Roman Holiday

Along a river bank during sunset, parrots wing from branch to branch in the trees above us. A meal of deep-fried-in-olive oil artichoke and mozzarella smothered aubergines. Ruins braced by small deli's and gelato shops. Small lizards crawl over sunburnt plaster walls, leading up to paintings of the Virgin and Child protected by glass-enclosed intricately framed boxes.

This is Rome.

A quiet and friendly place, plenty of proscuitto and pasta for everyone. Outside the stampedes inside the Vatican and along the Colosseum you can find the most precious alleys and piazzas with fruit stalls selling melon, small tabacconists selling 2euro 66cl Peronis, and little Jewish panificos selling the best(and cheapest)white pizzas.

All in all, our little Roman holiday was blissful and full of so much beauty that coming back to Paris seemed disappointing-until I remembered that we can see the dome of Sacré Coeur from the street of our favorite fromagerie, and though we may not be able to get a good Italian beer for a few euros, we can get a great bottle of Rose for the change found in the bottom of my purse.

le Liliputian

Petite. That’s our apartment in Paris. That’s everyone’s apartment in Paris. Rather than complain, Jay and I have taken to cajoling and complimenting each other on our tiny Nid d’amour (that’s love nest). Take for example the bathroom, as Jay puts it, one can only wonder at the sheer genius of the French who figured out a way to fit a shower (albeit one resembling your high-school locker but with running water), into an airplane bathroom. This picture says it all really, except you can’t tell from this angle that the water heater is suspended directly overhead of the toilet. Yeah.

One of my pride and joys of our almost-adequate-abode is our very own beer and chevre fridge! While we may not have a freezer that can hold more than 1-2 ice cube bags(amazing blue sandwich-sized bags that you fill a one-way valve with water and freeze then smack on the counter and viola! A bag of little ice cubes!), it does hold 4 very large beers, a big piece of chevre rolled in herbs, and the leftovers from last night’s pico de galo that Jay made(we have really gotten into Mexican food living in Paris-no doubt a side effect from seeing more crepes, croissants and cassoulets then we ever thought possible). Our beer fridge is SUPPREMELY important since, with very few exceptions, you can’t buy refrigerated beer here. Instead it comes straight off the shelf in aisle 4 of the Franprix at room temp. You CAN however buy Mon Cheri candies by the dozen in a box at the 8-a’-Huit for 9 euros with enough boozy liqueur in them to (combined with the sugar), give you a mind bending buzz. These little chocolate gems are contraband in the states which is why before I come back for a visit I will be filling a suitcase with them and strapping as many boxes to my ribcage and thighs as my pencil skirts will allow!

Storage options are limited in our minute-maison as well. I have taken to stacking lamp shades where our TV used to be and the TV now lives behind the cupboard that has become my dresser. We never used the TV since the one time we tried we found French television to be primarily new music videos of artists we thought to be retired or dead, episodes of Friends with French dubbing (believe it or not it does NOT make Jennifer Aniston less annoying), and strange game shows with such loud volume that it makes it difficult for us to hear our neighbor playing the Doobie Bros, “Takin’ it to the Streets”.

All in all, I am enamored and inspired by how little we need to live a very full and beautiful life: episodes of Parks and Recreation downloaded on our computer, a shelf to hold our baguette and bottle of olive oil, a table to play Scrabble on while snacking on French chocolates, and a bed to collapse in after walking from the 9^th to the 1^st to enjoy a falafel and shop for the perfect pair of seersucker shorts.

le Vrai Paris

Sometimes the best things about a place, are the things never mentioned in a travel brochure. They don’t make the latest Crave guide, and you won’t find them in Eat.Shop books. None the less, you find them and they color your day far brighter than the tulips in the Tulieries, or the less frequented, Cite de Fleurs.

One fine example is the locks on bridges all throughout Paris. Small bridges over quays of the Seine, large famous bridges like that of Pont Alexander III, or just random padlocks left along some water walkway not much traversed. Jay and I stumbled upon this padlock horde near Notre Dame Cathedral-the most famous love locks bridge-Pont de l'Archevêché-and wondered what started it all. From what I could discover, it was a tradition started in China where you leave a lock on a fence and "throw away the key". All in all, the contemporary juxtaposed against the ancient architecture is such a perfect depiction of Paris. The old mingling with the new. The foreboding with the funky. The traditional with the trendy.

One thing is for certain, Paris will surprise you. Even with all the films, poems, songs, photographs, tour books, guides and postcards; until you come spend time here, until you wander, get lost, find a better bakery than the ones David Lebowitz rants about online, you haven’t seen Paris at all. And you will never know all it’s secrets. You won’t unravel it’s mystique. A lifetime would not suffice to crumble away its fromage façade, because Paris is through and through every bit as wonderful as you want it to be, and so much more than you could ever imagine.

Pain et Fromage

I couldn’t live in Paris without devouring an assortment and impressive range of bread and cheese. This, compounded by living here with my lover who loves these two divine delicacies as much as I do, makes for some pretty serious snacking. Our fromagerie is two blocks from the house up Rue Lepic, our favorite in the city and our go-to for when we run out of chevre, comté or gouda vieux at the house. We do make pilgrimages, however, for more provincial cheeses-the 24 month comté, Tomme de Savoie, or the lovely Roquefort-papillion(literal translation: strong casting-butterfly, Dawn's translation:smelly cheese for cracker-snacking goodness).

La Fermette(The Farmhouse) fromagerie is amazing and is my favorite for all those stinky cheeses that most people shudder at but which the French(and I) adore and can’t get enough of. The smell is, in fact, how you find a cheese shop. C’est vrai! Just follow your nose and that funky smell will lead you to small mountains of goat cheese, wheels of Pont l'Eveque, and wedges and wedges of gruyere stacked in piles with baskets of brie. When Jay first arrived in Paris, he couldn’t fathom that smell would ever become an aromatic intoxicant, but now-more than me!- he can’t walk past a cheese shop without lingering with a lustful gaze on herb covered chevres, slices of gouda avec poivre, and delicate portions of d’Affinois.

There is no way to describe how sensational the boulangeries are here, suffice to say I love living in a country where the word Pain means BREAD.

Paques!

Not being religious, having no family here, and not really knowing what traditions to partake in, Jay and I celebrated Easter in a way I hope to model all following Easters on for years to come. We started with a homemade batch of banana blueberry pancakes, followed by a walk through Montmarte cemetery. Looking and lingering at tombs that are petite examples of gothic, Greek, roman, and medieval architecture, we nearly stumble onto the tomb of Alexandre Dumas. It was all too strange timing-just that morning I had finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo. As Jay put it, “have you ever finished a 900page book by an Author and then topped it off that same day visiting their grave?!?” Strange indeed. After that a visit to a secret garden that under a cherry tree-led to kissing-led to walking back home for a roll in the hay(I can tell you that because I am in Paris with my lover and you can assume an awful lot of that is happening no doubt, it is practically obligatory I assure you).

In time for a peach and coral colored sunset, we grab some room temperature beers(they don’t sell them refrigerated) and go out to the boulevard in front of our house to take in a part of Paris not found on a post card. We live near the Moulin Rouge and it makes for some pretty hilarious “site-seeing” at times I assure you. Full of people watching and making jokes about the Porno shops and Sex shows packed in with horrible hallal shops and cheap Chinese import stores selling 3Euro berets and Eiffel tower key chains.

When the sun goes down and the “working girls” head out wearing their best white plastic platform heels and lycra mini-dresses, we head back upstairs to our petite apartment. Easter dinner is a roasted rabbit sausage on fresh baguette, and we top the day off watching Back to the Future.

Paques. My new favorite holiday.

Printemps

Printemps. Spring in Paris. Time to get busy making beautiful things. That is definitely what I have been doing lately. Making memories, picnics, and of course- lamp shades.With parks packed with rows and rows of perfectly manicured lawns and trees trimmed to horticultural haute couture, Paris is the perfect place to get inspired by the spectacle of Spring. Awakened by sunny mornings, the day blossoms into 76deg. bliss. Up near Sacré Coeur or near our apartment in Montmarte, I sew and shape shades three days a week, and spend the other four exploring and eating my way through the arrondissements with my lover, Jay.

It’s not easy to find time to write when there is so much to imbibe, inspire, and enjoy. To start-Parc Monceau, a natural styled park with many hidden monuments and sculptures enfolded in its foliage. Compared to the Tuileries or Jardin de Luxenbourg, this is a very casual urban respite. Gardens in Paris serve the purpose of allowing our overly-stimulated eyes to find repose and rest for a while. Paris is crazy with architecture, beauty, graffiti, and women’s shoe stores to peruse. It’s a much needed break that comes when-though you are not allowed to trample the grass-you can sit in one of the famous Luxembourg lawn chairs and just space out on marble fountains, topiary trees and…dogs pooping on the perfect lawns. Well, Paris would be far too pristine if not for the occasional gelato covered child careening into you after a soccer ball, dog droppings to dodge, and pigeons to contend with(the huge horse chestnut trees are beautiful, but sit under them at your own risk).

But oh, Spring in Paris. Full of color, flowers, giant-and I mean GIANT-chocolate Easter eggs(joyeuses Paques!). I have yet to unravel the mystery of what fish-shaped chocolates have to do with April 1^st...but stay tuned.

Too bad you can't take a shot of Vin Rouge

Because after the week I have had, yeah, I need a shot. Or three.

Here's how it played out, and NO I am not exaggerating, and YES Paris is perfect, perfect, perfect. But just to get it all out of the way, Paris kicked my ass this week.

First off, week one of having my lover back in town with me was perfect, until we both got horrible colds. (thank you recycled airplane air, French germs like le Colde et le Sniffles). Once we got over our illnesses, we discovered that French brooms are like tiny push brooms and are USELESS AT SWEEPING and what is blue and in a spray bottle is NOT windex- and will leave your windows far streakier than the pigeons that collide endlessly into them.

Twice on trips "out and about" we discovered that there IS indeed an ugly part of Paris, and it exists outside the Metro line at Simplon. Don't go. We promise the rotting fish mixed with dirty water running down the sidewalk into the gutter is NOT "tres jolie ou tres French". It's just tres trashy. Speaking of trashy, want to know what they drink in the ghetto area of Paris? 40's of French biere? Nope. Box wine? Nah. But dirty plastic gasoline canisters of wine SOLD in grocery stores on the bottom shelf? Yep! No joke. Seriously, I couldn't think something this horrific up.

In this same week I survived(barely) an incredibly active bout of what I can only assume to be either food poisoning or le flu. How do you gracefully vomit up your small intestine repeatedly while your lover is 4 feet away in the next(the only) room? You don't. Essentially, as my darling so succinctly put it-the French have devised a way to squeeze a shower into an airplane bathroom, so imagine me cowering between a shower stall 18" x 18" and the pedestal sink while the water heater hovers a mere 3 feet above my head. Now imagine that we live in a studio and my dear one has nothing but the symphony playing out in the bathroom to accompany his slumber at 3am. Well, that and the constant horn blaring from the French drivers in the street below our window.

Side note: THIS I LOVE. I am, and will always be, 100% for blatant and ridiculous use of the car horn. It's flagrant, pointless, and wrathful-and usually initiated by either a man in a pressed suit, or a woman with three kids in the back seat. Completely effective not at speeding up traffic, but sorting out who the real assholes are in this world.

All said and done in a week, I found myself this evening eating a truly wonderful pizza with the man who holds my heart, while watching I Love You Man with French subtitles. This is how I found out that "my jet pack" in French is "mon reacteur dorsale". Told you. Paris is perfect.