Friday, December 26, 2008

The International Christmas Extravaganza.

Holidays away from your family can always be difficult for everyone.  That is why we were so lucky this year to be adopted by three families from all over the globe.  To start we had  a  superb French Fête.  Guillaume was the first person we met in Paris and he assured us we would spend a traditional French Christmas with him and his family.  His family was so funny and we had a great time learning about and trying cuisine from all over France (including escargot).   His mom is a brilliant cook and even though she might not be used to cooking vegetarian food she sure made some wonderful tofu stuffed mushrooms, ratatouille, and whipped truffles.   Included was the traditional French cheese course,  featuring one of the stinkiest cheeses in the world, which comes from the north of France.  This families hospitality already had us both entranced, but by the time Guillaume's mother brought out her homemade berry ice cream, Chocolate Mousse and Cake we wanted to be adopted for real.  
After we said goodbye to Guillaume's family we went to stop by a Mexican Fiesta at our friend Alfredo's house.  We caught the last  bits of some authentic guacamole, and rum punch that helped build our french speaking courage.  We put on some salsa/80's/mariachi music mix and had a dance party that lasted to the wee hours of the morning.  
On Christmas  we  headed over to our old place in the 18th to spend an evening with Belinda and Helen for an Australian/British Christmas dinner.  Helen was in extreme Christmas spirit and we spent the evening decorating the house, listening to old Christmas classics and Judy even dressed up as Santa.  The night ended with a good game of Pictionary (British Edition) and even though neither of us knew what a paint pot or cricket ball was, we still won.  













Friday, December 19, 2008

Birthday Party!









Today is Grant's Birthday.    Judy surprised him with a trip to the amazing Les Arts Decoratif museum for the Sonia Rykiel 40 year anniversary exhibition.  The exhibition featured over 250 outfits from Sonia as well as lots of videos,  pictures, and lots of other memorabilia.  At the very end of the exhibit was the 30 something outfits that all theses wonderful designers had made which were inspired by Sonia for her 80th runway show.   If you haven't seen the video of her last runway show you need to check it out.  It looks so much fun and being able to see all the pieces in person was such a special surprise. http://soniarykiel.com  The rest of the museum had great work in it as well.  It is a lot of interior and product design from the 1700's all the way to 2000's The place is huge and we only got through a couple other galleries before we headed out.
After that we returned back to the house to make a little dinner.  We had real tacos this time and they were so good.  The cake was probably the most sinful thing either of  us had ever eaten.  But hell, what are birthdays for.    

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

MEXICAN FOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Just as everyone warned us, there is absolutely no mexican food around town.  If you ask anyone if they know of anything they just say "oh yeah I know this Tex-Mex place."  What the hell is Tex-Mex.  Do the french really consider a chili dog Mexican food.  Paris desperately needs tortas, burritos, nachos, tacos, something, at this point I just want a tortilla.  The situation was looking really grim until our mexican friend Alfredo told us he knows of this little place that sells handmade goods from Mexico and if you ask them they will make you tortillas.  We dropped whatever we were doing and pretty much ran over to the place in a full sprint.   We got to the place and our faces were lit up like the sun.  Our excitement was quickly smashed when we saw the prices, 4.50 euros for a can of beans? 7.50 euros for hot sauce???? at this point we were afraid to ask how much the tortillas were.  It turns out they are 8 euros for a dozen. OUCH!!! Did we mention we are from California?  The land of 2 dollars for 3 tacos.  On the plus side the lady actually makes them herself and brings them to you in a couple of days.   Not to mention she pretty much has the market cornered.  She is very nice and also offers some really beautiful clothing made by hand from a family in Mexico.  She will even make you a piñata too.  We forked over the money and ran home to make some potato tacos with pinto beans.  Finally some real spicy hot sauce!!!!  

Monday, December 15, 2008

How to move free furniture across Paris with little or no resources






We desperately need furniture for our place and there doesn't seem to be the same overabundance of free furniture dumped all over the streets like there was in San Francisco.  Not to mention people try to get top dollar for all of their things off craigslist (100 euros for a 2 year old ikea table? Please.) Luckily we did find one nice guy who offered us his two shelves for free. He assured us he lived quite close to us and that we should have no problem carrying the things back to our house.  While we were walking we realized that when he said close to our house he meant on the other side of town.  About an hour later we arrived at his house and realized that each bookshelf had to weigh at least 100 pounds.  Maybe over the phone he didn't realize that Judy was only 5 feet tall and weighs only 90 pounds but there was no way we could do it.  We tried with one and got about a half block before we ditched it behind a building.  We headed back to the house to try to think of a new method.  Judy came up with the brilliant idea of using our old suitcases as makeshift dollies and off we went again.  The one we ditched was long gone by the time we returned so we tried with the other one.  It worked pretty good and minus a few little bumps and a million puzzled stares we welcomed our new shelf into our little home.  

Friday, December 12, 2008

Cheap Show at Cafe du Paris

We were invited to a cabaret type show that our friend Camille was performing in.  We didn't really know what to expect, except that it was free and the three time world champion tap dancer (claquettes) would be performing.  What we witnessed was nothing short of amazing.  The video quality may be lacking but each act was so good.  The opening act, a young woman performing traditional accordion songs in several languages had Judy completely entranced.  Camille a.k.a Belle Fée Gore sang songs from the 30's about drug use.  The tap dancer had the fastest feet i've ever seen. Then we were treated to a surprise can-can performance.   It was Sooooo french and we had a lot of fun.  

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Ode to a blouse.









In quite possibly the strangest event in our life we lost one of our most beloved creations.  We were woken up at 2:30 in the morning today by a complete stranger who had somehow broken into our apartment and decided to browse our rack of clothing.  Once he realized that we were here he grabbed what he could and made like the wind out of the door.  Luckily he dropped most of the things but he did make off with our favorite blouse.  I found the hanger sitting about three blocks away in a pack of parked vespas.  I have no idea what this person would want with our blouse but if I ever find anyone in Paris wearing it I will rip it right off their body and demand an explanation, or maybe the blouse will be the hot new item at H&M next season. You never know.  Never the less we are very shook up from this event. Please spread the word and if anyone knows anyone who may know where it is please email us.   The blouse is one of a  kind and very very special to us.  

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Home Sweet Home






Holy shit finding an apartment in Paris has to be one of the most stressful things either of us have ever had to deal with in our whole life.  I have never had to sign my name on so many pieces of paper before, I felt like a celebrity.  But it finally worked out and we got an amazing little place right in the heart of the Marais.  Next to some amazing boutiques and galleries. Here are just a couple photos of our place and one from the craziest move by taxi ever committed.  All the driver kept saying was we should have gotten a bigger taxi.  I hope we never have to go through anything like this ever again.