Morning was all about packing and organizing. Mark went to the post office by himself and ask how much it will cost to send a parcel to US. He came home very happy that he had a very interesting conversation in French with a ‘postal’ lady there and his parcel will cost only 13 Euros. We packed some stuff and went back to the post office to send the parcels. It turned out that Mark’s parcel cost 38 Euros not 13; the lady understood that Mark wants to send only a book not a parcel, this is why the difference. I would advise Mark not to negotiate the stock market in French, as French is not his forte.
With all this packing we were hungry; we had a bit of food left over, so we cooked a nice, simple meal with couscous, lentils and tomatoes(we are by now experts in couscous). We also decided to have some dessert for lunch, so Mark graciously offered to go to the patisserie; Mark come home with the cakes, however he emphasized that he was extremely brave to have to ask in front of the French people for Mille Feuille and Religious ! I laugh my head off, for the life out of him Mark can not pronounce Mille Feuille and every time he is tying to say it I can’t stop laughing………..after all what can we expect from an American Geek speaking Frenc:)
In the evening we were meeting Philippe and Malika for dinner.
I decided to walk from our place to Philippe, it is about an hour and a half walk, crossing Champs Elysses and by the Arc de Triumph. In my way to Philippe I got a bit lost, but that was good, I discover a few more beautiful streets and places. I walked on Rue Montaigne, and I came across Canadian Embassy; along this street are many exclusive expensive brands stores like Cartier, Gucci, Chanel, Valentino and so on, beautiful hotels and apartments. I looked at the people coming out of these apartments and stores and I wished I was one of them. All of the sudden I wanted to be rich, why wasn’t I born in a rich family???
Back to real life I was grateful just for being in Paris and being able to do what I do. I met Mark, Philippe, and Malika and headed out for dinner. Malika took us to one of the trendiest places in Paris, the 20 arrondissement. It is kind of a Yale Town, but the buildings are old, crowd is mostly young professionals where everything goes, it is a very busy place. There are tons of restaurants and coffee shops and they are all full; there were many people on the street smoking and drinking in front of the restaurants, hey if the French can not smoke inside anymore they are now taking the drinks on the street.
Malika had a restaurant in mind but it was booked for a private function; she suggested as an alternative a Moroccan restaurant and we ended up having dinner there; the food was awesome! I had lamb with artichokes, peas, other vegetables, everything cooked in a earth ware, it was very delicious.
This is us, we are about to eat and we are happy!
We finished dinner and we went for a drink; we talked and laugh and talked in sometimes very bad English and French, we had a great time. We are so happy to have Philippe and Malika as friends, they are both very special people. It was 2 am in the morning when we had to say good bye. I will miss them both and of course I miss Paris :(
No comments:
Post a Comment