Nuit Blanche 2013 – the beginning

I’ve been overwhelmed lately, as has everyone it seems.  Sometimes life just gets the best of us and things like journaling (thats what this blog is for me) get put by the wayside.  But, in my absence I was successfully able to do another full read-through of my thesis, edit the whole thing (again), make some final changes, and turn that baby in once and for all!  I now only have my defense left before I emerge a true Master!  We also had two birthdays last week in our tiny studio, as well as me reading my first book for fun since starting grad school one year ago.  I may have spent all weekend in bed reading after turning in my thesis and successfully finished 2.5 books.  So kill me.  It was amazing.

Anyways, a few weeks ago we had the awesome opportunity to go to our second Nuit Blanche here in Paris.  This is always one of my favorite nights of the year and I spend way too much time reading the huge city guide that the Mairie puts out so I can try to catch everything I want to see.  Alas, rather than seeing all the approximately 150 exhibits I wanted to see, The Husband, me, and our recently married friends the Baguettes hung out at Pizza Hut for most of the night.  Mr. Baguette was hungry, and just had to choose the sit down pizza joint.  Good company and great conversation made the non-artsy part of the evening my favorite.  We did see three things though, and three is better than none!  I count this as a win!

The Husband and I started off our evening with a picnic on the Seine and a walk around the quartier before meeting up with the Baguettes.






Stay tuned for the actual artsy part of the evening!

Tour Montparnasse

Before our friends The Loggers left Paris for good (this time around…) they treated us to a jaunt up the Tour Montparnasse.  Now, I had successfully avoided going up this monstrosity until that fateful night simply because I had already been up the Eiffel Tower and The Arc de Triomphe numerous times, but I have to say it was pretty cool.  If you’ve got a thing for looking over cities and have already visited the Tour Eiffel and the Arc de Triomphe, the Tour Montparnasse should be your next stop.  It’s basically the second Eiffel Tower of the city.

Did you know that there are regulations within Paris city limits about how tall a building can be?  Well, the Tour Montparnasse is one of the only ones that has been completed and stands above these regulations, giving it one of the most interesting views over the Eiffel Tower that you can get.  That being said, my favorite way to view the city from up high is still from the Arc de Triomphe, but the Tour Montparnasse wasn’t too shabby!












Paris at its best

The Husband and I took a night off a few weekends ago to spend some time together.  Sometimes an outdoor picnic to enjoy the last bits of summer is just what the doctor ordered, and just what our relationship needs to take away some of the stress that is constantly trying to sneak its way in.  One of my favorite things to do is to watch the Eiffel Tower sparkle — no matter how cliché it is, my soul is happiest when lying back on our Moroccan print blanket, drinking some apple juice, and chatting while staring at something incredibly beautiful.  Nights like this remind me of how lucky we are when everything else seems to be going wrong.





Chicago 2013

We split up our Chicago portion of the trip into two two day blocks (we bookended the trip to Florida with Chicago since it was cheaper to fly in and out of the city than Miami), so our visit felt even shorter than our time in Florida!

We jammed everything possible that we could into our four days — we started off with deep dish pizza at Lous, went to a Cubs game, spent some quality time at Costco and Target, a trip to Little Caesars, family photos, dinner with some of our closest friends from when we lived in the city, multiple doctors visits, and a visit to the Shedd Aquarium, where I volunteered with my father as a teenager.  And don’t forget getting to meet my brothers first child for the first time.

America, it was great.  Someday we’ll be back.  Until then we’ll have to make do with all the delicious foods we brought back to remind us of home!

 
















A surprise in the making

The Husband and I officially picked up our lives and moved to France (again) on September 1st, 2012, with the plan of staying here in Paris until May 2014.  Since I was giving up my full time job (The Husband was only working part time at that point and was able to keep his job after moving thanks to a pretty awesome boss) and we were both going back to school full time, we knew that money would be tight for the next year and a half, and we were fine with that.  The only thing that made us sad was the prospect of being away from our families for a complete 18 months.  Luckily we have great resources like Skype and Facetime to help us keep in touch, but something about talking to a computer just isn’t the same as being there in person, especially when it comes to niece and nephews.

Unexpectedly, The Husband’s little sister (he has two older and one younger) decided to serve a mission for our church, meaning that she would also be moving out of the country for 18 months, but unlike us wouldn’t be able to call, text, and e-mail whenever she wanted.  Lucky for her, she’s going to Japan and is super excited, but unlucky for her, she is leaving in October, meaning that we wouldn’t have seen her in person for approximately 3 years by the time she gets back, and who knows where we’re going to be then.

Although The Husband was overjoyed for Little Sister, he got really sad for a while because of the prospect of not seeing her for so long, prompting us to call The In-Laws and bargain with them.  Hence, the surprise was born.  We offered up what money we could afford, with them paying the difference, to fly us to Chicago, where my family lives.  From there, The Parental Units flew us down to Florida, where The In-Laws, Little Sister, Old(er) Sister, and Old(est) sister (along with her husband and kiddos) live, with our trip ending back in Chicago.  All of this in 10 days.  Four flights, 30+ hours in a plane, and 10 days in America to see off Little Sister, both of our families, and meet the first grandchild on my side of the family.  While exhausting, it was totally worth it!

We didn’t really expect it to work, but planned out a surprise for everyone on The Husband’s side — the In-Laws invited all the sisters (avec famille) over for a movie and then left part way through, saying that they needed to go pick up some ice cream at their favorite speciality shop about an hour away (a surprisingly common occurrence).  The got us at the airport, we cried and hugged and were generally happy, and then we walked in to the house without saying anything and hung out in the kitchen until everyone noticed.  There were an abnormal amount of tears and squeals, lots of hugs, and even one sister stating later that she thought she had fallen and hit her head and was hallucinating us.

It was a successful trip — most of the time (only 4 short days) spent snuggling on the couch (we actually did have a pretty epic tickle fight in bed), with a short get-a-way to the beach one morning to take in Florida.  Let me tell you, after a long summer of working non-stop on my thesis, a day at the beach was exactly what I needed.

 

The dogs may have played part in the surprise as well — we came home from the store one day to see they had been outfitted with (cruelty-free) eyebrows and were surprised/angry to see us!

London, part 2

These photos are pretty self explanatory today, so this little talking section is going to have absolutely nothing to do with them.  So, if you don’t want to read about my every day life here in Paris, feel free to skip on and only look at the pictures.  I wouldn’t blame you — life in Paris is much more exciting when you don’t think about the mundane everyday things that we have to do here in addition to in the states.

Without a doubt, the scariest thing to hear someone who is doing work on your apartment say is “Qu’est-ce qu’on fait?” (What are we doing?).  No joke, there are plumbers in our bathroom right now and they’ve said that at least 15 times…

About two months ago our lovely upstairs neighbors (two floors up, mind you) left their shower on all day while they were at work (HOW DO YOU DO THAT?), causing their bathroom, the bathroom in the apartment above ours, and our bathroom to flood.  So we had two holes in our ceiling as well as some water damage, meaning the insurance had to come in and fix all of that.  Two months later we finally got the call saying that someone was coming to fix it.  Well, not someone exactly, but a plumber, then a wall repair man, then a painter, then the plumber again (since its France, our building is incredibly old, meaning that we have a HUGE water heater hanging above our toilet that needed to be taken down since both of the holes just happened to be underneath it).  They told us the whole process would take four days, meaning four days without hot water.  In October.

So, the plumber came yesterday, took down the heater (after we had showered, luckily), and then the painter came in, took one look, said he could patch and fix the holes that afternoon, meaning the plumber could come put up the heater again that night.  Bam, no showers without hot water.  I was soooo exited.

Only one problem: the plumber didn’t think the painter could be done that quickly, so he refused to come back before tonight.  Meaning that I took THE COLDEST SHOWER known to man kind this morning (well, lets be honest, it was more of a wash down the hair and really quickly wet my hands and rub them on my body as quickly as possible type thing.  Aka a sponge bath….) and felt disgustingly dirty all day because it was too cold to submerge my body and truly lather up with that sweet substance known as soap.

Que the men in our bathroom: the plumbers “friends” who help him out sometimes, since the plumber didn’t want to stop by our place at 8 at night.  They have no idea what they’re doing.  It took them 45 minutes to figure out how to pick up the water heater so they would have it in the correct position to mount it, haha.  And, without fail, every 5 minutes they swear really loud, rest the heater on the sink, and ask one another “what are we doing?”.  The Husband is so nervous about all of this that he expelled himself to the doorway, the only spot in our apartment where you can’t see the bathroom.

So, what have we learned from this experience?  First of all, the painter is always right, trust him when he says he’ll be done by a certain time,  Secondly, never trust a plumbers “friends”.  Theres a reason why he refers to them as friends, not colleagues.  All in the name of hot water for my shower tomorrow morning….

 








London, part 1

London was…. magical.  This was The Husband’s first time in England, so I wish we had had more time to spend in London than just one day — we were lucky to have the time that we did have, though.

After waking up early, frantically trying to drive our car on the wrong side of the road (for us), going around what felt like a million roundabouts, and finally making it into the city, we felt like we deserved a treat.  So, of course, we bought ourselves a vegetable pastie and went and took photos at Platform 9 3/4.  I have to say, I’m pretty sure that was the best way to reward ourselves!  We even got suckered in to buying the professional photo that they took of us… What can I say, slap Harry Potter on anything and I’ll buy it!

We started off the day in London by trying to fit as much sightseeing in as possible.  We were at Kings Cross and decided (read: I decided because I love walking and am convinced that we should all walk cities whenever possible) to take the tube to London Bridge and then walk over to Hyde Park from there.  The Husband had a meeting set up at 1 in the park, so we had to book it, impressively making it that far in an hour (though not everyone enjoyed the walk as much as I did….).  The Husband and I had been kind of dumb when we were packing and had forgotten my camera battery charger in Paris (we accidentally grabbed the charger for our other Nikon), and of course as soon as we hit the road my camera was magically on its last bar of battery.  So, while picture taking was severely limited, I guess it was kind of a good thing — had I had full reign of the camera, we definitely wouldn’t have made it to The Husband’s meeting in time!

 











East Grinstead -> Basically America

The Husband and I discovered something horrible while we were in England.  Taco Bell exists outside of America.  It exists, and it is magnificent.  And we may or may not have drove an hour from our hotel to get Taco Bell and stuff ourselves with American goodness.  I’m not going to lie to you, this was probably the greatest decision we made all summer — The Husband was basically crying because it tasted so much like home.

So, without further explanation, heres some photos that are in no way creative or beautiful, but definitely chronicle one of the best parts about England.  Oh yeah, and theres like three other photos in there, just for funsies!  Tune in later for LONDON!!!!

 


















Paris -> Calais -> Dover -> East Grinstead

Sometimes, even when you’re a student (I guess I should say especially when you’re a student) all that you really need is a vacation.  In light of that need that had been quickly pressing down upon me all semester, The Husband and I, along with our friends the Loggers, rented a car here in Paris and headed over for the shortest of jaunts in England.  How I wish we had had more time!  This was The Husband’s first time in England, and my first time back since my prior trip in 2009, and all we had this time around was a measly 4 days, including travel time.

Although we love France to death, theres just something comforting about being in a country where everyone has the same native language as we do — none of those “whoops, I totally blanked on the word for this” moments (although we did have to ask someone what the word squidgy meant….).  England was lovely, I can definitely see it making the short list for places we could easily live one day (you know, as long as they want to grant us a visa…).

Our first day was mostly travel — we started out by picking up our car at 7 in the morning at Gare Montparnasse.  What a mess!  If you ever have the option, don’t pick up a car at the Hertz there!  We had to pay for the car in one area, and then walk about 10 minutes to get to the actual garage.  When we got there, we spent 45 minutes walking around (keep in mind, this is in a CAR GARAGE.  It wasn’t that big!) before we finally exited the garage and walked in through the Hertz car rental exit.  Turns out theres a secret floor in between floors two and three that you can only get to from a secret stairway.  Who knew, right?  After the less-than-stellar start off we got, we shouldn’t have been surprised that we ran into another MAJOR problem.

The Husband was already nervous about driving a French car on British roads, as well as the fact that he had never driven on the other side of the road, so we all had to stay really really quiet for about the first 15 minutes after we got off the ferry.  After that though, British boy band were fair game for me to blare over the sound system.  Well, in addition to starting the music up, I also punched in the coordinates to our hotel in the car’s GPS.  One problem — the Hertz people had never loaded the maps for the UK into the car, meaning that we had no GPS!!!!  Honestly, its amazing that we A. didn’t get any tickets in England for driving like crazy Americans. and B. found our way everywhere successfully without a GPS.  If you know either of us very well, you’ll know that we’re lucky we live in the age of GPS since we have no directional abilities at all, and get easily stressed when having to figure things out when driving.

Lucky for us, though, we got to spend a few hours at the end of the day exploring tiny British towns and grocery stores.  Let me just say, British grocery stores are MAGICAL!  After so long in France, it was amazing to see a place that was more similar to an American store — it made my greasy American heart sing!

 






















Last rays of summer – Le jardin du Luxembourg

Before leaving for London at the end of August, The Husband and I tried to take every chance we could to soak up the last rays of summer.  Well, really we were trying to soak up any rays of summer at all — something about writing a thesis and working all summer kept us pretty pasty white and lacking in summer soaking if you catch my drift.  We knew that summer would likely be gone by the time we returned from vacation, so we took the opportunity to meet up with one of The Husband’s friends from school and explore le jardin du Luxembourg.

It’d been a few years since I’d been (read: 3 years) and The Husband had never been, so we took the afternoon to play explorers.  If only The Husband had had an Indiana Jones hat and me a German accent, all his childhood dreams about exploration would have come true.  Alas, I have no German accent and we didn’t find any treasure, but we did have a great afternoon!