paris recap 2

hm...monday in paris. this is the day when quinn and i had our little fight. it was kind of cute, in a way. no sense going into detail.
that night we went to the Champs-elysses (sp?? french is not my strong suit) christmas market, which was positively magical. all up and down the great boulevard there were little white cottages decorated with blue and white twinkly lights and fluffy, fake snow and selling all manner of miraculous christmas goodies. food, wine, gifts, trinkets...one particularly amazing booth which i totally patronized had a sign that said "fucking party here!" and was playing techno music and offered 10 of the most delicious, crisp oysters i have ever had the pleasure of eating and a glass of white wine for 10euro. is quite an experience, really, standing in the freezing cold, slurping oysters out of their shells, tasting the ocean and listening to pounding house music while at the booth next door some old lady is buying a pair of socks with the hand-stiched image of a reindeer and having trouble paying because she dropped her coin purse into the fake snow and all the french people are gathering around chattering loudly and helping her to dig her coins out. love christmas. love france. did not think i would, for some reason (love france). i dont know, the first time i went to paris i didnt like it very much and i thought the people were a bit snotty and i always figured the french boys would be very smart and aloof and not talk to me. but could not be further from the reality! the french people were some of the kindest, most down to earth, helpful, insightful, genuine people i have ever met. they were so so sweet to us, and so easy to talk to, just as chatty as could be, and yes, incredibly smart. and they make possibly the worlds best food. so i love them.
the rest of paris was a dream. we saw a celebrity, a notorious crack head who was married to kate moss, at a restaurant and angela and he got into an argument which was possibly the greatest scene i have EVER witnessed. we shopped, we ate incredible food, we rode the subway alot, we saw cute boys. angela went to museums. quinn and i did not (but we did go to the paris ghetto!! ask quinn about that one, was baffling and hilarious and you should really hear that from quinns mouth as she is the authority on such things). one night quinn and i woke up at 1 am for no reason whatsoever except that we had fallen asleep at like 9 and our bodies werent use to going to bed so early. all of use woke up, actually, and we were all a bit annoyed cause it was now 1am and we were wide awake. so quinn and i went on a walk. we walked for a good 45 minutes, through the quiet, cold streets of paris. neither of us said a word to each other, we just walked and thought until we felt sleepy enough to go home. one of my favorite memories. i love my sister.

wednesday we took a train to aix-en-provence. i ended up being literally thrown onto the train by an attendant right as the doors slammed and the train started to depart (they do not mess around with their time schedules, not used to that) and ended up sitting on the floor of a hallway the whole 3 hour ride. was nice though, i had a big window and i could lay back by the heater (yes the trains have heaters, also not used to that) and watch the french country side go by. was stunning.
we arrived in aix-en-provence and sweet frederic picked us up and drove us to his apartment. was cozy and exactly what we needed after freezing, rain sodden paris, and we watched the godfather and i was pleased to note that i could understand about 65% of the parts in italian.
aix-en-provence was beautiful, a classic french town, cobblestoned and befountained and the people were incredibly atractive, like out of magazines, and it was great. angela had to leave friday morning, which was sad.
then we went to montpellier for the weekend, the city where frederic grew up, and a city that i have been hearing about for years from my friend teresa who insists that it is the best place ever and totally where she wants to live. i understand why she feels this way. montpellier is stunning, really beautiful, and fun and lively. the people are good looking and have that look of living in a perfect mix of big city and small town, where you never get bored but you never get worn out, either. the food was incredible, and frederic and i went out to a club with some of his friends and it was a blast.
saturday quinn and i were invited to have lunch at frederics parents house. before my trip to france, frederic kept asking what i wanted to do, and i insisted that my primary goal was to eat boullaibaisse (again, sp), a fantastic, typical, oh i forgot what you call it, poor-people-of-france-ate-it-when-they-were-poor-but-now-its-expensive-as-hell-cause-they-arent-poor-anymore-and-now-its-just-art food (the word i was looking for is "peasant"...), made from left over fish parts, cooked in a broth of heavy garlic and herbs, and served over crispy croutons with a spicy maionaisse. sounds weird, but its heaven, i assure you. we went to frederics house, and his mother, who is possibly the worlds most adorable person ever, was bussing around us offering tea and fresh olives and cherry tomatoes, and his dad was very talkative and asked probing questions and had alot of encyclopedias on the shelves and his sister was pretty and there with her fiance. i felt a bit stiff and formal due to the fact that a) this was possibly the worlds nicest, most normal, clean, wholesome family, all apple cheeked and bepearled and kindness and smiles and kisses on the cheek (**3. in montpellier you kiss 3 times. in paris only 2. it gets positively confusing, and the worst is when either you try to kiss the 3rd time and the other person doesnt, at which point you look like a fool and "take wind", and the very worst is when the other person goes in for the third kiss and you dont and then you feel awful at having made such a faux pas...france is hard sometimes, but v. beautiful e.g. constant kissing) and b) it seemed that the consensus between frederics family and...frederic (?!) was that i was frederics sort of girlfriend (?!) so this whole thing had this terrifying meet-the-parents vibe, and even though i am not, was not, and wont be frederics girlfriend (nothing against the boy, hes wonderful!) i still felt all this pressure to like...behave properly because i really, oddly and of course, wanted them to like me. wasnt hard, though, they were funny and made good conversation and lunch was amazing. the best part was watching quinn behave so oddly polite and formal and even frederic had to laugh afterward, saying hed never seen quinn so sweet. alot of "oui, s'il vous plait" and "merci beaucoup" and other french niceties. i ate like a horse, the food was PERFECT and even quinn was moved enough to TRY A BITE OF FISH (i was shocked), though she promptly gave up and frederics mom was kind enough to make her a filet of veal instead, which quinn said tasted "like a pork chop", and she ate the whole thing. after the boullaibaisse we sampled a selection of cheeses, one of which quinn deemed "tight", and then a fantastic fruit salad with pomegranate and passion fruit and mango was served with a variety of ice creams to chose from to put over the top (was hilarious, we were passing around the ice creams, and one of the cartons said in french-but-english-too that it was "caramel and vanilla" and quinn grabbed for it and frederics mom was like, "that one is-" and quinn said, "oh, i can read it!" and practically shoved the whole carton in her mouth, exclaiming that it smelled like a vanilla candle from the Body Shop. at this point a fruit fly or something landed on my lip and we both burst out laughing at each other, confusing everyone at the table, except for frederic, who was, in his way, quietly patient and amused). after lunch we retired to the den for a small pressed coffee, which i, of course, managed to spill all over my sweater and down my arm and then tried to ignore in manner of if-i-dont-aknowledge-it-no-one-will-notice, the kind of ploy that does not work when quinn is around, who immediately burst out laughing and called me a fool or similar, making frederics mother, frederic, the sister, and the fiance all start grappling for a rag, some soap, a dish towel, and anything else conceivable to help in a spill, while frederics father tried to play along with me, keeping the conversation going. was bright red and stuttering. and again, frederic was patient and amused.
after lunch there was a wine festival downtown (whew!), all local varieties of grapes, and you pay 2 euro and walk around and taste and swirl your glass and, if you are a pro (i´ll get to this later) you spit into a bucket, but if you are me, you just drink it. the wines were perfect and the festival was great except i could feel quinns eyes like daggers telling me shes fucking bored, she wants a bagguette and she wants to go home. by this point of the trip i didnt bother to argue. we left. went home and called it an early night.
6am frederic called, he was waiting outside to take us to the train station. 11am quinn and i arrived back in paris. 2pm we stopped in a mcdonalds so quinn could eat. 4pm quinn dropped me off at my bus station. 8pm, my flight home, thought would die, practically threw up on board when the plane did a 5 second nose-dive, promised myself i would never fly again. 10pm: back in italy. and i can honestly say i have never felt so relieved. i dont know why, france was perfect, france was beautiful, it was a blast, it was sophisticated and intellectual and the food was top notch and i had my sister and my friends and the boys were soooooo cute and the clothes were exsquisite. but when i got to my raggedy little train station and bought a 2euro panino col prosciutto and a cafe and i heard "il treno, regionale, 9245, directo a TRIESTE CENTRALE, arriva a binario 2" i felt like a great fist of love had socked me in the stomach. i felt like i was going home. i rode to cormons, arriving at 1am. pitch dark, starry sky. my castle was aglow on the hill. made my walk back to my dorm and breathed and felt like i had stepped into another century and was exactly where i was suppose to be. and it was one of the best, most reassuring feelings that i have ever felt.