second to last weekend

This weekend in paris was relaxing and interesting. We woke up to rain and wet everything saturday morning but luckily by the time we actually got ready to leave the house it had stopped raining. It actually didn’t even drizzle until we were a block away from home, obviously paris wants us to enjoy our last few days here. We started our saturday by heading towards the bois de boulogne, a huge (I want to say the biggest) park here located along the western side of paris. The park is over twice as big as central park in new york and three times as big as hyde park in london, thank you wikipedia. My sister had told me that some of the nicer apartments in paris are along avenue foch off the arc de triomphe on the way to bois de boulogone so we decided to get off the metro a few stops before and walk. The street was huge (it is the widest street in paris) and very peaceful, something you don’t see often in paris.

Once we got to the end of avenue foch (pronounced foe-sh, yes like the word meaning cuss in farsi) I had a general idea of where the park was. Dorene and I are used to each other only having general ideas of where we are so it wasn’t a big deal, I just wanted to find this park. We walked for a bit until we saw a patch of trees like a mini forest and figured that that was the beginning of the park. We trekked through the mud first attempting to go down a little trail we found only to discover it was a trail to nowhere. We simply followed all the trees down a few long muddy blocks until we finally found something that resembled an actual park. We saw a huge lake, a few actual trails and my favorite part, french runners and dogs.

Even though the lake was man-made I still thought it was gorgeous and sat down on a bench near by enjoying the view. It reminded me a little of my favorite scene in the notebook when they’re out in a row boat on a lake and it starts raining. I’m guessing it’s because I don’t normally see many lakes so any lake I see reminds of that scene but really the park was beautiful.

All the runners in the park reminded me of how badly I’m going to need to exercise when I get back home so it was quite a bittersweet moment for me while I sat on a bench eating an amazing quiche. Of course we didn’t go through and around the entire park, actually we probably just saw maybe three percent of the entire thing but I was still excited by the fact that we had finally made it to a not so touristy paris attraction. I already look forward to coming back during the summer to rent a boat on the lake, have a picnic and maybe actually run a little bit, keyword maybe.

By the way, just in case my blog entry inspires you to visit bois de boulogone please visit the park during the day because at nighttime the park becomes one of the red light districts of paris. I don’t know how this whole transformation actually takes place but basically stay away from this park once it’s dark outside unless well prostitution is kind of your thing.

After another muddy walk back to avenue foch we took the metro to la defense, which is in the northwest part of paris at the end of the metro line one, to check out the mall and all the office buildings there. La defense is europe’s largest purpose-built business district with 3.5 million square meters of office space (again, thank you wikipedia.) My dad used to work there when he lived in paris so for some reason I feel some sort of connection with la defense. The mall there was packed as if christmas was tomorrow and the entire city of paris didn’t have any gifts yet. It was a bit claustrophobic, enough to stop even dorene from wanting to shop, so we simply went outside to explore.

The famous part of la defense is the grande arche which is this modern looking building that is shaped like a hollow cube. It is supposed to be like a modern arc de triomphe of sorts.

Normally la defense would be pretty empty during the weekend but since there was achristmas market set up in the empty space between all the different office buildings it was packed. The christmas markets, aka tons of little booths selling crap, were just like the ones set up along the champs elysees.  I don’t know how the french don’t get sick of seeing the same things being sold over and over again but who am I to judge?

Dorene and I only bought things to eat at the market, all of which turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment but at least we tried. I got a piece of a noel brioche which tasted awful, dorene got a donut in shape of a pretzel and hot chocolate and together we both got these star shaped cookies we saw people eating. They look like gingerbread cookies and I love gingerbread but sadly they’re not even close, damn those people who were eating them made it look so good.

Since we had a walking-filled day we decided to head home somewhat early to rest before going out at night. This was our second to last weekend here and it just didn’t make sense to stay at home and relax when there were drinks to be drank and clubs to be danced at. Dorene had found this new club called l’etoile to go to but long story short there was a line, our french isn’t that good and we had to pee so we ended up going to duplex. Duplex was the first club we went to in paris so it’s an oldie but a goodie.

We managed to cut the long line and get in quickly.  They had this new level/room open where they played random semi-old american songs that the french obviously still consider to be cool. We spent most of our time on this level because we liked the music better and because we had been in the lower level, the actual club level before. We danced, sang out loud in english and had a great time.

I was determined to stay out until the metro opened in the morning (5:30am) and even though I had to sit down towards the end and force my eyes to stay open I’m proud to say I made it. We were able to catch the metro back home, something I hadn’t done before, and yes I felt very cool.  You can’t tell but in the picture below was taken around 6am but of course the clock part of the sign didn’t photograph well.

This morning or I guess afternoon we thought we would take advantage of it being the first sunday of the month and go visit a few museums for free. (Almost all the museums in paris are free on the first sunday of the month.) I wanted to go see musee d’orsay again since it has a lot of paintings that I like and we figured since it was already three pm the crowd would have died down a bit but boy we were wrong. We were barely off the metro stop when we noticed a line of at least 250 people waiting to get inside. I’m all for saving ten euros but do these people have nothing better to do?

We decided to take some time instead walking along the seine and taking some pictures on a bridge nearby.

On the bridge we noticed that there were all sorts of locks with couples name on them. I had seen this sort of love lock thing before near a church I think in rome but I didn’t know people had attempted to start one on this bridge in paris. Immediately, dorene and I thought about how we need to leave a lock there together. I don’t know if she was joking or not but I was quite serious so lock buying time here I come.

After walking to the concorde and taking pictures with the fountain shown in the movie devil wears prada we headed to le marais to have falafel sandwiches at this falafel place recommended by lenny kravitz (random I know but just go with it.)

Let’s just say lenny knows his falafels because I don’t even like falafel and I love this place. The sandwich consists of falafel obviously, pickled red cabbage, grilled eggplant, some tomato, some white cabbage textured thing and yogurt sauce on top all in a thick pita. It’s heavenly. It was our third time going in the past month. It’s quite the sandwich, I need to take breaks while eating, but it’s worth it. Definitely something I am going to miss when I get home.

Since we were still a bit tired from the staying up late fiasco the night before we decided to head back home after lunch for some r and r. I was going to start writing one of my papers but I couldn’t go all weekend without blogging so I decided to write this instead. After all, a girl’s gotta have her priorities straight. I'm off to bed now in hope that I wake up early and start writing one of my essays, wish me luck.