What a city. Paris is beautiful! It's like London, only in French!
We stayed at the Best Western Nouvel Orleans, and if you're ever in town you should definitely check it out. The accomodations are small and cozy, but the beds are comfy and they have typical Parisian balconies overlooking the rues.
Showing Hillary around London made me so terribly happy. I do love London a lot, and I'm going to miss this town when I leave (in twenty-one days, can you believe it!), but I absolutely cannot wait to get home. I miss my cats and my puppy and my rabbits. I can see it now, I'm going to walk through the front door and be smothered by a big old blind kitty who is going to give me scratchy tongue kisses all over my face (especially my eyelids, because she's weird) and she is going to make me carry her 15 pound self around for an hour or so and when I finally get her to calm down and realise she isn't dreaming I'm going to be pounced upon by a slobbery dog, who is then going to make me carry her 40 pound self around for an hour or so. The rabbits won't slobber, pounce or smother, they will just see me and jump all around and give me those big rabbit eyes and silently ask me for yogurt chips. Buns will request that I give him a kiss on her twitchy nose and that I rub him between his eyes.
Gosh I'm such a sucker.
But back to London and Paris. London is a fun town, and it was awesome to be able to share it with my most favourite person in the world.
Paris is just amazing, and fortunately they have very effective public transportation. We saw the Eiffle Tower at night, all lit up and glowing. We went to the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa, which was okay but I've seen better art since I've been here (and there are better Da Vinci's elsewhere).
Walking around Paris was by far the best part of the little trip. Walking through the streets and little cobbled alleyways, arm in arm or hand in hand. Notre Dam was impressive, but the little Sant Chappelle across the street was better (but not free). I hope to get back to Paris someday, and to get back to France someday as well, just like I hope to return to Spain and Barcelona, and Norway and Oslo.
We had dinner at this little Italian restaurant (if there is one Italian place in a 5 mile radius, I can find it simply by following my nose, trust), both nights. We had the same waiter both times, and he remembered our orders (and laughed when I got the same meal and said 'I'm not very adventurous'). On the second night we had our glasses of chianti, our still water, our pastas, and then our desserts (she had the fruit tiaramisu and I had this DELICIOUS sorbet with fresh fruit with CHAMPAGNE, ugh it was like I literally died and went to heaven). When they brought our dessert out the waiter comes over to the table and hands us to LARGE glasses of amaretto (and the two cups of tea we ordered, post dessert) and said "from us" with a smile. They totally knew it was our one year anniversary, and they made it so entirely special.
When we got back into London last evening, we were starving and exhausted, so I brought Hillary to Marleybone High Street, where all the cute little restaurants are (and the best gelato in London, if I didn't know better I'd swear I were Italian), but we were so hungry that our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and we barely ate any of our food. We stopped at a bar on the way home, after sharing a 1/2 bottle of red wine at dinner, and I had a double shot rum and coke and she had a double shot vodka cranberry and then we shared a pitcher of a drink called "purple rain" which is basically vodka and lemonade and anything else they feel like throwing in. We stumbled home in the rain, got ready for bed and passed out.
I got her to the airport today with 70 minutes to spare (they close the check-in for flights 60 minutes before departure, so we were sincerely hustling), held her hand and played with her soft brown hair the whole time. When we kissed goodbye while she was running to get to security I felt the biggest pang in my heart. I miss her so much, I miss home so much. It's like taking someone's heart and ripping it right out of their chest, and then sending it over 3,000 miles away.
But I'll only be here for another twenty-one days, and then I can go home and everything will be perfectly right with the world.
Hope everyone in the States had a very happy Thanksgiving!
No comments:
Post a Comment