I finally arrived home yesterday morning at around 6:30, with two tipsy friends in tow. We stumbled into my tiny apartment and passed out like kittens in a heap on my bed. I didn't bother to even wipe off my mascara or brush my teeth. I just vaguely hoped I wouldn't kick Sophie in the face during the night (morning) before I fell fast asleep, dead to the world, until my babysitting job in approximately five and a half hours.
I am so tired. After 3 and a half months of spending at least half the weekend holed up with a bottle of wine and a movie, I suddenly have plans every night. I guess this means I'm cool now. Christ, that took a while.
Let's back up. Two weekends ago was when Eloise and Astral's visitors from home were here; the night that I was in the fight outside Sacré Coeur. (Ok I know that I wasn't actually part of the fight, but it happened really, really close to me and I've never been in a fight, so I'm calling it, ok?)
The weekend after that was a doozy. For starters it began on Wednesday, and didn't end until the following Monday, which was a holiday. These are the establishments I patronized in those five days.
Wednesday: Earth's Kitchen
Thursday: Bo Zinc
Friday: Tribeca, O'Sullivan's, The Apartment of A French Person I've Never Met and Am Unlikely to Meet Again
Saturday: That Crepe Place By Montparnasse, Bo Zinc again, Bar On Grands Boulevards I Can't Remember
Sunday: La Campanella, L'International
Monday: Jardin des Tuileries, Starbucks
I was pretty much wiped by Monday, so wiped in fact that I didn't wake up until around 3 in the afternoon. That weekend was spectacular for a number of reasons. The first being that my long lost childhood friend, Connie, arrived in Paris with her new French boyfriend Mathieu. That is the reason I was in a strange Parisian apartment. I didn't just follow somebody home one night, I promise. Suddenly tasked with showing people a good time in Paris, I did the best I could. I dragged them to a couple only slightly overpriced restaurants in my neighborhood and then out to the few going-out-y neighborhoods I know of. I think I did pretty well. I'm calling it a success anyway. Mathieu was lovely and Connie and I got along as if we'd never stopped hanging out. It was like if you're really hungry but there's no food in the house and then suddenly you realize that that jar of Nutella in the back of your cupboard isn't empty after all. So you take to that thing with a spoon and zero shame and it is awesome. (I'm kinda poor right now, so please don't judge. This is legitimately awesome in my world). We drank, we laughed, we made inappropriate jokes. What's ten years, anyway?
I capped this spectacular weekend with early evening wine and cheese and strawberries in the Tuileries with Bea, where we soaked in what sunshine we could and admired ourselves for our Parisianness.
Well this last weekend wasn't quite so long, but certainly eventful. Friday I met Astral, Astral's best friend from Scotland, her other friend Ellyse, and their adorable accents. I'm sorry, I just can't get over how lovely Astral's Scottish accent is. Say English, but pronounce it, "Eyngllesh." Ah. So beautiful.
Anyway, we met at Bastille and per Ellyse's suggestion, just went into the loudest bar on the street, called Charlotte Bar. Pros: As soon as we entered, the doorman/host-type-person/MC/bartender brought us to a table which was already occupied by three guys. He kicked the guys out, and we moved in. Mean? Unfair? Sexist? Sure! No, of course I didn't offer to give the guys back their table. Cons: We missed Happy Hour, which meant that I paid 20 euros for two drinks. Ponder that for a minute. No, seriously. The music was deafening, I think my ears are still ringing, and the place was so packed I got at least ten other people's sweat on me. It was fun though. They played a lot of Jay-Z, etc and we made friends with some lovely gentlemen inexplicably wearing Viking hats and carrying inflatable axes.
Saturday night we decided to go to Batofar, a rave of sorts on a boat that started at midnight and ended at six. We got there at one, all of us at least a bottle of wine in, got our cool-girl wrist stamps, and prepared to party. This was Bea's last Saturday night in Paris before she leaves this weekend, sob, so we made a pledge to go hard. And hard we went. I'm trying to decide what my favorite part of the evening was. One friend flirting heavily with the bartender and then yelling angrily at said bartender an hour later; making one gullible (French!) guy believe that I was French; actually dancing for the first time in probably years; calling out the creeps on the dance floor; meeting the world's least subtle MDMA dealers; the 700,000 pictures we took; fighting with the vending machine in the train station for barbecue chips... So many memories to choose from.
Honestly, the thing I might like best about going out is recounting the evening the next morning with friends. You did what? I did what? Best night ever! It's just nice to have a friend there in the morning as you're unsticking the vodka from your hair and glugging water like you've just escaped a deserted island, and trying to deal with the fact that your stomach feels inside out and your head is trying to kill you, someone to confirm or deny whether you really were a complete and utter asshat the night before. This is how we bond, you see.
Ah, to be young. Here's the truth about youth, all you nostalgic older relatives that I know are reading this: it's freaking exhausting.
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