paris!

adam and i decided to take a weekend holiday in paris! thanks to expedia, we landed ourselves two eurostar tickets and a three-star hotel in the latin quarter for a reasonable price...


i was surprised to find that the eurostar had carpeted floors. i was also surprised to find that you have to check in and go through customs BEFORE you can get on the train...close call on timing! we spent half of the journey listening to French lessons on my iPod, and the other half of the journey eating lunch. by the time we purchased lunch, all that was left in the snack car was:

two bags of crisps
coffee
brownies
bickies aka biscuits aka cookies

a nice, balanced start to a weekend of healthy eating


hangin' out in the sun on the seine. we spent most of the weekend contently wandering up and down the river, occasionally stopping to look at stuff or sit on a wall.


adam hoping for a glimpse of quasimodo


i heart parisian cafes. this one was called la palette and was in the heart of saint germain in the middle of dozens of art galleries. good reco from lonely planet! i carried my lonely planet guide around faithfully, despite my co-workers teasing me that this is a guide book for students looking for a cheap holiday. just because i am 31 doesn't mean i can't be thrifty.


another lonely planet reco, we tried to go to this wine bar for lunch but the grumpy owner wasn't in the mood to serve food at such an odd hour (3 pm). so we came back for dinner. :-)


despite grumpy man's warning of rain, we sat at a table outside (we didn't get THAT wet and anyway, every other table was booked) and enjoyed a rather expensive bottle of wine.


we also enjoyed a cheese plate and a STUPID AMOUNT OF MEAT. we ordered l'entrecote for two people, which was enough delicious steak (and frites) to easily feed a family of four. none of it went to waste.


saturday we found ourselves walking along the seine again, this time on a mission to see a few sights. on the bridge to the louvre, we noticed that there were loads of padlocks stuck to the fence. perhaps they were part of an art exhibit? or a political statement? you can't chain that many bikes to the same part of the fence.


i bought a sweater (yes, Dad and Pam it is a grey sweater!!!!) because it was a bit chilly. shopping in paris was more fun than shopping in london. (i actually find shopping in london traumatic, between the size differences and the fact that most clothes are made for 13 year old girls)


the louvre looked kind of like a greenhouse.





the big triangle had baby triangles.


since dinner in paris isn't exactly cheap, we decided to buy groceries at carrefour and have ourselves a picnic. some baguettes, salami, gouda, fruit, and plastic knives are all you need for a good lunch! the free map from the hotel made a nice placemat. however, by the time we ate the whole block of cheese, i didn't desire dairy for the rest of the weekend.


walking to the eiffel tower from the louvre is a bit misleading. you think "oh, look it's over there, pretty close by", then you think "hmm, not much farther", then "right, just a few more blocks probably", and finally "f'ing hell, where is this bloody thing?".


after a bit of debate, i finally decided this one is definitely bigger than the one at Kings Island.




tour de france rolled into town while we were there...


trying a new beer at a new cafe :-)


another lonely planet dinner reco that became our favorite spot in paris




adam really wanted to try snails and other delicacies, which is one of reasons we chose Moissonier for dinner. it was a little gem with about 15 tables and a husband/wife team running everything. about a minute after we ordered our escargots, you could hear the butter start to sizzle in the kitchen. after we finished the entree, we soaked up the leftover sauce with free, fresh-baked bread...


in the true spirit of adventure, i ordered quenelle, which is some sort of pike (fish) based souffle. i really didn't know what to expect, but this was light, fluffy, perfectly seasoned, and just plain decadent. :-)


adam was even braver than me and ordered calf kidneys. so good! they tasted like blood sausage and came with potatoes au gratin, mmmmm.


i have no idea what i ordered for dessert, but it was marshmellowy with caramel drizzled over top and a lovely vanilla sauce. heaven.

after two days of such culinary treats, we spent sunday recovering over croque madames and crepes before taking one last walk along the river and then a nice jog through the train station. must learn to leave earlier when traveling internationally...

some things i've learned...

...living in a small space with four other people...

- having four roommates is a great way to ensure you eat all of the food you buy, as you don't have room to keep buying more new stuff when the old stuff is occupying "your" half shelf of the camping-sized refrigerator.

- "cleaning as you go" in the kitchen is imperative to ensure that you have enough counter space to make, say, anything involving more than three ingredients, especially when four people are in the kitchen simultaneously.

- washing dishes by hand is critical for items you only have one of, e.g. the measuring cup or the semi-sharp butcher knife. although, this does take the fun out of watching someone dig through the mountains of mess in the dishwasher for something and then spend another twenty minutes trying to cleaning two-week old food off said object. (who can be bothered to run that darn machine? we need a house mom, really.)

- it isn't worth getting upset over small things, like someone ALWAYS taking your produce out of what looks like a community bowl and setting it on the counter. (but seriously why, WHY won't you leave my poor Tesco tomatoes alone people!?)

- it IS worth it to wash someone else's random dishes just so that you don't have to look at them another day (although i am NOT touching the cup of oil that has been sitting next to the stove for the better part of July. must have some standards, you know)

- nobody wins if you are too lazy to change the empty toilet paper roll. what goes around, comes around...

- washing the shower curtain and seeing it emerge (two hours later) from the machine in a completely different shade of white produces an unimaginable sense of pride and joy. (seriously, i thought that thing was CREAM coloured.)

- that said, you should always check the washer before you throw things in, just in case someone has decided to dye something purple and leave it in the machine overnight.

- it is nice always having someone available to tell you what shoes go best with your dress.

- sometimes you have to scrap your dreams of making Sunday brunch and go out, because your roommate is blasting foreign rock music whilst using every available countertop, stovetop, microwave, and oven to make...something...

- it is possible to eat rice and prawns that were left out of the refrigerator for 24 hours and not die (or even get sick) (wasn't me).

- wine tastes better when you share it with your roommates.

harry potter nerd's slow tour of london

while i refuse to go on a paid "harry potter tour of london", i do find small joys in stopping by famous sites from the movies. one blustery saturday in june (seriously, was about 50 degrees), i decided to put aside my belief that zoos are evil, sad places and go visit the animals living in the london zoo. they had some pretty interesting species there, as well as the usual suspects - giraffes, monkeys, zebras and the like.

however, i digress. back to harry. perhaps you remember the film "harry potter and the sorcerer's stone"? well, it is in this movie that, at the reptile house in the london zoo, harry learns he can speak parseltongue. an important moment in every young man's life, really.


and here's me at the reptile house. i did not make any life changing discoveries on this particular day, although i did enjoy a strawberry cupcake later that afternoon.

4th of July picnic, British style

mmm, duck sandwich and banana milk consumed while sitting on a plastic bag in the park. if that doesn't say "happy birthday, america", i just don't know what else would.

(if you really must know, banana milk, which is banana-flavoured milk and not "milk of bananas" tastes a lot like liquid laffy taffy. amazing stuff.)

i like pie

i really, really like to cook and have been experimenting with proper british meals on sunday afternoons. jamie oliver had a fantastic lamb pie recipe in one of his cookbooks; however, it called for some part of the lamb that i had never heard of, as well as puff pastry, which takes six hours to make and i can't ever find ready-made.

more often than not, i have to find "compromises" when i cook and this was no exception. there was some lovely lamb shoulder on sale at asda (wal-mart), and a bag of puff pastry mix in a random aisle. done and done. i even talked adam into buying me a rolling pin!

i had never cooked lamb before but it was surprisingly easy. just put it in a dutch oven to brown it, throw in some veggies and red wine sauce to simmer, then cover with pastry and bake for a few minutes. the puff pastry mix didn't make quite enough to cover the pie, so we improvised and used the end bits to plug a few holes. however, the baking dish wasn't deep enough so my beautiful crust, which i had so lovingly applied an egg wash to, sunk. turns out that soggy pie crust still tastes pretty damn good... :-)



the masterpiece!


after a few bites...

i miss you, midnight sun

ok, so we don't actually have midnight sun here, but we are far enough north that for a few interesting months, the sun came up at 4 and it was light till almost 23:00. this was sometimes annoying because i would forget to go to bed, but it was also cool because, as my friend Kelly pointed out, you wake up at 4 and realise you still have a LONG time before you have to get up. :-)

this amazing phenomenon only lasted a few weeks though, and when i returned from cincinnati a few weeks ago, our extended hours of daylight were already growing ever shorter. boo...in fact, double boo, because this just means we are slowly heading back to the time of year when we get about seven hours of daylight...