked for a table, the girl said, "Sorry, we're totally full." What? (And then I remembered years ago, on Spring Break in the Loire Valley with Michele, where the inhabitants of the little town we were in were like, 20 people in all, and the restuarant we walked into refused to seat us without a reservation. One man was eating there. One.) J told them of our devoted attempts at trying to eat there our whole vacation, and remarkably, they seated us. As we ate the bread they put on the table, we chewed and wondered why it tasted so familiar. Then we saw the waitress run across the street to pick up bread from a shop there...and guess what the shop's name was? Cosi! Cosi bread- like the food chain!!! Who knew it was in Paris too?

Another interesting thing I noticed about Paris is the really hot guy with the ho-hum girlfriend phenomonon. There are just scores of good looking men, walking with their arms around frumpy, plain, dirty-haired women. It actually made us do some double takes (come on, don't we all size up couples we see on the street and decide who is the more attractive one, of if they are both equally so?) I think it is because everyone in Paris wants to be in a relationship (shocking, I know), and they look more for someone they can have fun with, rather than the most appealing eye candy in the store. So you don't get the New York phenomenon of banker-bellied, greasy-haired upper east side boys with model-like girlfriends--the guys who never settle because there could be an even prettier woman who would date them and let him take her to Nobu.

The best parts of the trip were just walking around, and really getting a feel for the layout of the city. We walked EVERYWHERE. And by the end of those three days (Paris is really small if you think about it), it felt like our neighborhood. The weather was clear blue skies, warm, no humidity, every single day. We spent a lot of time throwing our chests over the ledges of bridges and admiring the views of the water below and seeing the cheezy tourists pass by in cheezy tourist boatrides. (I couldn't resist: Against J's protesting, I waved back to the pale guy in the flower print shirt with the large Nikon camera, as he waved at "real french people sitting along the Seine doing french things!)

Then, looking up at the ornate architecture all around us, sturdy, and built with such attention to detail. The way I feel walking through the Village, or Chelsea, when I look up at apartments and on each block I can say, "God I'd love to live there...and there...or there"--that is ALL of Paris. Every building has its own charm.

On our last night, we ran through the darker, narrower streets looking for cool posters to pry out from their plexi frames and take home. J scored some really cool ones for us (I was the lookout guy).

We escaped with only one minor fight...And it was because of a dressing room incident. No, not that kind of incident. I knew J was trying things on in the men's section of Zara, so I took oh, say, 13 items to try on in the women's dressing rooms in the mean time. Well, for women, trying on clothes is a time warp. Hours can pass, and you wouldn't think it was more than five minutes. Needless to say, my "mean time" resulted in J spending half an hour looking for me in the store, going upstairs, downstairs, outside and getting more and more frustrated. He thought we probably kept missing each other as each one searched for the other. When he finally realized that I might possibly be trying on clothes STILL, he came to the dressing room. I had no idea so much time had gone by.

"What do you think of this skirt? I have something like it, but I have it in pink, and this is khaki, with a belt. I know, it is the end of summer and I should be thinking fall wardrobe but..."

at which point I realized there was practically smoke coming out his ears, and he told me he he'd been pacing the store as our short time in Paris was being eaten up in Zara. Note: Even in the best of relationships, even if you are dating a metro-sexual (yes J, you are), too much time spent in a dressing room is something one must always be mindful of. And he minded.

But we made up by the time we'd walked ten blocks.

No one wants to hear about the mushy romantic stuff right? Good. Then I gave the audience what they needed.

So those are some Paris snippets. I am so tired and jet lagged (we got home yesterday at 1:30 pm), I am still on Paris time, and my run tonight took everything out of me...I will upload photos to go with this entry, cuz we took some cool pictures. Not one of them is, "Me and J in front of the Eiffel Tower," or "Me and J sitting side by side in a cafe." So don't worry, they will be fun.

Posted by lexzog at September 7, 2004 10:00 PM

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