frenchship bracelets

This morning was not my morning. I started my day off with some milk and cereal, the milk tasted a bit funny but I drank it anyway. On my way to school my stomach started to churn and my saliva tasted sour and I was convinced that my milk had gone bad; you can’t always trust unpasteurized milk in france. I decided to buy a pastry from the bakery on the corner near school hoping it would make me feel better. I got a pain au raisin, a sort of raisin roll that doesn’t really exist in america. This one was different from all the other ones I’ve had or seen in paris, it was less flakey and brunt, more doughy and soft. Anyway, a few bites of that didn’t do the trick so during break from class I thought I would get a coffee from the vending machine. The coffee vending machines at my school are amazing; they have helped me not miss my black iced teasfrom starbucks as much. I put my two-euro coin and got back two euros in other change (a small shot of coffee costs fifty euro cents.) Before I could get excited about getting a free coffee I looked into the cup to realize it was some sort of clear liquid frothy thing. Since I figured I hadn’t technically paid for it I would try again in another machine, I really needed the caffeine. This time it took my money, as it should but gave me another clear liquid frothy drink. Lesson of the day, there is no such thing as a free cup of coffee in france. 

Thanks to my lack of coffee, I got home from class and took an hour-long nap on the couch without even taking my shoes off so that when I woke up I would be ready to go sightsee with dorene. Okay in all honesty I thought I was just going to put my head down for a few minutes but I fell asleep and now call it an hour-long nap. It was very pretty outside this afternoon, blue skies and almost cloudless (a true rarity here) so dorene wanted to go to the eiffel tower for a legit photo shoot. If it is not obvious by now I’m a picture-taking fanatic and it is almost impossible to believe that dorene and I didn’t have pictures in front of the eiffel tower until today. We’ve been to the top of it, we’ve (okay maybe just I’ve) ran around it, we’ve watched the special light show they have at night right now but we’ve never gone to trocadero (the place all the tourists go to the get the above ground eiffel tower photo shot) to take pictures. So without any further ado (I’m not sure how to spell this saying, but you get the jist) here is our photo shoot.

Dorene needed four pictures: a normal one, a delta one, a delta jumping one, and a single pose one.

Note, it was not warm enough to wear a tank top outside. I was the photographer/coat rack.

I didn’t need any, but apparently wanted all. All and then some.

Luckily, we somehow got someone to take a picture of us together.

I asked if we could have a “crazy photo” and the guy was actually surprised at how un-crazy our pose photo really was.

All the posing made us hungry so we decided to have lunch at a café nearby. I convinced dorene to eat at the only café there with an eiffel tower view, reminding her that we only have two weeks left. We sat outside and enjoyed a croque madame, a salad, and the view. As dorene likes to say, “she could just stare at the tower all day” (two points for me for rhyming on accident.)

Below is the view from our table, stop signs, trees and all. 

After lunch, we headed towards père lachaise, a famous cemetery in eastern paris, where several famous are buried. The cemetery was large to say the least, but fortunately there was an extremely complicated map near the entrance. Dorene was joking when she asked me to take a picture of the map to reference later when we got lost. I must say, that was one of her top ten best ideas in paris so far.

Somehow we made it to honore balzac’s tomb. We saw a girl taking a photo of a tomb and quickly headed in that direction, assuming it had to be someone famous. Dorene considered herself accomplished seeing one famous tomb but we weren’t going to stop trying. 

Thirty minutes, eighteen camera references to the map, and five walking u-turns later, we made it to oscar wilde’s tomb. It definitely didn’t look like anything I had imagined it to be. Apparently people kiss the tomb but I’ve made it through eleven weeks in paris without getting majorly sick (knock on wood) and I want to make it through two more, so sorry mr. wilde, you missed out on a good one!

After we felt like we could conquer the cemetery world, we set off to find edith piaf’s tomb. Edith piaf was a very famous french singer who we both learned about in french class in high school. The french are pretty much still obsessed with her and being true parisiennes, we felt the need to pay our respects, but apparently she didn’t feel the same way. After walking around in circles knowing that we were in the right area, I decided to ask two french women nearby to see if they knew where she was. One perfectly formulated french question later, we found out that the cemetery was closing in fifteen minutes and that she was “very far from here.”

I’m happy to report that we made it out of there before it closed as well as before the sun completely set because there wasn’t a single light fixture in the entire cemetery.

On our way home I thought that we would see another two monuments that were sort of near by. Our first stop was the place de republique which is basically just like any other street but with a big monument in middle, the republique statue obviously. Dorene said that her red scarf was because of the holidays. I normally would believe her without a doubt but let’s just say she’s lied to me about too many touristic facts before.

There we stopped off at the mcdonalds of course and had a crumble caramel mcflurry as dessert. It really is the best mcflurry I have ever had but also a little too rich and demanding towards the end so sadly neither of us finished ours.

Our next and last stop before home was bastille, an area known for having small street lined with bars as well as the bastille monument. Okay I’m pulling a dorene and making up random facts about bastille being known for their monument but I mean that’s why I went so it’s known to me as having it.

We happened to pass by this one clothing store when we were walking around bastille and I wanted to go inside because I saw a blazer I liked in the window. At that store we ended up buying matching french string bracelets. The french are really into these bracelets they make with this special type of “string” and different charms. I already own three that I bought last year when I visited france but unfortunately I don’t believe less is more. When we got home tonight we had a bracelet putting on ceremony, yes I made us have a ceremony, so now we’re both proud owners of a frenchship bracelet. Here’s to the next and last two weeks of our frenchship while in paris, can someone please slow down time?!