Photos from the Camargue (Part 2)

I did tell you bulls were a big thing around here...

Busy, busy, busy

Has it really been a week?  Gentle readers, I do apologize for my neglect, I truly had every intention of keeping up with this blog during my travels, but I just never seemed to have time (last week) or internet (this weekend).  It's all been somewhat crazed - I was in London on Tuesday through Thursday for work, but still managed to see a few friends for lunches, dinners and (of course) cocktails.  Got back with just enough time to unpack my suitcase and re-pack it for the mystery trip with my Paris office, which involved me having to be at the Gare de Lyon at 7:45 on Friday  morning (a hideous hour for a non-morning-person like me, I do assure you).  We ended up in the Camargue, which is a rather lovely area famed for horses, salt, and bulls.  I know - random.  But it was good fun: beach bbq, horseback riding, scavenger hunt, flamenco dancing, tons of great food (who knew bull stew was so delicious?) and a great deal of lovely wine (which I very much needed, because being with 27 over-excited French people all talking at once isn't exactly my idea of a relaxing weekend).  But sadly, I didn't escape unscathed - I managed to sprain my ankle on Saturday afternoon and spent the rest of the trip hobbling around with it swollen to hilariously cartoonish proportions.  Oh well, at least it wasn't another black eye...

It's a brocante thing (Part 2)

So, gentle readers, yesterday we learned about things you might see at a brocante.  Today is a continuation, along with some handy tips:

1) take cash, it's easier to haggle.

2) try to keep in mind what you need, as opposed to what you want (which will be many things - not good when one is on a budget).  I finally found the perfect wineglasses at this brocante (yes, after three months of making do with the martini glasses I told you about in Apartment, bitches) and restricted myself to those, but if I actually had money to spend?  Dang!

3) if you are a reasonably youthful, moderately attractive female by yourself at a brocante, it may be that the female vendors will be snippy with you, and it may be that the male vendors will try to work some flirting into the haggling.  At a previous brocante, I cheerfully bartered a kiss on the cheek for a few extra peacock feathers (hey, they're expensive!), but I drew the line this time when the guy got a little handsier than necessary when "helping" me try on a necklace.  Just saying...

4) keep your eyes peeled - not only for the cool things around you, but also for people with strollers and tiny dogs - possibly not a tripping hazard for the likes of you, but for anyone as clumsy as Miss K, it's a damn minefield.  

Just a few little tips from me to you, now on with the photos:

The sign is cool enough, but WITH the wooden gorilla looking at it?  Way cooler.

Zillions of teeny-tiny adorable doorknobs. 

Not just books, but books with a big horned animal skull underneath.  Awesome.

Arfully patinated chairs, cool vases, groovy old paintings, pop-art Marilyn AND a little wooden tiger.  Couldn't love it more if I tried.

Love the jaunty sailor painting but REALLY love the totally over-it dog.

Funky tiled table, 4' tall inflatable phone, and freaky puppet head.  No comment.

Very much liked this chest-of-drawers, but REALLY wanted the big metal cheetah.  Ahhh, someday.

Do you see it, at the back, beside the teacups?  A KNIGHT'S HELMET!!!  By the teacups! So. Damn. Cool.

I like these guys, just chillin'.

Putting the giant lion's head on top of the Union Jack stool? Genius. And please note the adorable little dog top of the photo just for added cuteness.

FINALLY!  I can drink wine like a civilized person again - from my €2 glasses, which are crystal, no less!  Worth the wait...

Things you might see in a building

I'm not sure why this building has a giant stone bottle in the lobby, but I like it.  Of course, I'd like it a whole lot better if it was actually filled with wine and came with a giant glass, but you know, that's just me...

Things you might see in a shop

I was in my local supermarket yesterday when I noticed what the guy in front of me was buying (I took it on my phone very quickly, excuse the blurriness): paper napkins, seven bottles of wine, and that really blurry thing on the far left, which you can't quite make out, is a can of whipped cream.  Dude, I like the way you party...

Things you might see from your window

This morning at about 10am, I glanced out my window and saw one of my neighbours across the street starting off the day with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.  Yep, just another day in Paris...

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...

Things you might see on the street

This is a wine shop.  This is a wine shop having a sale.  This is a wine shop having a sale, with a window display that involves...laundry.  Yep, every time I think I've seen the pinnacle of Paris craziness, I see something new.  Laundry in a wine shop window - why?  Whyyyyy???

Tiny Dancer and the furry man-whore

For those of you who are long-time readers of this blog, you may remember my post from last year on the subject of Valentine's Day.  If not, or if you are new here, I am attaching the link: Paris - City of Love. Really?  

So, have things improved for Miss K in the romance department?  Well, let me tell you how I spent Valentine's Day this year.  First, I went for dinner with Tiny Dancer - and you know, she's more delightful than a box of puppies and all that, but she's not a hot man.  Nonetheless, we had a lovely evening - I had been detoxing for nine days and wasn't planning to drink, but Tiny Dancer made the excellent argument that a single girl can't possibly be expected to get through V-Day without the benefit of alcohol, and that surely there is some kind of amnesty granted for such an occasion.  Doesn't that make sense to everyone?  Yes, I thought so too.  So we had pre-dinner aperos, a bottle of wine at dinner, champagne with dessert, and a post-dinner nightcap.  Hee!

And then I went stumbling home to my furry little feline man-whore.   Of course, he doesn't just love me, he'll basically fling himself at anyone who walks into the apartment (hence his reputation as a furry man-whore), but it's still nice to come home to.  And this is the snuggliest cat in the world - you can pick him up any old time and he looooves it.  Most cats would claw your face off if you tried that, and granted, he is a cat and therefore unpredictable (which probably means he'll claw my face off about ten seconds after I write this), but he's still adorable.

Soooo, was this year's Valentine's Day an improvement over last year?  Well, admittedly there were still no hot men romancing me, but a fabulous girly dinner with the awesome Tiny Dancer and then having a furry little feline man-whore snuggle up to me in bed?  Hell yeah - definite improvement!

Fried. Turkey. Parts.

Was this what we had for the redneck Thanksgiving?  Alas, no (but it's such a great title, I couldn't waste it).  Mr and Mrs Redneck had originally planned to deep-fry some turkey parts, since their apartment here in Paris doesn't have an oven, but they went with pre-cooked poultry and just heated it up.   Although, quite honestly, I'm amazed that any of us could eat our main meal considering that the pre-dinner snacks consisted of: nuts, olives, chips, popcorn, veggies and dip, two kinds of sausage, five kinds of cheese, and a five-layer Tex Mex dip.  Then there was: turkey, cranberry sauce, creamed corn, regular corn, macaroni and cheese, mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing and a cranberry jello salad sort of thing (which was actually much nicer than the jello salads I used to encounter when I was growing up in swamp country, so clearly, rednecks are a step up the culinary ladder from swamp trash like me!).

I was so busy cramming my face with food that I didn't even manage to drink all that much wine, but not to worry - Mr and Mrs Redneck are having another party tomorrow afternoon, which will be followed by a visit to the Paris Wine Show.  Yikes - you just know that's not going to end well for my liver...

Oww, my head...and liver...

How is it that a quiet little mid-afternoon shopping trip turned into an evening of debauchery?  I met Tiny Dancer at 3pm yesterday to pick up a few things we needed for our Halloween costumes and then we went to meet The Redhead and another friend at a café, where we all drank non-alcoholic beverages (honestly, that does occasionally happen).  Then we stopped by The Redhead's place to just have one glass of wine.  Aaaaaand that's where it all went to hell - we finished that bottle, drank another, and had started on a third when we decided to go to Tiny Dancer's place for dinner.  And along the way, we thought it would be a good idea to purchase another three bottles of wine.  I'm not entirely sure how many of those we actually got through, but judging by the size of my hangover this morning, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say we drank most of it.  Ahh, just another Wednesday night in Paris...

Just another Friday night

Right this very minute, I am sitting in a cafe, waiting on some friends and sipping a glass of wine. And the Moulin Rouge is right in front of me - I just thought I would share that.

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...

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...

From busy to bored

Okay, I know you're not allowed to be bored when you live in Paris.  I know.  It's a wonderland of art, culture, beauty, cuisine, wine, architecture, urban planning, fashion, etc, etc, and people would sell their right kidney to be living here and I don't know how lucky I am, blahblahblah.  Okay, really:  I freakin' KNOW, people!

However, what I didn't know when I moved here is about the plethora of public holidays - today is the third one this month and as it falls on a Thursday, many people have taken the entire week off.  And in addition to nearly everything being shut today, most things are shut tomorrow as well, as a "bridge" to the weekend.  So, to recap: pretty much everyone I know is out of town, everything is closed and the weather is CRAP.  

So forgive me my boredom - yes, even here in Paris.  There is no one to call as they're all away, there's nothing to do as everything is shut, and I have already spent all goddamn winter walking all over this city, so forgive me if the thought of yet another ramble in the freezing cold (in MAY, no less!) doesn't thrill me to my very marrow.  I suppose I could have spent a productive day catching up on things, but instead I have chosen to sulk, eat, sulk, read, sulk, and drink wine.  Remember how I said that once you open the bottle, the temptation is to just go ahead and finish it?  Well, I stand by that and I must add that it also really helps the sulking process, in case you were wondering.   Let's all just pray for some sun tomorrow, that's all I ask...

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!

Brunch - expat style

I mentioned last time that I went to a party on Saturday night - it was a delightful occasion at which I met many lovely people. It was also an occasion at which I drank a disgraceful amount of champagne and staggered home at 4am (for those of you keeping score at home, yes, that is indeed twice in two weeks that such a thing has happened), but that was okay, because one of the lovely people I had met invited me for brunch on the Sunday. Ahhh, brunch - I had visions of a hangover-friendly, Canadian-style brunch dancing through my inebriated head - juice, caffeinated beverages, eggs, sausages, bacon, toast, things like that. Is that what I got? Not so much...

We were meant to meet there at 12:30, so I rolled out of bed at about 11:30 (looking and feeling like something the cat had vomited up) and got myself together, which was relatively easy since I was still wearing my make-up from the night before - yes, I am just pure class. Got on the Metro and got a seat. Okay, not so bad, I might get there without throwing up or my head exploding. And then.... the mariachi band got on and started playing. No, I am not kidding and that is not some sort of euphemism - two guys playing sax and trumpet along with a very loud boombox. There are often musicians on the Paris Metro and I probably could have dealt with a nice gentle bit of accordion music, but a freakin' brass section??? (And the weirdest music selection ever - "When The Saints Come Marching In", followed by "Hava Nagila" - wtf?) It was only a few stops but it was the looooongest trip of my life.

Finally I was at Bastille and started walking toward the brunch venue, when suddenly I spied a McDonald's (those of you who know me will be aware of my firm conviction that the only help for a hangover is a Big Mac and fat Coke), and even though I was already on my way to eat, I decided that it was a medical emergency and I had to have it. Good thing, too, because when I arrived at the brunch venue, it was not a cafe. Or a restaurant. It was a wine and oyster bar. Yes, wine and oysters. Take a moment to imagine yourself nauseated beyond belief, with an absolutely crushing hangover, and finding yourself surrounded by the smells of wine and oysters.


And then imagine yourself meeting what seemed like the entire expat community of Paris in such circumstances - wow, do I know how to make an awesome first impression or what? I could have lit the whole room with the glow from my bloodshot eyes, I could barely string a coherent sentence together, I was thisclose to vomiting the whole time, and I'm quite sure I was still reeking alcohol from every pore. Niiiice. But they were a very jolly group and I actually really enjoyed my afternoon. I will tell you a bit more about them at a later date if I ever see them again (which, see above, doesn't seem all that likely!) as they were an interesting bunch.

I rounded off the day by trudging home so that I could stop along the way for some KFC. What? You thought I was kidding about how classy I am?