"you're in Paris! you're in love...turn around! - A Parisian Christmas, Ho Style 11-15 December 07
29 December 2007
Jessica and Diana at the Louvre with an amazing Parisian sunset. even still, the camera didn't capture the color as accurately as my little heart had hoped. but this'll suffice.
me, Christine, and Jess on our Leeds shopping adventure in the Victoria Quarter arcade. uhhhh pretty. how pretty? we saw someone taking wedding photos in there that's how pretty.
this is one of the photos Jess and I sent to our parents on the trip. my dad decided he liked it so much he was going to print them out and put them in our Christmas cards AKA....the one they sent me. I love my dad.
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so, it was definitely a surreal experience seeing Jessica in the Charles De Gaulles airport. I know that we see each other on skype all the time, but it was great to actually see her in the flesh. I think I would've been more emotional had it not been for skype. so it was definitely joyful, but not crying-joyful [though I'll admit, I did feel some tears forming but never fully appeared..I've gotta keep my cool somehow, you know]. we managed to make our way to the hotel in the 5th arrondissement in tact and completely pooped. we also discovered that our hotel room only had a sink and a biday...the toilet was on the other side of the elevator and the showers were nonexistent in the type of room we booked. roughing it! so, it's a good thing that grabbed my dry shampoo or else we'd have to "wash" our hair in the sink. after we settled in, we decided it'd be est to take about a 4 or 5 hour nap to recoup. funny though, Jess had major jetlag//time differences to deal with, so it's no wonder that she was passed out on the best for 5 hours. amazingly enough, I had neither to deal with but I slept right along with her. if anyone who reads this knows me at all, they know that that's not surprising at all, considering how much I flippin' love sleeping. once we woke up, we went on a hunt for some food, but not wanting to stray too far at night and tired, we opted for the local McDo since it was close and predictable and cheap.
after falling into a sweet, sweet coma that night, we woke up the next day to a brilliantly sunny yet freezing [AKA...colder-than-Leeds freezing] day. we went on a search for some brekkie and eventually found a little patisserie on Port Royale and took our croissants and pains au chocolat to a small cafe a block or two down to get a cafe latte. the latte was good, albeit a bit overpriced for my wallet. that day [Wednesday], Noelle and I had arranged to meet at our hotel's lobby to catch up on our crazy EAP experiences and get some lunch. luckily, we connected without a hitch. she took us through the Quartier Latin, the mostly student quarter, to this AMAZING kebab joint about a block away from the Seine. they put chips [British chips, not American chips] and made it fresh in front of us. surprisingly, and very un-Parisian, it was €4 for the whole shebang! for Paris, a €4 filling meal is like GOLD. after, we promenaded to Notre Dame to meet Diana thanks to Noelle's cell phone...a close relative of my Blue Beauty. so the 4 of us proceeded to conquer Paris and all of its expensive aspects. what was great about being in Paris with JEss at the time that I was, was the fact that we could enjoy ourselves, catch up, and see some more of Paris that we didn't see before without having to really worry about how to get around or where to go since we were with our friends who a) spoke the language better than we could and b) who knew their weay around and knew where to go. things are so much less stressful that way.
Jess and I really wanted to see a ballet at the Paris Opera if we could, but of course all of the tickets were gone like hot cakes, or bagels [if you ask Heidi Klum to compare how quickly they were gone]. it would've been perfect to see the Paris opera Ballet doing the Nutcracker, but I suppose there's always next time. I think it's pretty much imposible to see one city in its entirety in one normal holiday visit. there's always something else to see, so we always say "it's just another reason to come back in the future" when we miss something or forget to do something. so, seeing Paris Opera Ballet wil definitely be on my list of things to do next time I'm in Paris [AKA....maybe with Cooper?!?!].
the next day we woke up to another sunny-freezing day in Paris to meet Diana at the Musee d'Orsay to do some chefs d-oeuvres viewing of my favorite art movement, Impressionism. we breezed past the high Impressionists [Monets, Manets, Renoirs, Degas], Barbizan painters [Corots, Courbets, Turners...one of the earlier movements that inspired Impressionism], and Post-Impressionists [Toulouse-Lautrecs, Seurats, Gauguins, and Van Goghs]. there was also a few rooms of some awesome examples of Art Deco//Art Nouveau era furniture design and windows on display. after, we headed over to Rue Rivoli to do some Christmas shopping for ourselves. Jess and I both loved this one gray wool skirt Promod, but neither of us could muster up the money to buy it or the energy to actually try it on for fear of liking it too much. but then we went to Printemps [the ginormous department store second only to Galeries Lafayette] and bought 4, that's right 4, Longchamp bags. granted, one was for Aunt Jan [from Mom], one for Mom [for herself], one for Jess, and unfortunately one for myself, completely on a whim. I had absolutely no intentions on spending €62 on a purse on this trip, but we were in the store and trying to decide on colors and all for the other bags...and the bags are just sooo pretty! and there's so many colors! and I'm a girl! so one thing led to another yadda yadda yadda [I yadda-yadda shop] I walked out of there with a gray//silver Longchamp that I figured I'll just use for the next 10 years to pay it off. that's right, it's a long term investment. for dinner that night, Diana tok us to a good Senegalese restaurant that she had been to before and we finally ate a proper, sit-down meal. in that arrondissement was this great little tea house that Jess had been to when she was abroad called Mariage Frères and bought a gift set that included their trademark tea, trademark storage tin, and some sort of ambiguous jelly stuff that we never quite figured out what it was.
the next day Diana had to teach so Jess and I were on our own in the big city. unfortunately, we got too late of a start cuz we wanted to catch some of the early morning sunlight = good pictures but missed it. it's a sore subject...I don't like to talk about it let's change the subject. besides missing our golden opportunity for some quality kodak moments, Jess and I had a pleasant time strolling through Paris during Christmas and seeing all the shops decorated to the nines and to see the Champs Elysées all lit up. that's when Jess and I got in a little tiff. looking back on it, though, is pretty funny. just think...Jess and I are in Paris, it's Christmas [how romantic] walking along the Champs Elysées, but walking 5 feet apart because we can't walk next to each other. that's what's great about us, we get each other so much that we can look back and laugh at our own ridiculousness. in conclusion, I love my sister. :)
the next day was our fun little trek back to Leeds via London. here's some background info:
item #1: Ren ended up not being able to come back to Leeds with Jess and I because she wasn't feeling well. she wrote me saying she felt terrible, but it was best for everyone, health = important! seeing Ho = ehhh not so much...it can wait another few months, I'm still the same boring Ho. she's going to NEW ZEALAND! that's crazy and I'm jealous!
item #2: easyJet decided that our flight into London Luton was going ot be delayed for a whole 4 hour due to short crew on the flight before from Milan. arrrrgh. if only Jess and I knew that before we left the hotel to be early at the airport. I like to call them non-so-easy-Jet now.
so yeah, Jess and I spent some quality time bonding together sitting in the CDG airport trying to firgure out what the hell to do with ourselves cuz we were already early early because we actually did something right and got there on time//early. eventually we did make it to London Luton, then coached from Luton into the city center [AKA we didn't have time to see that couture exhibit at the V&A Museum...sigh] killed more time in the Subway at the Victoria Coach Station [I swear, that day we did about 4 hours of travelling and about 10 hours waiting]. we took our las leg to Leeds on the NatExp coach and got a cheap [£3!] cab back to St. Ann's that was thankfully empty of flatmates. just after we got in and gave Jess the grand tour of the flat, Christine had gotten her cab to temporarily live at St. Ann's for the next few days. it was so cute, she arrived bearing gifts! she brought some foodstuffs from her flat, and a box of candy canes [festive!] and a homemade sign made of Post-Its and Sharpie that said "Welcome Back, Ho's!" it made me so happy, and I think she was happy to see friends again cuz Leeds is a real ghost town with all the students gone.
so the next 3 days Christine, Jess, and I hung around, watched movies and cooked REAL MEALS for dinner! it was fantastic. maybe I just needed Jess to come visit me to get me cooking again. it's not like it's hard, I'm just so reluctant to buy all those ingredients at double to price and all that mumbojumbo. even though we didn't do much that was special, it was awesome just to hang around and do nothing great in particular, so long as I was with Jess. the second day in Leeds we took her on the "grand" tour into town and showed her some of the university and the usual walk into town to do some shopping. we took her all over to the stores, but we had to show her what Leeds culture us like. when we got to H+M, I was having some major retail conflict because there was this one really well-proportioned coat that was ON SALE for £25 instead of £50! problem is, I had just bought this really cute party dress from Zara that fit really well etc for £29. the rest of the day went well. I just bought the long cardigan that I had been wanting for a long time from the Scarlet P for £8. the next day I ended up returning the dress and getting the coat in this suble black, blue, and brown plaid pattern. I figured that if I didn't get it, I would just end up talking about it and completely regretting not getting it. and I can totally us it up in Davis. and this way, I will have stuck to my word about only buying that Top Shop dress [the only "expensive" party dress that I'm buying this year].
Tuesday was an intense day, it mainly consisted of me running back and forth between downtoan and St. Ann's...I think that by the end of the night, I had taken the bus 7 times. so, at 3pm when I finally had to say bye to Jess at the train station, I got a little verclemt. although, we were pretty rushed so we couldn't just stand and wallow and wait for the train to come. but I think that that's almost better or else I probably would've cried. luckily I found out later that I had handed her off to Achim without a hitch. I didn't even have time to it and wistfully miss her and wallow in my sorrows at seeing her leave because Christine and I immediately had to get ready to go to ROME via Liverpool! in conclusion, I was SOOOOO happy to get to see Jess even without the parents. it felt good to spread out their trips so that there isn't going to be too long of breaks between seeing them. all in all, très bien. :)
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