Printemps

So Spring came (and seems to have gone away again) with temps being in the low 20's but the flowers are out in full bloom and at least you can go outside at midday without a heavy coat! Walking in Paris is gorgeous at the moment - all the flowerbeds have daffodils and tulips flowering....

In Parc de Sceaux they have fields of cheery trees all with blossoms, you can't appreciate the colour in this photo but its gorgeous... These are the cherry blossoms outside Notre Dame, still a cloudy sky but so pretty against the almost ugly stonework.
The time changed the other day, means I still get up in the dark but its still light until about 8.30/9pm. So nice to come home in the light for a change. Spring suits me :)

Champagne

I had planned a weekend trip away with Rach to Reims to taste Champagne to drown my sorrows about Matt leaving but as he was still here and Rachel was nice, Matt and I ended up going alone. I didn't have anything really planned for this trip but the Champagne houses have tours fairly often so it was great. The first place we went to was a lovely Art Nouveu style house (so gorgeous) and the champagne was pretty good too. Two full glasses each!

The next place we went to was Tattinger which had caves that we could visit. They are all old chalk quarries that keep the temperature really constant for when they ferment the champagne. They gave us a tour of the caves and gave us the blurb how they make etc. Got a bit bored of the 'talk' as we did it all over again the next day!

We got another 2 glasses of champagne there and then headed home for a nap.

We had a late dinner at this awesome seafood restaurant, we tried a tasting platter which had all sorts of crazy things (cold sea snails -urgh, tiny little shrimps and really good oysters!). The best part of dinner was my lobster risotto-doesn't it look yummy!

On Sunday, with our champagne tour booked for the afternoon we decided to explore a bit more of Reims. About 95% of the buildings were destroyed in the war and it was where the peace treaty was signed, the museum was closed for lunch so we didn't go inside but it gave us something to take a picture of other than champagne!

Waiting for our next tour at Pommery (one of the more famous caves) we had lunch in a park nearby-soaking up the sunshine. At Pommery we tasted 4 different types of Champagne, I thought Champagne was champagne but you could really taste the difference when you compared them all.
We (ok, Matt splurged) splurged on 2 bottles of champagne, one to take back for a special occasion and another to drink with Rach when we got home, hence the drunk photo below!
So after our wonderful weekend away, it was time for Matt to go home. I was so lucky to get an extra week with him (thanks appendicitis!) but wasn't too sad saying goodbye knowing I would be home in 3 months!

Appendicitis in Paris

So after we returned from our fancy pants dinner, Matt started to complain about having a sore stomach. Then a few hours later he had the most expensive vomit ever! After a restless night where neither he or I got any sleep and after spending Saturday morning at home with Matt at his best whingy self I finally cracked and decided to take him to hospital. At this stage I was thinking they will tell him to take a pain killer and get over it! Of course, Matt had googled stomach-ache and had self-diagnosed himself with appendicitis. Luckily there was a hospital just down the road from where we were staying (I made him walk there!), turned out the hospital was one of the leaders in digestive surgery. After registering at the desk, where the nurses had a giggle at him having a surname like French and not being able to speak a word, we proceeded to wait about 2hours to get into see a doctor.

Then they did a blood test, then we waited another 3 hours for the results which weren't conclusive so then he went for an ultrasound where they saw his appendix was swollen. Felt a bit guilty for being mean to Matt and calling him a sook when he was actually in pain! My bad! They then admitted him and took him to the wards (about 2am at this stage). I got to sleep in a chair overnight - fun! They got him up at about 6am to have a shower (turned out to be a hosepipe in a room with tiles!) and where told he would have his op that morning.

They kicked me out of the ward at about 10am as it wasn't visiting hours under the impression that he was going in before lunch and to come back at 3pm to see him afterwards. Came back and he still hadn't gone into surgery. Was going to start throwing my toys out the cot when they came to get him (almost 24hrs after we arrived at hospital). He was out of the op by 8pm. I thought I had at least the morning to organise ourselves as we had to find another apartment to stay in and had to change Matt's flights and stuff but they rung me at about 10am to go and pick him up!

After about 2 days in bed, loving having me at his beck and call Matt was up and about as if nothing happened! And we got to spend an extra week together :)

Matt's Visit

Well the day finally arrived after 8 months....I was so happy it was unbelievable. Ended up having a final girls night with Rach the night before he arrived where we drunk a bit too much considering I had to be up and out of the house by 5am to get to the airport on-time. I ended up setting my alarm for 5am due to my drunken state but managed to get an express train and arrive on-time. Pormptly went to the wrong terminal, then found the right one only to see that Matt’s flight had been moved to another terminal....so I was late! It was so good seeing him, we rented a little 1 bedroom apartment in Paris which was small but overlooked a park and was pretty close to a Metro.
The first few days we just spent at home together but the following day we headed out to dinner with some of Matt’s friends who were also on their ROCL. We had to get Matt a coat as all he’d bought with him was a hoodie (smart boy), I was meant to get him a coat – glad I didn’t as I wouldn’t have chosen one that was anything like the gay euro one he eventually bought! Tried to meet Matt’s friends at Georges Pompidou centre but to cut a long story short we met at the Guiness Tavern (I needed to check out places for St Paddy’s day!) Went out for dinner and obviously all the tourists had snails and confirmed what I had always said, they just taste like rubbery garlic! Then we headed off to Cafe Oz for a few drinks, but dancing on tables is a girl thing so wasn’t a popular spot!

Saturday was another lazy morning before I took all the boys up to Sacre Coeur to watch the buskers, think its another girl thing but they enjoyed the soccer dude so there you go.
Had a wonder down into the red light district after dinner for the obligatory photo in-front of the Moulin Rouge.
Sunday was all planned to head up the Eiffel Tower – I’d been waiting for this for 8 months – I was banned from going up without Matt. Had it all sorted, pre-booked an afternoon climb so I knew the top would be open, got us there on time. Pity I forgot Matt was scared of heights so while we were waiting I was making comments on how big it was etc. To get to the top of the tower you take 2 lifts, one that goes to the 1st and 2nd floors and then another to the top. Now I admit I thought when we stopped on the first lift we were at the top – it was pretty high! But no we still had the same distance to go. Poor Matt is freaking out at this point and staying as close to the centre as he can, palms sweaty, white face but he was very brave and got into the next lift and proceeded to bury his head in my shoulder so that he wouldn’t have to see! When we got to the top (its enclosed on the first level) it was swaying a bit and Matt was pretty much as close to the lift shaft as possible. I tried to take his mind off it by pointing to various things and we eventually worked our way up and into the open, where he didn’t move basically. I tried to get him to do a lap but as soon as the wind blew he was history! So funny! We grabbed this quick photo before racing all the way back down to earth. Shortest visit to the Eiffel tower EVER!
After that fiasco, I scrapped all other monument climbing activities for the rest of the week!
On Sunday evening I had got us cheap late tickets to LIDO, a cabaret that is on the Champs Elysees. I will be doing a run-down on tLIDO vs. Moulin Rouge later. We arrived early and sat down for a chocolat chaud at a cafe (17euros later we know why I don’t even look in a shop on Champs Elysees!). Here’s a photo of Matt near the Arc de Triumph trying to look cool in his Euro coat.
I took Matt out to see my shitty little student room and my uni, he was suitably unimpressed but hopefully now realises why I always whinge about taking the train and bus everywhere. Being the clued up Parisienne that I am, we went to the Louvre late on Wednesday afternoon as it stays open until 10pm, cruised through security at the side entrance and no queue for tickets either!
Matt then proceeded to drag me through every gallery in the Louvre – boring et encore boring! It was so nice and quiet in some of the galleries though. I really don’t appreciate art at all, I think statues are there for funny photo opportunities....
On Thursday, we headed to Les Invalides which is the army museum and which I felt obliged to take Matt. It was pretty good, Napolean’s tomb is also there so get to tick off 2 things. Their WW1&2 displays are pretty interesting and plentiful. I wasn’t so keen on the displays of uniforms and swords of every person who ever was a French soldier......so many corridors! Again not a museum person.
On Friday, I dragged Matt up Montmartre again to get our portrait done, luckily it was a cold week day so we could barter a lot as there weren’t very many tourists. We looked around at a few of the artists and thought we has chosen a good one – boy were we wrong! After both sitting for an hour being drawn, this is what we ended up with....Uncanny!
After that we were off to fancy pants restaurant at Tour Montparnasse for dinner, we were so lucky to get a table by the window although Matt was freaking out again and think he would have preferred a table right at the back where he couldn’t look down. The view of the Eiffel Tower is beautiful, especially when it sparkles. The food was amazing too.
As we get home, Matt starts whinging about having a sore stomach.....and we all know where that leads!

Pamper Weekend

Being the weekend before Matt arrived, Rach and I had planned a pamper weekend. Starting with a visit to a beautician to get everything waxed, let me just say trying to make small talk in a second language while getting your bikini wax is pretty hard! After that experience it was off to the hairdresser for me to brave a whole new vocabulary (how do you say I want layers and a trim in frenhc??), thankgod for hair magazines and sign language. The little place I went to in Vincennes didn’t allow bookings and I went in just before lunch (rookie mistake), ended up waiting with wet hair until everyone came back from their lunch. Took forever!
After a very late lunch we were off to a hammam spa for a session. We arrived and were totally confused as to if we needed to take all our clothes off and way too embarrassed to ask. Luckily we played it safe with a bikini! We were ushered straight into a steam room and hten promptly slathered in savon noir (black soap) by a hopefully gay guy. After our soaping, a quick shower and then we were off for our exfoliation – it felt like I was being scrubbed with a wire brush which was not so pleasant. The it was time for a massage. I had the soap guy he was amazing, I’m never going back to female masseuse. Rach ended up with a girl and looked a bit worried when we got out – turned out she had got a boob massage! After our interesting massages, we proceeded to flit between the steam room, sauna and spa for the rest of the evening...absolute bliss:) Arriving home, we were straight back into the pampering with some weird hair mask concoction that Rach made (beer and olive oil were among the ingredients) yuck! We did feet and Rach did nails (as I still bite mine), facemasks, moisturiser...anything you could think of was done to highest of our abilities.

On Sunday, we walked into Paris (only about 10km’s) to go the Musee de l’erotisme which is near the Moulin Rouge. There were lots of ‘interesting’ displays there. One of which were a collection of chairs similar to this one and a wall of photos of people’s bits – not artfully photographed, just your average polaroid! It was eye-opening to say the least!
We then spent a very chilled afternoon on the steps of Sacre Coeur doing what we do best (drinking wine and watching the buskers) where we caught one the crowd pleasers on top form. Check him out on youtube too.
And no pamper weekend is complete without a visit to the SEXODROME!