Picnics in Paris

The whole concept of springtime in Paris is a bit overrated, for the very good reason that it doesn't really exist.  Seriously, one day it's winter, and the next thing you know we've skipped right on through to summer.  Well, whatever - the important thing to know is that as soon as it's warm enough, it's picnic season!  My friend Southern Belle was in town a couple of weeks ago and we made an attempt at the first picnic of the year - it wasn't particularly amazing food-wise (see photo below), but since it was the 16th of March and we were still wearing coats, it wasn't a bad attempt!

However, today it was sunny and 24 Celcius and I met up with English Rose to kick off the picnic season properly.  She has the same kind of part-time work hours as I do, and we agreed that the only real benefit to being so poor and under-employed is the freedom to spend random weekday afternoons in the park (beside the Louvre, I might add), enjoying the sunshine while more gainfully employed people are stuck in the office.  Of course, this is the only kind of dining out that we can actually afford to do in Paris, so just let us have our little moment of smugness, okay?

Picnic #1 - bottle of wine and bag of chips. Not quite gourmet, but still delicious!

Picnic #2 - much more respectable, and even a few healthy items.  No wine, but that was only because of our hangovers from the day before...

Slightly misplaced generation

Okay, wait a minute - how exactly did it get to be the end of September already???  I thought the craziness of summer in Paris was going to die down a bit as we eased into autumn, but looking at my calendar, I realize that I have been to 17 social events in the past 27 days - no wonder I've been such a...how to put it?... slightly erratic correspondent, shall we say? 

But I have a theory about what's going on here - my circle of expat friends in Paris is all very Lost Generation: we have no money but we somehow manage to go out (hence the summer of picnics - relaxing in a park with a bottle of wine and a baguette is one of the cheapest and nicest things to do in Paris), we drink far too much, most of us are creative in one way or another, and we hang out together all the time.  But there is good reason for this - when your friends are expats, you never know how long they'll be here, because Paris is very expensive and can be difficult, and for one reason or another, people leave.  In just the past few months, Chica Libre (who writes the great blog of the same name, look for the link on the right side of this page) has moved to New York; Bronx Girl has gone back to Los Angeles; and the Southern Belle (previously known in this blog as Miss RA, but this nickname is better) headed off to Italy.  And as wonderful as it is to have them as friends wherever they are, it sucks that they're not still here.  So I think the moral here is to appreciate the people you're with, because you never know when they just might not be around anymore.  Or it could just be an excuse for us to all drink more wine...

Sunset picnics

The view from last night's picnic on the Solferino bridge.   Yes, yes, I know you hate me - I believe you may have mentioned that once or twice already...

Picnic, Paris-style

Summer is finally here in Paris and I decided to celebrate the great weather with some expat friends and a picnic in the Parc Montsouris (a lovely park a little off the beaten track, highly recommended).  The photo below is of our picnic spread, which was all very lovely and even moderately healthy.  This, however, does not show you all the factors involved:

a) our picnic was only for four girls

b) there were four bottles of wine (only three are pictured because we remembered the last bottle just before we left and knocked it back faster than Romans at an orgy.  Oh yes, we're a classy bunch.)

c) the lovely Miss M also brought along a delightful little apero that very closely tasted like a mango smoothie, unless of course you factor in that about half of it was vodka 

d) the lovely Miss M lives very near the park and although one of our group sensibly departed after the picnic, the other three of us went to Miss M's house and drank another blenderful of the mango vodka smoothie things as well as two or three more bottles of wine

And that, gentle readers, is why you haven't heard from me for a few days - the picnic was on Friday and my subsequent ruin lasted all the way through Saturday and a little bit of yesterday.  It didn't stop me from attending three more social occasions this weekend but it did stop me from being able to string a coherent sentence together!  My apologies, but I will try to post every single day this week to make it up to you.  Just as long as there isn't another picnic, I should be fine...

Thoughts on wine

I like wine.  There are just no two ways about it: I like wine.  But as a single person, sometimes you just want to have a glass of wine at home (I particularly enjoy it when I am writing, for example, and I can totally understand why so many writers are alcoholics), but if you get a whole bottle the temptation is always to have a second glass.  Maybe a third.  Oh hell, might as well just finish the bottle. Not good.

It seems that in most countries, wine bottles come in either the single-glass size, which is always expensive for 250ml, or the normal bottle, which always works out to be cheaper.  But in France, you can buy wine in any possible size variation and price point you can possibly think of.  Genius.  I truly thought I had seen it all, but the 250ml size packaged like juice boxes?  Genius!!!  I am just waiting for the weather to get better again to try those out and I will report back.  In the meantime, let me just share this little gem with you (something I discovered two weeks ago when the weather here was fantastic).  You can buy this little bottle of white for €0.75 and it's plastic - so you can put it in the freezer and take it with you frozen solid to drink with your little picnic.  I wouldn't really drink it otherwise (I'm not saying it tastes like drain cleaner, but then again I have never drunk drain cleaner), but on a hot day, drinking it as an icy-cold wine slushie is completely fantastic.  Don't judge me - I work part-time, sometimes I have to make my own fun at lunchtime!