There were a lot of canals… with absolutely nothing stopping you from falling in.
This added to the adventure factor.

Chocomel is THE SHIT. I’ve been searching online for a USA vendor so I can order some.
It’s like drinking pudding. Really, really good pudding.

Frites, bitches! Even though Belgium is supposedly the home of the french fry,
Amsterdam made some damn good ones, too. Here are some with garlic mayo sauce. mmm mmm.

I found a lot of cool lighting fixtures. Here are my two favorites.

At one point we actually ate a *real meal that didn’t consist of shoarma or waffles. We found an Argentinian restaurant (after we had to talk Jonathan out of eating at the only Mexican restaurant in Amsterdam, and probably the Netherlands). The steak was great, and I have no incidents of mad cow disease to report.

Overall, I think we ordered 15 Chocomel hot chocolates, and ate 10-15 waffles, collectively, including the one I saved for the trip home on the train.

Amsterdam was fun.

Salade Gascon
Salade verte, tomates, magrets fumés, foie gras, pommes de terre sautées à l’ail
=
Gascon Salad
Green salad, tomatoes, smoked duck, goose liver, fried potatoes with garlic.

It’s the best thing ever… *ever.

It finally arrives at the table. The bowl is much deeper than it appears to be.
Don’t get it twisted, there’s actually lettuce under there… somewhere.

Oh look, the foie gras! I was beginning to think it wasn’t there at all.
At this point, i haven’t actually *eaten any salad, I’ve just pushed the potatoes aside to find the good stuff.

This is the point where I got ridiculously full.
Chris ate the rest of my potatoes.

I still don’t know what the dressing on the salad is. Jonathan’s convinced me it’s bacon fat and cream. I’m convinced he is correct.

Here are the ones I found in Paris.

Rue Vielle Du Temple – Le Marais, Paris


Rue François Miròn et Rue de Fourcy – Le Marais, Paris


Rue D’Orsel – Montmartre, Paris

The Red Light District isn’t as dramatic as HBO’s “Pimps Up, Hos Down” documentary makes it out to be.

Ordering weed isn’t as dramatic as you think it is, nor as exciting.

You spend a majority of your money on actual drinks at “coffee shops”. You have to pay to stay.

A coffee shop and a café are two extremely different things.

Shoarma is my new favorite food.

The rest is a smoky blur. Pictures to come.

Chris and Laura

Me and Jonathan

I had the Canard Confit avec pommes l’ail – duck with potatoes, as recommended by Laura. Laura and Jonathan had the Gavroche salad, and Chris had a salad with smoked salmon on top. Apparently, there’s a neighborhood cat that comes into the restaurant and sits on a random chair. It just wanders around.

Canard Confit

There was the cutest little boy sitting across from us, he kept dropping food on the ground.

That’s the boy. And that’s my arm.

I was ridiculously stuffed after eating almost half of my food, and then dessert comes. It was all so pretty! I couldn’t resist. Chris had the chocolate mousse, Laura and something with raspberries and cream, and I had the peach and pear parfait. C’est magnifique! Jonathan was wiggity wack and just had un café, because he was gonna eat all of ours anyway.

Dessert, bitches.

Laura, being the cool woman that she is, got us into the Louvre for free, where Chris and I wandered for hours. I took lots of pictures of the Islamic art so I can import the pictures into Photoshop and jack the patterns for backgrounds.

I heart Islamic art patterns

After wandering the Louvre for a few hours, Chris went back to the apartment and I joined Laura and Sandrine to go to FNAC to see Raul Midòn play a FREE show. Yes, bitches, free! What’s better than seeing an awesome performance, than seeing an awesome performance for FREE.

Raul Midòn

Ate Lebanese food for dinner, then I crashed super early. Chris says I snore. I think he’s lying.

Thursday, Chris left for Ireland. He went down to the boulangerie, because I was too lazy, and brought back a baguette, some pain aux chocolate (chocolate filled croissant), and of course, the infamous pain aux lardons.

After breakfast, we took had a little walk around the city, from Nation to Bastille. It’s a nice walk. Not exactly short, but nice.

Bastille

We ended up at a tourist trap café watching people walk by. I had un café crème, which is a cup of espresso served with a pitcher of steamed milk.

un café crème, s’il vous plait.

Chris had a Pschitt, which is a more carbonated version of Sprite. And yes, we giggled and called it a “Shit”.

Awwwwwwww Pschitt!!!

Then Chris was off to Ireland. I took a little nap, and Jonathan, Cyril and Laura came home and we watched Lost. I don’t knwo what it is about watching Lost in a foreign country, but it’s so much more suspenseful. Damn that was a good episode. We made dinner (gnocchi with pesto and lardon, lemon pasta, and Cyril’s famous lemon tart), and we crashed.

So, day 6 begins… I’ve had a cappucino and a dinner roll from last night. We leave for Amsterdam tonight, so don’t expect me to blog this weekend. I will take copious notes and hope I don’t forget anything cool. See you Monday.

View from Jonathan’s balcony

Here we are, the morning of day 5, trying to remember everything that went on the past two days.

Monday was probably the day I was worried about most on my trip, becaused Jonathan would be at school and Cyril would be at work, and I would be left to wander the streets of Paris by myself. So wrong, I was. Laura, Sandrine and John took me to Centre Pompidou to see the Los Angeles exibit… which is sort of funny, because it took me flying 5200 miles (thanks, John) to see an exibit that’s 1 1/2 hours from my house. Laura has all the museum hookups, since she works at the Louvre, so we went for free. She also managed to sneak us into the exibit next door called Morphosis. Big ups to Laura.

Pompidou Museum

It was around 2:30 before we left the museum, and I was staaaaaaaaaaaaarving. All I had that morning was a couple of cookies and half an orange (again, thanks John). We ate at a place called Chez Marianne. where you choose a few different small things (small salads, dips, finger foods) and eat them with bread. I got fallafel, kefta, eggplant and tuna salad and a couple of cornichons (little pickles). It was really good. Navigating the streets of Paris is hard, bitches… hard! I couldn’t do it alone.

Lunch at Chez Marianne (yes, Marianne was there)

So, today I met Sandrine, John, Sabrina and Fizel. We got dinner delivered from a place called Hollywood Canteen (go figure). And then we slept.

l-r : John, Sabrina, Jonathan, Cyril

Tuesday, nothing much happened. Christopher was set to fly in to Charles de Gaulle today, so we basically just waited for him to get here. With the “riots” going on and half of the metro stations not working, it took him 4 hours to get here. He is here though, safe and sound. Jonathan and I went grocery shopping in the morning after he got back from class. I always want to get a ton of stuff at the grocery store, but in the back of my mind I’m remembering the fact that we also have to walk up 6 flights of stairs to get to his apartment door. It helps with shopping light.

Jonathan made dope ass sandwiches for lunch. We used the infamous Pain aux Lardons. Basically, it was tuna, cheese, ham, and love. It was the best sandwich ever.

The infamous Bacon Bread

We washed it down with Pepsi Max.

Cappucino flavored Pepsi. Yes, you heard right. It’s the shit, son.

For dinner, Cyril brought home some lamb curry. Apparently, Nestle isn’t just for chocolate. For dessert, I made my “look at me, it looks like I can really cook” strawberries in balsamic vinegar and black pepper with mascarpone cheese whipped cream.

Mmm mmm, bitches.

Cyril also made a home made from scratch lemon tart, but we kinda ate it all before I could get a picture. It was super good, though.

Day 5 begins (at 11AM). Today I’m off to lunch with Jonathan, Chris and Laura. Then Chris and I are going to take advantage of Laura and go to the Louvre. More to come…

Well, I’m here. Friday morning started with my sister picking me up to take me to the airport. I thought my flight left at 10:25, but a nice morning call from Jonathan made me realize that it didn’t actually leave until 11:40. So, we had some time to kill. We decided to have breakfast at the Hash House in Hillcrest. After being pleasantly full from a boatload of food, we took off to the airport.

It was the longest flight EVER. I couldn’t get comfortable to save my life. So, I didn’t sleep. Jonathan picked me up with pain aux lardons and I felt better already. We got back to his apartment, where I realized how important elevators are. Jonathan’s on the 5th floor, which is actually the 6th floor, since 0 is a floor here. I was pooped, so I took a nap, and by nap I mean I slept for 4 hours before it was time to go to Cyril’s parent’s house for dinner. After we sat around and cut up the chocolate I brought from Chuao.

Cuttin’ chocolate. This is Earl Grey and Spicy Maya.

It didn’t even feel like we were there for 6 hours. The language barrior wasn’t as big of a deal as I thought it would be. Poor Jonathan’s head was spinning from translating between English and French for 6 hours.

We started off Sunday morning with a couple cappucinos. And by Sunday morning I mean 1PM.

We took the metro to meet Laura, John and Sandrine for brunch. They were running a little late, so we detoured to the Pere Lachaise cemetary where lots of famous people are buried. Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison… lots of people. It’s a big ass cemetary. We probably covered 1/4 of it for the 45 minutes or so we were there.

Pere Lechaise cemetary

We finally met up for brunch, which consisted of a salad with bacon, carrot salad, a sandwich, scrambled eggs, baked potato with chives and cream, and an apple crumble along with coffee and orange juice.

French brunch

Somehow, brunch didn’t end until 5PM. Don’t ask. Day two continues…