brush up.

Oh and I forgot... This add campaign is funny and will teach you some highly useful french vocab.

trop gourmand.

Helloooo. I'm just engrossed in watching my favourite French television program. There are not many good ones out there, but I like to try and and watch some telly to learn new vocab and 'train my ear'. This 'emission' is about an Austrian chef who drives around France in her red VW beetle learning to cook traditional French dishes in their region of origin. She always has to hunt out ingredients from the local farmers and butchers, go foraging on salt marshes for herbs, don bee-keeping gear, pluck the pigeons etc. It shows the lovely rural side of France.
And because, as Alice told me today, I am too gourmande, I need a snack when I'm watching the box. Tonight it was macaroons. Oh yum.

These are the mini variety, and I have a whole box of them which I will try to make last as long as possible. I have raspberry, pistachio, chocolate, vanilla and coffee. They are perfectly flakey on the outside and soft and gooey inside. You can find macaroons in most boulangeries but a few of the big names in patisseries do them REALLY well. Ladurée are supposed to be the best, and they come in about 20 different flavours but mine are Le Notre and also very good. Come to Paris and I'll take you out to try some.
In other news, Paris is cooling down rapidly, but still very beautiful with all the autumn colours. One more week until the clocks go back and we are plunged into darkness, ugh. Only 3 more days of school and then it's 2 weeks of holiday! Which means about 12 days off for me.
And I'm going to spend 4 days of it in Sicily!
More on that later, now I have some macaroons to eat.

stuff

Well my three lovely girls have moved on, I think they must be in Nice by now. It was so nice having them around! My apartment seems awfully boring without them and their clutter!
It was fun times; though I had work the week days so it was probably most fun for them! But we did get to do some stuff together, mostly eating and watching tv after their full days of sight-seeing.
We did get to have a very fun weekend together. We took the toy kiwi out for a crepe dinner on Saturday night. The toy had a squeaker in it's head and we squawked it whenever we saw French supporters (it was the night of the quarter final). Here is Emily on the metro, squawking at a really glum looking Frenchy.
And eating our tasty meal:
After this we went to a bar to watch the rugby. It was so full that we had to stand on the stairs to watch, but at least there were a few other groups of kiwis there, so our cheers were on par with our competition. Okay so we lost and it was disappointing for a little while, but the exuberance of the French was so contagious that we soon forgot our sorrows and set out to have a fun night. It was also the night of the 'Nuit Blanche' when contemporary art is exhibited all around the city. It was mostly installation art; we visited the Tuileries garden which had been transformed into a fairytale-ish fire garden. Paths were lined with fire-filled terracotta pots; men in top hats made fireballs come spurting out of contraptions resembling giant potbelly stoves; enormous wire spheres were dotted with more flaming pots creating kind of burning bushes. The heat hit you in waves as we walked the length of the garden towards the ferris wheel at Place de la Concorde.
And my camera had no battery.
Anyways we ended up on the Champs Elysees where people were tooting their horns like crazy, waving flags, sitting on car-roofs or hanging out of windows all night long.
We slept away half of Sunday, and then went to the lovely Rodin museum, where the sun came out and we lounged around and yawned.
My gosh it is suddenly late and I feel like I have been sitting here for hours. Well I have been watching 'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring' at the same time. I recommend it, but it may make the sensitive cry a little.
So to conclude, we also went to visit the catacombs of Paris. Not as gothic and gloomy as I thought it would be, but nevertheless quite a unique experience. The catacombes used to be quarries under the city, and then when over-crowded cemeteries were linked to the spread of disease in the 17th century, the graves were exhumed and the bones stored in the tunnels. My guidebook describes it as the 'most macabre place in Paris', which is pretty exact.

For Anna!

I feel bad for people who check this blog regularly and find no updates!
So Anna, seeing as this post will feature your sister, it is dedicated to you!
I has been a GREAT week here! I can't think of a nice poetic way to express it in english - but, 'je me sens bien dans ma peau!' I think it might be something to do with autumn. I love seeing the trees change colour from week to week, I'm thankful to be living in such a leafy part of town. It's still reasonably light in the evenings, and during the day the skies are a lovely cool blue, and the wind is nippy enough for new scarf and gloves. And on top of that I've had the absolute pleasure of good Kiwi company. It's been a fabulous few months for visitors, I'll be sad once it's all over!
Alicia, Jessie and Emily arrived in Paris last weekend. They've been living out of their suitcases for months and I think they are doing so well to still have a good morale! We took it pretty easy (okay so I might have been a little brutal with wake-up time, but I like to maximize my weekends!) lots of strolling and shopping, eating, eating, eating and a Sophie's Special Bike Tour.
We had pretty awesome weather, 'hot' enough for jandals even. I love biking in Paris, it's is just magical to go rolling along the Seine, through the Latin quarter - and my fave - circle the pyramid of the Louvre.
They've popped down to Lyon for a few days, and will be back for more fun and games tomorrow. We're going to try and find a bar with some other Kiwi supporters and watch the AB's and les Bleues battle it out in the quarter final of the Rugby World Cup. So cool that France and NZ are coming up against each other! Also it's the Nuit Blanche tomorrow night, which sees the city turned into a series of outdoor contemporary art spaces. It sounds amazing, and photos are sure to follow!
For those of you who check my flicker photos, I've put up a heap more, all very muddled and in no order what-so-ever! It's like op-shopping.
ciao xx