SO, Lauren arrived on Dec. 29th (which I just realized was 1 month ago today). I met her at the Charles de Gaulle airport which was my first journey to the airport by myself. Had to take the subway to get to the train station and then I hopped on the RER train to get out there. It's about a 1 hour journey, one way. After waiting for about 20 minutes Lauren finally came through the doors and I greeted her with a big hug. We then made our way back to my apt. and try to decide what to do first. We decided to walk around the area where I live. I live in the 18th in Montmartre, but also in the 18th is Pigalle which is kind of like the red light district. This is also where the Moulin Rouge is and since that was on Lauren's list of things to do, we walked to the MR.
After we stopped off here for a few tourist-y pics we continued to walk down Blvd. Clichy and check out all the sex shops, strip joints, etc. We did stop off at a place and have a sandwich. We both had the "Americane" which couldn't have been further from any sandwich I've had in America! After walking around the 18th for awhile, I wanted to show Lauren the Galeries Lafayette which is the huge department store I talked about in a previous post. I had spotted a candle there that I really wanted from my last trip there so I bought that. Which is already burned up, might I add. I can't remember if Lauren bought anything that day, I don't think she did though. I also took her to the very top floor where there is an outside terrace where you can over look the city. Here are a few pictures from that.
The first is a pic of the Sacre Coeur Basilica from the top of Galeries Lafayette and the second is me trying to put the Eiffel Tower in the palm of my hand. Howerver trying to take a pic like that is much harder than it seems! Clearly it was very windy outside that day as my hair looks like a trainwreck, haha! After GL (I like to abbreviate, and use parentheses remember) we went back to my apartment for a little power nap. Lauren was a bit jet lagged from her flight and we needed to get geared up for the evenings festivities and Lauren's first night out in Paris. After a few hour nap we woke up and got ready and wanted to grab a late dinner. We walked around near the Abbesses metro stop and ended up eating at a place called Cafe Bryant. After perusing the menu and avoiding something that contained a "gherkin", Lauren decided on what she knew best...a thigh of Chicken and French Fries and I believe I got some sort of steak with shallots. Which Lauren and I decided was pronounced more like "shallow" in French since they probably don't pronounce a hard T. FYI we later found out after many a google search that a gherkin in a pickle. But the small ones that have bumps on the outside, ewww. Here is a pic of us at dinner.
As you can see, we started off the meal right with a couple of small carafe's of wine. So about dinner...this makes for a good laugh. As far as I can remember my steak and shallow's were quite tasty. Lauren wasn't so lucky. She said her chicken was very dry and that when she cut into it, she had a movie scene flash in her head. I think we've all seen National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase. She said her chicken was like when Clark cut into the X-mas turkey and it was so dry that it deflated and smoke started pouring out of it!!! How hilarious is that, made me laugh anyway! After dinner we made our way to Corcoran's Irish Pub which is basically like my Cheers. Don't think anything too crazy happened that particular evening, but things would soon change! Let's just say we encountered lots of interesting characters throughout the week!
