Bonjour! et Merci! et Scuzi!

That's all the French Brandi knows, but apparently it didn't matter. She's my guest blogger today (and probably tomorrow and the next day - she took A LOT of pictures) Settle in with some macarons and escargot and whatever else is French, 'cause it's gonna be a long blog!

Bonjour!

I am Jenni’s soeur – that’s French for sister! (or, at least, Internet sez it is) – Brandi Dean, and I just returned from Paree (which is French for Paris! … kind of). Because I am brimming over with stories to tell about it, to the point where I’m boring everyone in my life to tears with the repetition of them, Jenni has graciously offered me use of her blog, in hopes that I’ll get it out of my system.

So, here I go!

You may remember from some of Jenni’s previous blogs (see, for example, “Thirty, Flirty and Fun!” and “We’re Sisters and They’re Sisters”) that I recently turned 30, and to prepare for that event, I made a list of 30 things I wanted to accomplish before I was officially old. Jenni was polite and neglected to mention the fact that I didn’t quite accomplish everything by my deadline, due to time constraints. One of them (number 1 on the list, in fact) was Visit Another Country. I couldn’t do that by June because of work, but I have been planning for this trip since June, and can finally check it off the list.

For those of you who might want to learn from my experiences and see if you can duplicate my fabulous results, here is what I did to get ready:

1. I read books written or set in France – “The Sun Also Rises” and “A Moveable Feast” by Earnest Hemingway; and “My Life in France” by Julia Child. I also intended to read (and started) “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” but then I fell asleep.

2.  I read blogs and guidebooks, such as: “Chic Parisian” by Inès de la Fressange and “Chic Paris Shopping” by Rebecca Perry Magniant, where I learned how to dress like a Parisian (lots of black); and hipparis.com and girlsguidetoparis.com, where I learned how to behave like a Parisian (lots of disinterested disdain).

3. I downloaded some French music to set the mood.

4. I shopped, putting all my hard-gotten knowledge to work. (Some might think that you should save the shopping until you get to your exotic destination, but I don’t see why you should have to choose one over the other.)

So, with all this work behind me, I was tired by Oct. 4, when we set off, and slept well on the nine-hour plane ride. By the time I woke up, the sun was rising over Paris, and we were almost ready to land.

(At least, that was what was supposed to happen. In reality, it’s hard to sleep in coach. But all the same, we soldiered on through:)

Day 1:

We arrived at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 5. Under the clouds, it was what we would eventually know as a typically cool and cloudy day for Paris in October. By the time we’d gotten our luggage and a taxi ride to the apartment we were renting for the week, we had just enough time to change clothes, wash our face and decipher the metro, before it was time for our strategically scheduled walking tour (arranged for the dual purpose of keeping us awake despite jet lag, and giving us the low down on the layout of the city). That means that we didn’t have enough time to photograph the apartment before all our stuff was strewn about. But here is a photo from the site we got it from showing what it looked like before adding all my luggage into the mix:

There are lots of mirrors, so it’s much smaller than it looks here. But it’s also probably a good deal larger than the hotel rooms we could have afforded. And it was in a very nice neighborhood!

Anyway, so we raced from here to Notre Dame where our walking tour started.

Our tour guide, Sarah, was an architect from the UK. She was great. She explained to us useful things like what the flying buttresses were for on the cathedral, what all those crazy faces were on the bridge, what caused the French revolution and why the (current) French were trying to breed a better-looking pigeon (they’re worried that the tourists will be put off by all the pigeons in the city, so they’ve introduced pigeons that look more like doves into the population to improve the aesthetics). We went back and forth and back and forth over all the bridges, through the Latin quarter (named because it’s where the university was in days of old, so all the kids spoke Latin) and around the Louvre. It was interesting and helpful. AND we happened to be strolling through the Tuileries just as one of the Paris Fashion Week fashion shows broke up, and got to see all the models in their regular-people clothes and all the paparazzi hounding them. They were all as tall and willowy as you'd expect, but their clothes were not nearly as weird as what you see in fashion shows, which I found reassuring.

So then Sarah recommended to us our first Parisian restaurant to try. We had not eaten much of anything since the day before, U.S.-time, and were famished even before we started walking. Unfortunately, we had a lot to learn about the French and their meal times. It turns out, they’re very strictly regulated. There are eating times for eating, and you don’t eat outside of them. So although the walking tour ended at 5, we would have no opportunity to eat until 7:30, when the restaurants would start seating diners. But that was OK, because it gave us a chance to wander a bit on our way. And it was a pretty walk:

And it probably made our meal, when we finally had it, taste that much better.

After our chicken and new potatos (me) and beef stew (Nicole) (and maybe just a little bit of dessert we picked up at a patisserie on our way home), we were more than ready for a good nights sleep. After all, we’d need our strength for:

Day 2:

Day 2! On Day 2 we decided to just shamefully embrace our inner tourists and go straight for the gold.

La Tour Eiffel!

It is totally every bit as big as it looks in the pictures. Quite impressive. There are stores and post offices in the four leg bases, it’s so big. And just looking at it makes you feel French. Unfortunately, many people seemed to share our opinion, because there were LOTS of people there to look at it. The line snaked way away from the ticket booth, and it was (typically) cloudy and cold. But we got in line, and after about an hour (and a few short rain showers), we were getting in the elevator.

But if we thought it was cold at the bottom – well, you can imagine what it was like at the top!

So we didn’t stay up there very long. But that’s OK, because the second level down provided much clearer views:

Also, it provided a souvenir shop, where we were able to buy postcards, which we could then get mailed at the bottom with an official Eiffel Tour postmark!

We had read that there were two restaurants on the tower – the famous (and famously expensive) Jules Verne, and another one. We looked and looked for the other one, but all we found was a snack bar. So we ordered coffee and hot chocolate and filled out our postcards, resigned to eating somewhere less interesting. But! On our ride back down to the bottom, we noticed a poster in the elevator that mentioned the “Opening” of 58 Tour Eiffel. We though, “oh, too bad, it must not be open yet.” Then we realized that the poster didn’t look particularly new, and was awfully vague about *when* the restaurant was opening. So, just as the elevator doors were about to close on the designated level, we jumped off and found someone to point us in the restaurant’s (which had been open for several years) direction.

Good thing we did!

I had macaroni and cheese with bacon and mushrooms and Eiffel Tower Cake. Delicious! And our waiter was great – don’t listen to people who tell you French waiters are rude! He gave us a surprisingly comprehensive French lesson during our meal, and then his phone number with instructions to call if we needed any help. (And OK, yes, maybe he was flirting, but it really didn’t come off that way.)

We had had big plans for going to alllll the museums in the afternoon, but we got a bit of a late start and took longer than we planned at the tower. So that afternoon (night, really, by that time) we only made it to the Musee d’Orsay, where we saw Van Goghs and DeGas and, honestly, a lot of other things I enjoyed a lot at the time but don’t really remember now. We were getting pretty tired. So we headed back to the apartment for a good night’s sleep in preparation for:

Day 3:
Shopping Day!

Again, we had planned to get an early start on Shopping Day, because we expected it to be pretty full. But we were a little later than planned, and what with the French people’s strict dining time rules, missed breakfast. But lucky we did, because we ended up eating brunch at Laduree – inventor of the French Macaron as we know it!

We had (among us) a club sandwich, an omelet, two marcarons (an exciting first for both of us; we haven’t found any nearly as good since in the US or Paris) and a perfectly lovely time. We vowed to come back for dinner before we left.

Then the shopping commenced! We consulted our various “guide” books and decided to start at the very top: La Bon Marche!

LBM is the (I would say) Neiman Marcus of Paris. It was the first Parisian department store and is appropriately posh. I didn’t really expect to buy anything there, but Nicole had decided that she would allow herself one big exciting purchase as a souvenir. After looking at purses shoes and any number of other things (they have it all), she decided to get some expensive rose-scented perfume.

Then we moved on to our next stop: Bazaar Hotel De Ville. But we got distracted by a photo op across the street:

We don’t know what that building was, we just thought it was pretty.

Also pretty:

I’d say that Hotel De Ville is a Dillard’s-level equivalent in Paris. But BIGGER! We only scratched the surface of the six floors on one side of the street, with women’s clothing, home goods, a HARDWARE store and … tons of other stuff, and six more floors on the other side of the street for men. This was more of the level I felt comfortable spending at, and I loaded up on silk scarves for girl presents and Parisian ties for boy presents (plus an item or two for myself, perhaps).

We wrapped up our Day of Shopping (though not our shopping), with a visit to Monoprix, the Target-level equivalent – though much nicer than Target! I got yet another silk scarf (for myself) and some adorable clothes for my best friend’s six-month-old – a baby beret and a (4 percent) cashmere onesie!

By this time, we were starting to get hungry, so we headed to Les Deux Magots (The Two Magots in English – the magots refer to Chinese rulers, not to the bugs). It came highly recommended by a well-traveled gentleman in our office, as well as Earnest Hemingway and Julia Child. I had a steak, and Nicole had gazpacho and basil sorbet. Then we topped it off with HUGE apple tarts and ice cream.

It was all great, but the best was yet to come!

Au revoir for now!

(Psst! Part II can now be found here.)