Paris: "we b in kings chamber"

This past weekend's impromptu trip to Paris was really last minute, like, booked a week before I left. If you know me (and I assume if you're reading this, you do know me), you know that I plan EVERYTHING months in advance, so for me to essentially pick up and go to France was a bit spontaneous.

At first I wasn't considering coming here because I was here before, albeit when I was 10 years old and fairly stupid. Now, I (allegedly) speak some French, I know French history fairly well, and I actually appreciate more than a city having a Pizza Hut branch. It was time to return to Paris.

After a lovely 3:15 a.m. departure from bumblefuck, Prague, my ridiculously short flight landed at CDG and I was en route to Paris! When I was there with my parents we stayed in a hotel outside the city center so we had to take the RER, and I was amazed to find that I remembered some of the same buildings from 2000 (for context, I was there before the Euro existed), including my favorite bibliotheque. Got to Paris, was awed by the breathing room and regular sidewalks, met up with Claudia (who, for the record, is a wonderful, tres magnifique host) and crashed before heading to the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysees.

True to form, I can't go on a trip without some epic quest, and this one's was a move of desperation: I needed Garnier hair gel, something that Prague has yet to embrace. I decided that duh, of course I could find my way in a city whose language I can't really speak and haven't been to since I was 10, so I left Claudia and her other visiting friend and went off to find this mysterious American-British pharmacy that would surely have it.

It took almost three hours, plenty of frustrated calls to my mom for directions (sorry!), and a pit stop at a theatre at the Place de la Madeleine to get tickets for an all-French production of A Doll's House (starring Audrey Tatou!!!!!!) but I found my way there. They didn't have what I was looking for, and what they did have was 13 euros (NOT HAPPENING) but it was fine. It was okay because I got to see the Opera Garnier, which, for those of you who know your Leroux/Lloyd Webber, is the Phantom of the Opera opera house, which means it is fabulous.

Speaking of fabulous, everyone looks perfect all the time and I was too young to pick up on it last time but someone teach me the ways of the Gallic because I want to be able to walk the city in 5-inch heels and not want to die.

Anyway, so I saw the sparkly Eiffel Tower and Audrey Tatou in A Doll's House later that night, and while it was beyond cool to see her onstage (she's just as gorgeous as you'd think she'd be), my French is far worse than I estimated it to be and therefore I only caught words like "merci" and "aussi". But it was Audrey Tatou, and Claudia read me the Wikipedia summary beforehand so I at least knew what was happening onstage, no thanks to the French language.

Saturday morning I went to the Pompidou Centre because that's what Claudia and Lu had done while I was on the quest for hair gel (so guido-sounding, ick). The fifth floor (with all the famous art) was closed for renovations, but the exhibit they had was incredible. It was elles@Pompidou and featured work by female artists, including my personal favorite, a huge collage done by the Guerrilla Girls and also a smaller exhibit of collages by Erro. Afterward I met Claudia at Montmartre to go see Sacre Coeur (so pretty!) and then we went to the plaza, where she contemplated buying a painfully expensive painting and then we went to see the Moulin Rouge in the red light district. Passed a supermarché erotique (complete with shopping carts) and found hair gel FINALLY at Monoprix. We went to the Opera again, where I was easily the chicest person alive because we had coffee at the Cafe de la Paix. We also discovered that Longchamp bags are far cheaper in France than in America (LESSON LEARNED) so any return in the future will include shopping.

Then the biggest event of the trip: le Théâtre du Châtelet's production of A Little Night Music with Leslie Caron. Last June was when I first heard that Kristin Scott Thomas was doing a production of ALNM in Paris for one week only, and I had said (slightly facetiously) that I was going no matter what. Eight months later, I was in Paris and Kristin was the one who didn't show, but it didn't matter. What mattered slightly more was that my seat was directly behind a pole, but who needs to see center stage? Nothing important ever happens there.

No really, the show was one of the most phenomenal productions I've ever seen, and I can finally say that I've seen ALNM. It was also the biggest gathering of Anglophones I'd been in in weeks so it was nice to hear English spoken everywhere. Well-worth the money (by the way, screw the Euro) and something I'll remember forever.

Sunday was the day the history dork in me was waiting for: VERSAILLES. It was SO BIG and didn't feel real, but I can't even explain how excited I was to be there. Not so exciting was the fact that the ticket people had no idea if students entered for free or not so we waited on a thousand lines and argued with people who kept telling us different things but OH MY GOD VERSAILLES. Words can't do it justice. I doubt my pictures can do it justice. But OH MY GOD VERSAILLES. I loved it with every history-loving bone in my body. I can't imagine it being in use 300 years ago which I would've liked by oh my God, Versailles. ALSO: GINGER ALE IS READILY AVAILABLE IN FRANCE. So I chugged a two-liter bottle before coming home. Naturally.

After returning to Paris, Claudia and I went back to St. Michel (we had walked through Notre Dame in the morning) to look for the elusive Point Zéro, which is the exact center of Paris. It took us three times, tons of research, and even mapping it out but we STILL couldn't find it. I love the Latin Quarter and Notre Dame is my Parisian happy place; after all, it was the first part of Paris I saw back when I was 10 and we were exiting the metro station for the first time and it took my breath away, so I was ecstatic to be back there.

Paris was frustrating but in a good way. I guess I over-estimated my French abilities and it's not laid out in the most sensible way (at least to me) but I love it terribly and would love to live there in the future. It's just fabulous. What wasn't fabulous was my flight home.

Left Claudia's apartment this morning at 6 a.m. to get to the airport for my 8:25 flight. Oh, my ticket expired when it shouldn't have. Oh, I'm waiting 20 minutes for a train that should have been there in 3. Oh, the RER decided to take a break and just hang in the suburbs at like 7:15. I checked my bag without a hassle, but it's 8:08 and I'm stuck in the security line from hell and am unable to communicate that my flight leaves in 17 minutes and thank God for the French lady who let me cut her in line and then forced me past a group of businessmen. Oh, wait, that was too positive. My duffel bag ripped somewhere between Paris and Prague so it's only the Tiger Woods issue of Vanity Fair that kept my dirty underwear from spilling all over a Boeing 737 or the Prague airport baggage conveyor belt. That's not too bad or anything, right? Also, my second attempt to get my passport stamped by the French was a miserable failure. THANKS, SCHENGEN AREA.

I was hating on Prague all weekend in Paris because it's always gray and cold and sad but when I got back, it was sunny and I didn't recognize most of the city. Of course, it's always good to see that the mullet didn't go out of style when I leave for the weekend. What's good, though, is that the ice is at a minimum and I didn't fear for my life walking from the tram to my dorm. If anyone thinks that Seasonal Affective Disorder is a lie, it isn't. BRING ON THE SUN.