Bigfoot's Carbon Footprint: Paris, Texas...no, wait...

Paris, Fraaaaaance, that's right!
As you may know, I went to Paris for a week to meet up with ma copine.
It was quite nice. I don't have too much to say about it, other than it was a delicious change of pace from Armenia. I'm trying to be strengths-based in my approach to Armenia and my 6 weeks left here (wow, thats it?!?). But I do have to say that it was amazing to be back in Paris. So, I took French in middle school and high school when every spart American was taking (the more useful) Spanish. But that being said, I have had the good fortune to travel to France a number of times. In high school and the beginning of college I spent a total of 3 summers there. All in all, I got pretty conversational in the language, but I haven't used it really at all since I moved to Texas in 2002. So being there this past week, I was pretty surprised with how much functional French came pouring back. I'll tell ya, I speak a helluvalot more French than I do Armenian, so it was really refreshing to be able to communicate with strangers on the street in a foreign country, instead of aping rudimentary hand signals to buy a kilo of carrots.
I think we had a pretty good time. What do they call Paris? The City of Lovers? The City of Romance? The City of Love? One of those. All of the three, I don't know. Anyways. I've spend several days to a week in Paris at least three times over the years and each time, being a single, scruffy, horny backpacker, I always felt quite excluded from all of the magic of it all. Walking across one of the many bridges through the middle of the city, its hard not to want to be holding hands with some young thing, some cute little Frenchie in bice boots and a cute little dress. At least, thats what you see, so thats what you want, or something. I don't know. Anyways: this time? My turn! It was pretty nice. You can see how American couples come to Paris for a vacation for a week and do stupid things like propose to each other and shit. It just be like that over there. No worries. I didn't say anything that I'm not ready to say, but it was a romantic week...put it this way: if I was a God-fearing Christian who believed in marriage and cultural norms, I would have thought that that was the place to do it. And it probably is. I'm babbling.
The other point was that I realized that I have retained alot more French than I ever would have thought and I spoke it pretty passably. This has made me realize that I need to find some way to get some extended stay in a Francophone part of the world and at least take a few steps toward getting fluent. Thats the one thing thats really getting driven home this time abroad, is that there are so many fucking bi and trilingual people out in the world. Its obviously not all that hard to do, so I need to do it. I want to be working on a 3rd language soon and proficient in French. I could probably say I'm proficient in French now, but if someone's got a spare copy of Rosetta Stone: French laying around, kick it down!
Anyways, on to the pictures!

On the Seine, by the Notre Dame de Paris. Yeah, we're cute. Miss that girl already!

taking a picture of Notre Dame

Candles inside Notre Dame

Q-BERT! MY CHILDHOOD! this brings back memories of playing an arcade game at a pizza parlor when i was like 7, waiting for the pizza to be ready with my Dad, not knowing where to set down my can of Hires root beer, because the face of the console area was at a 20 degree angle and the can kept sliding off. Pepperoni pizza, root beer and sour cream and onion potato chips from Duxbury Pizza. Mmmmm. Somebody have that for dinner for me and tell me about it! I'd kill for a slice of pepperoni pizza right now!

(p.s. the tile image is of a character from a video game from the 80s.)

So we went to the zoo, in the botanical gardens. Wallabies and monkeys and these GIGANTIC mountain goats from the caucasus, which must be endangered, because I haven't seen any of them sombitches out here...and there were little kids playing on this hippopotamus status. Pretty cute.

More food from the jewish quarter. Matzo ball soup.

Paella sold in a market. Streetfood with mussels, calimari and shrimps.

This was the best falafel I've ever had in my life. We were intrigued because the guide book says this is a local hot lunch spot and Lenny Kravitz has been quoted as saying that this is the best falafel in the world. Now I tend to hate superlatives like that, but the man may be right. The secret was that along with the usual lettuce and tomato and cabbage and whatnot, they also threw in roasted eggplant, which set the whole thing off. It was incredible.

I don't even know...

This was the coziest little restaurant we found in the Latin Quarter. Although the food was not as epic as some places we went, the atmosphere was excellent. We got in and they tucked us into the back, next to two middle aged French ladies, sharing dinner and wine, and their middle-aged dog, asleep on the floor. The tables were so tightly packed in there that the dog literally took up all the space between the two tables. The owner had on a knit winter hat and big glasses and was also middle aged and brought us two glasses of sangria for free when we walked in the door. I had steak and fries with a mustard sauce and C had it with a pepper sauce. Hers was better. We had a couple of glasses of wine. When we got the check, instead of mints or something, the tab came with two small shots of cognac. The place was all old wood interior with a stable theme. I think it may at one point have been a stable. Only lit with candlelight.

Insanity of one of the posh thriftstores in the old Jewish quarter of the 4ieme district. A homegirl's gotta throw some elbows to get up in there and take anything good, but the prices were right...