Dans les Rues de Paris - Le Printemps

My parents have called me Bug for as long as I can remember. My first birthday cake was in the shape of a ladybug, and when my Dad needs help with something, he usually calls out to me, "Hey Bug, can you get me that dish towel?" It's how it's always been.

So it was most definitely a good omen that this lovely Parisian ladybug - coccinelle- was hanging out near Place des Vosges on rue Pas de la Mule.

Copain saw her first:

She was stuck on a fence, so he took her to the park...

Where she flew away into a tree...where she would be happier.

Our walk continued to the Seine...

Where all the Parisians had flown to - because it was happier in the sun, near the water, the bikers, the roller bladers, and the trees, just starting to blossom for spring.

Happy

All I can think about is scratching the upper half of my back, right below my neck. Why, you may ask-

Because I have a sunburn! A SUNBURN!

Normally, I would not be proud of this news. The girl who wears SPF 45 face cream every single day of the year, the one who recently invested in a wide-brimmed sun hat...

BUT - after 6 months of nothing but cold, rain, sleet and snow, I am ROCKIN this sunburn.

Parisians are finally alive again! I walked around my quartier in ballerines and leggings, enjoying the vide grenier, wishing I could buy this set of dishes and that old telephone from the fifties, then I plopped on a patch of grass read my book at Place des Vosges. It was such an amazingly sunny day that I  officially declared it "OK to Have Two Ice Creams Day".  As I meandered from the 11th to the Marais, I made sure that every street I walked on was sunny.

I also got right down to celebrating OK to Have Two Ice Creams Day - my first ice cream was mango, banana and coconut in a bowl, and my second was speculoos, chocolate chip and rhum raisin in a cone. Ahh, bliss.

I didn't even care that the kids playing in fountains were probably going to get some strange mutating diseases - part of me wanted to jump in and splash right along with them. 

Some American tourists were sitting behind me on the grass talking about their plan for the day. One turned to the other and said, "Everyone is just so happy."

Exactly - that's exactly right.

Easter Weekend NOT in Chartres

Never on top of planning our long weekends, it was only last night that Copain and I decided that maybe we should take a Saturday day trip and get out of Paris for Easter.

We brainstormed a few choices - Fontainebleau (but I've already been there), Giverny - where we would bike from the train station in Vernon to Monet's house and beautiful garden, or Chartres - a supposedly charming little town with a very large cathedral. 

We decided on Giverny with the bike ride being the main attraction but when we called Monet's house and the dame started talking about large crowds and lignes d'attente, Copain called Belle Mère who advised us to avoid the crowds and go to Chartres.

It was 9am - the train was leaving at 10.33 from the Gare Montparnasse. We totally had enough time.  But then I had to use our new epilator on my legs so I could wear a dress. And by the time that was done, I still had to put on the dress and do my makeup.  By the time we left the house we were running to Metro line 1 with only 35 minutes to get from chez nous to la gare.  Oh la la - yeah. oops.

We were thinking positively - we even made a no-fighting pact for the day - things were looking up. Line 1, Line 4 (complete with THE SMELLIEST HOMELESS DUDE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD - I almost dry heaved). Then BAM - Gare Montparnasse!  We had already come to the conclusion that we wouldn't have time to buy tickets and that we would have to do so once on board. No biggie. We ran through the gare, up the escaliers, jumping over suitcases and herds of new tourists just arriving in gay Paris. Three minutes to go...

We spotted quai 20 and ran towards it just as the bell started to ring! Copain asked the cheery SNCF worker if we could purchase tickets on board to which he answered by shaking his head - Non. 

Super.

Never one to follow the sort of rules put in place by the SNCF (or the RATP for that matter), Copain ran down the quai, prepared to jump onboard anyways.  But then we stopped in our tracks - the train was PACKED. When I say packed, I mean, all seats were full and people were standing packed in like sardines in the common area between the cars.  Every. single. car. 

We gave up. We laughed - we had made it just in time- but we would not be going to Chartres. 

As we walked through the gare deciding what to do with our day, we realized that it was ridiculous to try and leave Paris without a pre-paid ticket on a holiday weekend. The rest of Paris had decided to do the same thing and it was everything but a holiday on that train.  We decided to do only things we had never done in Paris for the day and here is what we did...

We walked down rue de Maine and found a very cool bonsai store - one of them was selling for 1400 Euros. That is some serious zen.

Then we stopped in at the Montparnasse cemetery where the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and Samuel Becket are buried...

We walked all the way to Avenue de General Leclerc, past the metro Alesia (where I popped into a store to check out summer dresses - no luck).  We walked all the way down the Porte d'Orleans and then crossed in front of the impressive Cité Universitaire ...

This is one of the oldest houses on the campus (nothing like the craphole I lived in when I first arrived in Toulouse - scary Chapou!!)

Finally we went to Franprix and bought a picnic complete with baguette, ham, chèvre cheese, grated carrot salad and frozen fruit (my favorite!) for dessert.  We found a nice little bench at the Parc Montsouris (and it was such a beautiful day that I didn't even mind that much when I snagged by dress on a nail in the bench and ripped a hole right in the butt). 

This was our lovely park view - with Spring in full effect- as we enjoyed lunch...

ducklings!

fish!

calm

little girls in Easter hats, little boys in capri pants, parents on picnic blankets

We decided that (despite public opinion)  Paris is a great place to be for Easter - and that we will probably never try to leave Paris again on a holiday weekend. Better to let everyone else leave so that we can enjoy the city - all to ourselves. 

  

Cannoise Mini-Break for a Parisienne

I was in Cannes last weekend, celebrating my friend's bday on the lovely, warm, vacation-feeling Côte d'Azur.  It was everything you would want in a weekend, including but not limited to:

-lunch with beer
-napping on the beach until we realized our faces were turning into raspberries
-a performance I could sing along to (The Sundown Sisters!)
-dancing at Ladies Night until 4am (Merci to T for playing what he considers crap just for our listening and bootay-shaking pleasure)
-staying during after-hours to talk about everything and nothing with girlfriends
-pasta with parm at 5am
-bed at 6am
-girlfriend shopping in Nice (SPREE!!)
-sushi
-Franky's beach hut lunch
-birthday millefeuilles
-going out tops, dresses and heels - dangly earrings - hairspray - smokey eyes
-movie night (ps - 27 Dresses is not that great)
-good red wine
-lots of vanilla ice cream (with honey on top! Childhood fave)
-sleeping in the Cannet where I woke up every morning to birds chirping and a view of the Med...

In addition to realizing how much I miss my Anglo girls, visiting made me miss the safety and calm of Cannes - two things that are hard to come by on a regular basis in Paris.  I must have said at least ten times that Paris is stressful and that I have just gotten over my bataille with winter.   As my friend L and I were doing our makeup in the bathroom for birthday fun and Ladies Night we noticed that we were basically two-toned...as in she was tan and I was...not.

After about 30 minutes under the Cannes sun, we noticed later that night that my face was literally a tomato - bright red - made worse by the fact that the sun had somehow missed my neck. (Tomato on a popsicle stick?)

When I put on my "going out outfit" it took awhile to feel comfortable.  In Paris I do all that I can to fondre dans la foule (fade into the crowd) - for safety reasons if nothing else (what if I have to run through the metro?! I can't be wearing heels! Yes, my dad was a cop).  But in Cannes, the sky's the limit! Heels, earrings, hot pants - Cannoise style.  It was fun to play dress up after a year of fading...

And while it was hard to say goodbye to the mini-holiday in a place that I used to call home (all 56 meters squared of it), it was also nice to see Copain waiting for me at the Gare de Lyon...my favorite train station in Paris.  As we walked home, I was happy to be back- with chatter on terraces, a warm Spring night and my bed waiting for me in our teeny, tiny chez-nous.

I Love Paris in the Springtime

It's getting warmer in Paris - so warm that I can wear ballerina shoes with no socks.  When I leave work it's still daylight and all I want to do is walk around Paris or stop on a terrace for a drink and some people watching.

Tonight Copain couldn't join me so I meandered home along the rue de Rivoli toute seule, stopping in stores, window shopping for summer shoes and enjoying the mild weather that feels oh-so-nice after a cold,  dreary winter.

Even though I'm feeling under the weather (runny nose, headache, tired) - this good weather makes me so happy to be in Paris (the Amorino ice cream I treated myself to may have also done the trick:-)).

I'd never lived through a Parisian winter - the kind that everyone warned me about...I didn't know that it would lead to a bataille against unrelenting fatigue, perpetual dark circles under my eyes and all-around hideousness.  Now I understand how excited the Parisians get when the weather turns warm.  We all finally look alive again.

Not only do our faces brighten, but the clothing does too.  The corals, turquoises and purples are alive and well in the Spring collections making my head-to-toe black ensembles look downright depressing.

Where I'm not at all looking forward to the swamp ass that is surely in my June, July and August future, this new sunlight is definitely la bienvenue.