So every now and then I realize that I shouldn't even bother trying to come up with things to write about. I should just post the AIM conversations I have with CanadaKate, because honestly when we get going, I die laughing on a regular basis. We're funnier than the sum of our parts.
However, then I promptly forget and close the window we had just been chatting in, consigning all that comic genius to the wastebin of history.
That's really a shame, because now I'm going to have to tell you about Paris without all the !!!!! and OMGOMGOMG and JUMPING JESUS BALLS that the two of us regularly use to punctuate our conversations, in much the same way that a normal person would use, say, a comma.
First, let me just say that I've had like 4 double espressos over the course of the day, because being somewhere that does a decent coffee just makes my heart purr.
Second, OMGOMGOMG!!!!! JUMPING JESUS BALLS, but I love Paris! I was here for about a day and a half, like eight years ago, and I think I was too busy being a poor student on the very tail end of a month through Europe to really appreciate it. To start, my hotel is next door to the Paris Opera, and is not, in fact, a room with six bunk beds in the Young and Happy Youth Hostel (where everybody's young and happy!!). Second, I have a corporate Amex instead of being down to my last twenty bucks.
Both of those facts help.
Most of the afternoon was work, but I had a chance before my bosses showed up to walk around the neighborhood and do some shopping. I bought herbs, and three different kinds of salt. Remind me to try to pick up some foie gras before I go. Also if I don't bring my family baseball hats that say Paris! on them in rhinestones, I think I'll be disowned.
Then the coworkers and I went to the Hotel du Nord for dinner, and I'm sure it'll come as zero surprise to anybody when I say that I had both the terrine de foie gras, and also the filet of duck. MMMMPH.
It's such a shock being here directly after India -- I can't imagine a more polar opposite. Everything here is sumptuous and gilded and, well...just so European. The cars are all shiny and the windows are all shiny and there are stained glass atria everywhere and MAN does it do my decadent little heart good. Don't get me wrong, there are things I really love about India too, and decadent shiny places there as well, but I can't help having a stronger affinity to pate than to paneer.
I just got back to my room from taking a walk down the street to the Seine, where I looked at a bunch of domes that I didn't know what they were, and then, of course, the Eiffel Tower. When I was here last time, I remember thinking how short and unimpressive it looked, compared to what I was imagining in my head. Maybe it was just that I'd already gotten over that disappointment, but tonight? Tonight, man -- it was magic.