Pour L’Art et Les Vues | Paris 2017

Friday, 20 October 2017Thursday, 19 October 2017 StarrLeave a comment

Previously, on Paris 2017, we arrived fresh off a red-eye flight from New York, settled into our hotel in Le Marais, and went straight to eating before exploring our neighborhood. The real exploration, though, was about to begin…

Warning: A lot of photos incoming!

While planning the previous day, we decided that our first full day in Paris would be dedicated to the most famous and oldest art museum in the world: Le Louvre. We’d spend as much time as possible in the museum, not worry about seeing any “famous” pieces that we weren’t personally interested in (no Mona Lisa for us!), and just taking it all in, nice and steady.

That morning, we decided to walk to the Louvre and get breakfast on our way. It is a longer walk, with a grey and drizzly sky overhead. (Spoiler alert: It rained every single day that we were in Paris. Paris is beautiful in the rain but I don’t know how many places are beautiful when the sky can’t commit to really raining… Still, it was hard to be upset!) After getting a great head start on our steps, we stopped by La Couleur des Blés for coffee (thank you, time difference) and pastries. I later learned that this is a really popular shop, but there was only one man in the teeny tiny shop when we stopped by. We walked away with some croissants and a little hot coffee for Ben.

Etiquette tip: When you enter a shop, make sure to greet whoever is working with a “Bonjour!” Also, make sure to say “Merci” on your way out; saying hello and thank you are very important and it’s considered rude not to.

Ordering tip: Ordering “un café” is not the same as a regular drip coffee in the United States. It’s more like ordering an espresso, and it will come in a teeny cup. Asking for a “café alongée” will get you an Americano: espresso with hot water added.

From the boulangerie, we walked about 2 blocks to the Louvre and parked ourselves on some benches to dig into our croissants. (The only problem with them was that we didn’t have more of them!) And then it was time.

Louvre courtyard — Our view from breakfast
Not pictured: Crumbs all over my face and coat

Because we purchased the Paris Pass before our trip, we were able to wait in the shorter line for pass holders and didn’t have to wait in an additional line to purchase tickets to the museum. Time and time again, the Paris Pass proved to be a real timesaver for us, even without considering the value of the tickets that we would have otherwise purchased without it. After descending down the escalator below the famous glass pyramids….

… we arrived. Please enjoy some of my favorite photos from our visit interspersed with fun facts about the Louvre.

Nintendo Audioguide — The Louvre’s audioguide is provided on Nintendo 3DS XLs. You can also download the free museum app.

There are at least 2 versions of this sculpture of Artemis (Diana) at the Louvre.

I have so many photos of the ornate ceilings and mouldings at the Louvre. Always remember to look up. (But take breaks or your neck will cramp up.)

Me in a Nook — After walking around this enormous museum, I frequently found solace in little nooks between gallery walls

Some of the art was delightfully weird…

Nous Sommes Arrivés! | Paris 2017

Tuesday, 17 October 2017Monday, 16 October 2017 Starr4 Comments

After a rough experience going through international departures at JFK, we were in the air on our way to Paris! It was a red-eye flight, aka we flew during sleeping hours, so we were pretty surprised to get fed during the flight? We had some food, saved some teeny bottles of wine for the hotel, and fell asleep like kids on Christmas Eve. Quick shout-out to Air France for one of the best airline customer service experiences I’ve ever had, by the way, when I was at JFK and also on the way back. I’m not really sure where the stereotype of the uptight, cold Frenchperson comes from because we really didn’t experience this.

We checked into Les Jardins du Marais (in-depth review), which was a great spot for us that we found at a really awesome deal. (I had been trying to find us a good AirBnB so that I could feel really homey and eat eggs and fruit with the massive amounts of pastry and bread I wanted to indulge in. And do laundry! But the hotel deal was too good to beat.) The quick and dirty of this hotel are:

Pros:
+ You get a free smartphone in your room that you can take with you out and about, with free data and free calls to the US (and a few other countries). This was a gamechanger.
+ Excellent location in the trendy Le Marais neighborhood and near several metro lines.
Cons:
– Trendy neighborhood + cool courtyard with a patio bar = lots of noise coming in through the windows, even on a Wednesday night.
– Super paper-thin walls that we could hear everything through – hanky-panky, zippers, toilet seats being lowered, everything…

So take that as you will! I’d definitely recommend it unless you are a light sleeper and/or plan to do anything above a whisper with people next door, because they will hear your loud farts and shower singing and more.

After getting settled into our room, and freaking the freak out over the smartphone situation (check out the company that provides them, handy, for more information about these and to see which hotels are carrying them), we walked down the block to grab lunch at Le Centenaire (review), because the two of us were absolutely famished. I was feeling so excited that I got beef tartare for the second time in my life and Ben got steak frites because it’s hard to say no to it when you’re starving, I was translating the menu for him quite slowly, and he wasn’t even sure what some of the menu items I described to him where let alone whether he wanted to eat them. So beef two ways for us it was! With plenty of French fries and baguette to carb-load us for the rest of the evening.

Beef tartare + frites — Feeling French and dangerous with beef tartare (+ fries)(+ salad, which means +health!)

Steak frites — Poor Ben was so hungry that he had a hard time denying the allure of classic steak frites

After lunch, we walked around the neighborhood a bit to get situated. There is a grocery store and a pharmacy, aka drugstore, and tons of little restaurants and cafes and bars. We got ourselves settled, spent some time planning our new few days in the hotel, and called Les Temps de Cerises (review) to save ourselves a table for dinner. The restaurant was crammed full of English-speaking diners and cozy and intimate on that chilly evening.

Duck with plantain — Duck breast with fried plantain

Millefeuille — Chocolate millefeuille with berries

We walked our way to the Seine and walked along the river bank taking in the night and all the young people sitting and drinking and talking and laughing at like 10-11PM on a Wednesday night. It was so nice and got us so excited to spend a week in the City of Lights.

What are the more “adventurous” French foods that you have eaten? (Or haven’t quite dared to yet?) I tried beef tartare for the first time just a few months ago and surprisingly loved it so I was excited to try it in France. I first tried snails as a Chinese dish and I love them in garlic butter because you basically only taste garlic butter yum.

What are some gamechangers and dealbreakers for your travel accommodations? Ben and I really really loved the in-room smartphones but it was really unsettling how much we could hear the couple next door. Zippers? Toilet flushes? And we slept terribly because of the hub-bub outside. I don’t know…

I am going to work really hard to get the other Paris recaps up in a timely manner! Can you believe we’re halfway through October already?? Are you ready for Halloween?? (I’m not!)

Feeling French Music

Thursday, 19 February 2015Friday, 20 March 2015 StarrLeave a comment

Happy first day of spring! It snowed here (because of course it did) but I hope you are enjoying free Rita’s and warmer weather without suffering from allergies.

Lately, I’ve just been really feeling French music. Not necessarily French by nationality but French as in the language that is being sung. I think I can trace this kick back to seeing a Stromae music video for the first time. It was this one:

Tumblr was a big fan and I was, too. I had first heard of Stromae through Pentatonix, actually, when they did a cover of his hit song “Papaoutai”. Their cover was really good, but I love Stromae’s video.

First of all, freaky fresh dance moves. Second of all, I really love how weird but not too-weird his music videos are? I get pretty easily waaaaay weirded out by music videos. Call me provincial, but the “artistic message” behind really “avant garde” music videos is very frequently completely lost on me. With Stromae’s videos, I am really engaged by the interesting video but I am also listening pretty closely to the music.

Even though I know French, I don’t really listen to the lyrics too closely when I listen to French songs. It’s like when I had my kpop phase; I listen to the songs because they sound good, and very rarely do I pay attention to what the words themselves mean. In fact, I rarely listen for the lyrics in English songs the first few listens. I have never spent much time on lyrics when it comes to listening to songs.

Anyway, French music keeps following me about so I thought I’d share a couple of music videos with you all. I made a Paris playlist ages ago, intending to release it with my Paris blog. That won’t be out for a while, since I spent a long time in Paris and… I am putting it off knowing how much I need to put into it. Also, these are mostly contemporary songs. Before this current music phase, I liked listening to a lot of older French music and was not at all familiar with anything from the last decade or two. (Or really any decade, let’s be real.)

Besides Stromae (who I am seeing in September!), I have also been listening to these artists on-and-off for the past few years: