Sunset

And yet again I have recently been heavy on the yammering and light on the photos, so here's another for your viewing pleasure (and I very nearly got run over taking it, so I hope you like it!)...

Wait, what day is it?

Really?  It's the 11th of May?  How are we nearly halfway through the month already??  Well, I guess I didn't notice because I've been so damn busy; I have finished working at the bar as they don't need me now that the weather is horrible, and the sale goes through next Monday so things are winding down anyway.  It's too bad, because I really enjoyed it - the experience was very valuable and I definitely miss my awesome boss and his delicious cooking, but c'est la vie...

It's been quite nice to get my life back, though - I basically put my entire social life on hold while I was there because I really needed to get that bar experience, but now I'm fluttering about like a little social butterfly again.  Since the 1st of May, this is what I've been up to:

• out dancing until 5am (will post more re this another time)
• a dinner party with a glamorous international crowd at a diplomat's house
• a cheesy-80s-movie-night party (Flashdance+lots of wine=embarrassing photos!)
• an afternoon of cocktails which led to an evening of cocktails
• girly lunch, visit to Catacombs and another evening of cocktails
• another girly lunch (amazingly, this one was without cocktails)
• had one of my best London friends over to visit for three days
• hosted my first real Paris party (will post more re this another time)

 Whew!  No wonder I didn't notice the month flying by so quickly...

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!

Lunch. Bones. Cocktails.

Today was a lot of fun: I met my lovely friends Miss RA and Miss A for a nice girly lunch and then we went to hang out underground with a whole bunch of human remains.  Ahhh, good times.  I am, of course, referring to visiting the Catacombs.  An extremely interesting place and one that I have meant to visit for ages but have somehow never quite gotten around to it...and that was in no way because I am a big scaredy-cat with a vivid imagination and was too afraid to go on my own.  Ahem.  Anyway, it was really fascinating and you should definitely try to take a look if you are visiting Paris.  (Don't be alarmed when you see the defibrillator by the front entrance - you are far more likely to have a heart attack from climbing the many, many stairs than from fright...)

Not only was it historically interesting, but you have got to hand it to the French.  Not only did they neatly stack the bones of six million people, but they also went to the trouble to make things pretty:

And in case you're not clear on what you're seeing, that is indeed a heart shape.  Made. Of. Human. Skulls. Set into a wall of human bones.  Creeeeeeeeeeeeepy.  No wonder we needed to go for a cocktail afterwards.  (Admittedly, we probably didn't need to go for four cocktails each, but jeez, if ever there was a time for happy hour...)

Feel free to skip it...

Sort of a strange day for me.  The 5th of May is the anniversary of my mother's death and I take pride in somehow managing to avoid thinking about it every year.  Somewhere around the 8th, I usually think "Whew, 'forgot' about it again this year, woohoo!"  But this year?  Have had it on my mind for the past couple of weeks, and I don't know why - I don't WANT to think about it because she wouldn't approve.  Every year on her birthday in November I get dressed up and go drink posh cocktails in her memory, which she would be totally on board with, but the anniversary of her death?  No way - she would want me to 'forget' every year.  We're Scottish Presbyterians, we're all about the denial!

Anyway, this year I couldn't quite get it out of my head and I don't know if it's because I haven't yet built up the support network that I have in both London and Toronto, but today was nevertheless okay.  My lovely friend Mr V advised me to to go to church and light a candle, which I did (risking getting my pagan ass blown to smithereens by a righteous thunderbolt from the heavens - luckily that didn't happen), sobbed my eyes out and then went out and had cocktails.  But that?  My Ma would approve of.  Anyway, my sweet friend Miss RA was free this afternoon and we managed to find a bar that started happy hour at 3pm (ahhhhhhhh!) so we stayed there for a couple of hours before moving on and finding another spot where her boyfriend, the adorable Monsieur P could join us.

So it was a crappy day, there's no way around it.  But I got through it with a little help from my friends, and let me tell you -  as an expat, when you realize that you have made good friends like that?  You're doing pretty well...

Thinking

Well, I've noticed that once again I've been a bit stingy with the pretty pictures recently, so here's a little something from one of my favourite places in Paris: the gardens of the Rodin museum.  Enjoy!

Paris on 5 euros per day - done!

So it's now May and you may wonder if I did, in fact, manage to get through April on my insane budget of €5 per day?  Well, the answer to that is a resounding oui!!!  It was pretty difficult the first couple of weeks, but working at the bar was the key - not only did I spend all my time there (thereby not going out and spending elsewhere), but they fed me exceedingly well (my 6'2" macho Italian boss gets really irked that I call him my Italian mama - hee!  But really, that's how he feeds me - I've eaten enough pasta to sink a battleship), which meant I hardly had to buy any food at all.  So the end result of this was that I ended the month not only on budget but actually €30 ahead - woohoo!!!  

So now I can relax and have a bit more fun this month, but it was an extremely useful exercise; I know articles advising on budgeting always tell you how much we waste on unnecessary things but it's not until you really buckle down and try to live on a tiny amount of money that you realize how much just gets frittered away - a magazine, a coffee, a pair of Christian Louboutins (okay, that one might just be me - but that was in the past when I was more gainfully employed).  Ahem.  Anyway, the point is this: even if you don't need to do it, give it a try for maybe a week on whatever daily sum looks reasonable to you and see if you can do it, it's a pretty interesting experience.