Paris: Weekend Nine

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Here I am back at it again, trying to play catch up. I have a new (surprise) adventure coming up soon so I plan on posting one new blog a day until all my Paris stories have been told!

Now let’s time travel back to a rainy Saturday in France…

After a quick coffee and goodbye, my friend was off to the airport back to LA! As much as I loved having a visitor, I was thankful to have my place to myself again. 12m² is just too tiny for two people (But perfect for me hehe)!

Now that I felt the time ticking (aka my visa expiring in less than 1 month), I tried to maximize my already maximized outings!

For lunch, I met up with a friend for Japanese food in Paris’s Little Tokyo. It is a tiny but extremely dense street filled with a multitude of shops and restaurants. We must have spent a good thirty minutes walking from restaurant to restaurant trying to find 1) the shortest line, 2) the BEST ramen (according to Yelp), 3) and the least expensive. I wish I remembered the name of the place we picked because the ramen was amazing. It was a tiny place tightly packed with open grills, scary basement bathrooms, and anime decor. We honestly felt like we were in a different country, it was so strange (In the best way possible).

We then stopped in the biggest (& most luxurious) travel agency I have ever seen. There must have been at least 4 different levels with each section decorated to fit the destination of the specialists. My friend said that he likes to pick up the free guide books to plan a more budget friendly but unique trip.

In the evening, I met up with a new friend I met at the fashion event last weekend. She recommended that we meet at Bambou, a trendy thai restaurant that recently launched a new cocktail bar. The space was absolutely fab. Imagine a corridor transformed into a tropical patio, in the building to the left is the restaurant and in in the building to the right is the cocktail bar. To cross from one to the other you can go through the patio OR you can go underneath in a wonderfully strange speakeasy style.

The one thing that I have never gotten used to here is the eating schedule of Europeans. Growing up we always had dinner around 17:00 or 18:00 at the latest. Here in Paris (and most of Europe from my understanding), “dîner”* is served after 19:30 or later always. Moral of the story, when I am meeting a friend at 20:00 at a restaurant/bar I NEVER know if I should eat before (& just getting drinks) or if we are eating there. I always pack snacks in my purse for this exact reason. I decided to eat a light snack before meeting which was perfect because then we ordered veggie rice wraps to share!

After our drinks/snacks, she dropped me off at friend #3 activity – more drinks. Somehow we stayed in one bar for hours talking when we realized that it was closing. The hours of bars range from closing at 2:00 to closing at 10:00… We went on a mission to find a pub that had darts and beer (she had friends visiting from the UK). We were unsuccessful as you can imagine that there are not that many pub-like places open after 2:00 in Paris but we had a great long adventure walk.

*I had a funny discussion with a French friend about different dialect. As you know, I learned french both from school & my relationships, so my french is a mix of French Canadian French and French from France. I will give a few examples of my mixed french.

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• I say the “une chausette” (sock) the French from France way (in QC it is “un bas). When I was working in Mont-Tremblant, it was pointed out repeatedly that I speak “formally”.
• I have horrified my French friends by saying “chocolatine” instead of “pain au chocolat” (but we can all agree that either is better than saying “chocolate croissant”). I never knew this but there is a debate between French speakers on which is the correct pronunciation.
• I have started confused many people by starting informal conversations in French with “Allo” instead of “Bonjour”. Technically speaking it is not an anglicism like “faire du jogging”, it is officially a French (Canadian) greeting.
• One of my favourite dialect surprises was when I said “blonde et chum” (girlfriend & boyfriend – QC). My friend could NOT believe that you would ever dare to casually call your girlfriend “une blonde”.
• Finally, the reason why I am telling this story… I say “souper” (France) instead of “dîner”(QC) for dinner/supper. This completely threw off my friend because it is the old-fashioned, not popular way to say dinner/supper in French. I had never realized the difference in meal names: déjeuner, dîner, souper (QC) v. petit-dejeuner, déjeuner, dîner (France).

Sunday, March 8, 2020

You would think that after such a long/busy week and Saturday, I would want to spend my Sunday relaxing. You would be 100% wrong. — Writing this in quarantine I am SO happy that I spent so much time outside socializing and adventuring instead of Netflixing & sleeping. One other side note: on this day Macron announced that gatherings of more than 1,000 people are banned.

I began my day with meeting a friend (backpacking across Europe) for brunch in my neighbourhood… okay maybe I was a bit tired and didn’t feel like travelling across Paris in the morning. It (Treize au Jardin) was this adorable little restaurant right near the Luxembourg gardens. What kind of food in such a chic, iconic Parisian area you ask? American comfort food.

I had to rush home after brunch to get changed for fulfilling a bucket list item – seeing a show at the Palais Garnier! In Feburary 2017, I went to a huge chagall exhibition at the MMFA (Montreal) and fell in love. Ever since then, my laptop screensaver has been of the ceiling of the famous opera house. Finally after years of waiting (admittedly not as long as I was expecting), I was able to see that iconic beautiful ceiling in person. Getting tickets to any large show in Paris is quite difficult. They sell out quickly and are quite limited. I was able to get an amazingly inexpensive youth discounted ticket and sit in my favourite place in any theatre, the sides of the horseshoe (sometimes called “slips”). Yes, they do not have the BEST view but I find it a positive that I can watch both the orchestra pit and the stage at the same time. I saw a modern French opera – Yvonne Princess de Bourgogne. It was one of the strangest things I have seen in my life, it was very dark but yet humorous. I went by myself and had a wonderful time exploring the beautiful building during the intermissions. The crème de la crème of this whole experience was that Taittinger champagne was only 10 euro for a glass!

You must be thinking, wow big day, it must be over right? Wrong. I was on what I could only refer to as an “art high”. I was craving more beauty, more wonder, more spectacle. I was googling art shows & galleries like mad, trying to unveil a new discovery. Unfortunately, Paris is inactive on Sunday’s, especially in the evenings. Fortunately, the Palais de Tokyo is open most days of the week until midnight. I quickly messaged a friend and we met there to see the recently changed expos. Now normally I am not a big modern art or performance art gal but these exhibitions were amazing.

Ulla von Brandenburg – Le Millieu est Bleu. Hmm how to summarize… imagine every form of art in one exhibition centred around human motivation and rituals inspired by theatre. Not concise enough? I would like to see you try! Watch this video (or part of it), then imagine a giant empty art gallery filled with people (dancing) and objects with giant fabrics draped from the ceiling and video projections:

Collaboration – Notre monde brûle (Our world is burning). It was a giant exhibition with contributing artists from the Persian Gulf area with a focus on three current and upcoming crises: ecological, sociopolitical, and historical (the way narratives are being told). The multitude of messages were presented on mediums such as multi-screened films, giant room filled with sand (see below right), painted matchboxes, and stacks gas canisters. It was powerful and engaging. There were so many different messages and art installations… I know that I am not doing the exhibition justice. If you are interested, HERE is a Youtube video walkthrough.

Well, that’s it for this weekend… I hope that you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this!

Xoxo,

Tara