Flowers and trees.

Proud of this photo.

A grey Sunday afternoon in the Parc Floral de Vincennes.

Le Marais: Part 1

I work in the Marais. It's sad how easily you can get accustomed to the most interesting circumstances, and often when I'm trudging up the Rue de Poitou at 7.55am in the darkness I don't exactly appreciate how incredibly lucky I am to work in this particular area of Paris. So yesterday after work I wandered around the area taking photos like the perpetual tourist I am. It was sunny and I wandered around listening to Carla Bruni (I cannot believe this woman is married to the President)... I love living here.

The Marais is narrow, winding streets and buildings of honey-coloured stone. It has lots of hotels particuliers, which were built as homes for aristocrats in the 16th and 17th centuries. They are typically like small mansions with large interior courtyards, which now house museum or art collections. The Marais also has a large Jewish community centred on the Rue de Rosiers, and it's also the gay quarter of Paris. The Marais is full of gay bars, falafel vendors, boutique clothing stores, tiny workshops and small warehouses, pretty cafés, synagogues, wrought-iron balconies, winding streets and hidden squares. 

A selection of photos; mostly pretty buildings and other accidental glimpses of street life. 

                             

                                      Un beau chat dans un jardin.

"Little pleasures" (or to be more precises, "happinesses").

Close up of the previous photo; this statue is surrounded by rose bushes and should look
beautiful come summer.

Woman in café

This weekend I'm going to my first social occasion without any other anglophones. My French friend Estelle is having a little dinner party chez elle, and has invited some others over partly, I think, because I kept saying how much I wanted to meet some actual Parisians seeing as I live in Paris (as opposed to the Brits and Americans I socialise with otherwise). It's pretty terrible that it's taken me four months to get here, but I'm looking forward to it. This doesn't feel like a year out from my life. Sometimes I feel like returning to Warwick will be the 8 month sabbatical from where I really should be, which is here, in this magnificent city.

Bisous!

Bruxelles

This weekend I went to Brussels to stay with my friend Isabelle and her family.

We saw the old part of town and I took photos of it with my pinhole camera. Très belle!

Isabelle went riding and I wandered around chatting to these horses. 

We visited the EU district. Here is two bright umbrellas near to the Council building.

This is the Cinquantenaire arch, a monument to Belgian national unity. With a van selling waffles in front of it! 

 

 More waffles. I'm not a big fan. 

Here is the national symbol of Belgium which is........ wait for it........ a small boy peeing. There is a TINY statue of this, called the Mannekin Pis, and the souvenir shops around are filled with trinkets based on this bizarre image. The funniest one I saw was a life size bronze statue of the Mannekin Pis, for a mere 50 euros. Quite who this is meant to appeal to is beyond me - Belgian nationalists? Extreme souvenir collectors? 

A good time was had by all. I think.

I would like to thank Isabelle's family for their hospitality, not least two lovely dinners. On the first night I had my first galette. It's a puff-pastry pie filled with almond paste that is traditional to eat during January for Epiphany. I had a vague idea of what it was before coming to France, but had never eaten one before. Baked inside the pie is a fève - the word literally means "broad bean" but it is more often now a small trinket or figurine. Our galette was Narnia-themed, which I found quite adorable. There was a tiny Reepicheep baked inside! I kept it, but unfortunately I think it fell out of my pocked and I can't find it anymore. Anyway, the person who finds the fève in their slice of galette gets to wear a paper crown and be the King or Queen for the rest of the evening. I'm pretty sure the tradition has its roots in Saturnalia, the Roman festival during which servants and masters swapped roles for a limited amount of time, and one of the servants became the Lord of Misrule (this is also the plot of Twelfth Night, which also refers to the 6th January - the 12th night after Christmas and official end of the festivities).

When I returned to Paris, there was discarded Christmas trees all over the streets. I have started two new babysitting jobs, and the incongruous pines on the streets of Vincennes particularly delighted the 3 year old Victor that I escorted to nursery on Monday. 

And as for the city? It's not Spring, it's not even nearly Spring, but at least the snows are over. It's exciting to think that deep in the branches of trees, and deep in the soil of flowerbeds all over the city lie the potential for blossom. In a few weeks time Paris will burst into flower - my camera can't wait. 

A tout ailleurs 

x

This post is long comme un jour sans pain*

Paris is freezing, and as such, je m'habille comme un oignon (I am dressed like an onion). By which I mean I've gone for a spherical beige outfit. Not really. It's a new phrase that my language partner Estelle taught me, which describes the state of being bundled up in hundreds of layers in an attempt to alleviate the cold.

So.

Lots of things have happened. Including the discovery of a "pinhole" function on my camera, which renders photos all nostalgic looking, regardless of the content or context. But look how pretty it makes the Sacre Coeur! I took this a couple of weeks ago.

I was walking to the Metro Station last night, and this peeked at me from between two rows of buildings. I hadn't realised it was so near. I love Montmartre.

Other events of interest...

I learnt how to make espresso at home!

Tiffany drinking said espresso in our kitchen. 

This is a sticker which says "In French, please!", stuck onto an advert whose slogan is in English. I'm inclined to agree. So many adverts have random English slogans ("Are you Ready?" "Hide yourself", "I love to Party") which is just a lazy way of making them seem edgy and interesting. 

Mint tea for five, poured from a beautiful teapot. Paris = form over function (and paying through the nose for it)

Christmas tree in front of the Notre Dame.

After-school walk around the Marais.

And this weekend I went shopping for the first time in Paris. I went to a few vintage shops and bought a bag and jumper, and then today I found some super-cheap jewellery shops. 

10 Euro vintage bag. I am very pleased with this.

                            

                                         These were two euros!!!

*This post is as long as a day without bread. Another new French expression.

Pendaison de cremaillere.

Paris' flaming trees are slowly being doused in an endless drizzle of rain; grey cloud banks cover the sky. Paris is beautiful in every colour but less than charming in this stormy mood. Saying that, the rain has abated for today, so I might turn my errand-running into a little walk. Sadly my memory card is stuck inside my computer, but a friend has promised to lend me a new one so come Tuesday, there will be more photos.

In the past week, I went to the theatre on Sunday to see Le Diner des Cons, which was very funny. Perhaps not as side-splitting as the Frenchies around me seemed to find it, but entertaining nonetheless. It was such a nice atmosphere; to be in a gorgeous theatre on a Sunday afternoon; high up and level to the vast chandelier, surrounded by people laughing in red velvet seats. Le Diner des Cons is known in English as "The Dinner of Idiots" and it's a farce based on the premise of a dinner where every guest brings along an "idiot" for entertainment value. Marrant.

Hmm, aside from that, the most interesting place I have visited this week was the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Everyone says how lovely it is, and I wanted to see for myself. It is on the site of a former quarry, hence all of the hills (buttes is hills or heights).

It has a lake, two waterfalls, statues, and a big island with a belvedere on it (pictures to follow because clearly no one knows what a belvedere is without seeing it).

Belvedere on a hill

Trees with a statue of Pan, the Greek god of nature.

Pan in a classic Facebook pose.  

Leaves, light and water.

Last night I went to a party with people from all over Europe - French, English, German, Italian, Colombian and Spanish. One girl I was talking to came from Palermo, city of le mer et le Mafia. I keep meeting hundreds of new people, and often never see them again after an evening's conversation. It is very strange. No doubt a time will come in my life when I very rarely meet new people, but I can't help but think at the moment it would be compensated for by being around the friends I have already. That's a fancy way of saying I feel a bit homesick. Oh well. 

I attempted to speak and understand some German last night, and it was terrible! I can't believe I got the best mark in my school and now remember almost nothing of it.

In any case.

Auf wiedersehen, au revoir & arriverderci. 

Il pleut des cordes

It has been raining all weekend. I learnt a new idiom to help me out with describing this - "Il pleut des cordes", which means literally "It's raining ropes". It will hopefully be more help than the supposed English idiom of "It's raining cats and dogs, which I have never heard used outside of English language textbooks. 

Anyway, I spent this weekend... pottering around house. I found an old coffee table in the garage, which is full of old furniture people don't want, and decided to rearrange my room. Et voilà.

Newly painted furniture and bedside lamp.

New (old) coffee table, with coffee and computer.

The view from my door, looking inwards.

 My sofa bed.

My American penpal is coming to visit in less than three weeks!!! It's hard to believe that the sender of emails, - some one line long, some going on for paragraphs, some arriving within hours, others taking weeks - is going to appear in my life as a real person. We've only spoken on Skype once, and I saw a blurry picture of her about a year ago, but there's no way I could recognise her. But... I love showing off Paris. I feel proud, as if I have some claim over the city. I plan to be a tourguide par excellence.

A bientot.

Eden.

Automne à Vincennes et à Paris

Paris is on fire. The trees are red, and yellow, and orange, and maroon.

We went to the Parc Floral in Vincennes:

We went to the Pere Lachaise cemetery, although couldn't find Oscar Wilde's grave:

We went to a poetry reading at Shakespeare & Co

 Alice impressed up by playing Mozart and Beethoven from memory

Life continues as usual. I had visitors over the Toussaint half-term holiday, but it's back to work tomorrow. I've got classes in 9 hours, and I haven't finished planning them yet, so there's no more time to write.