Lazy Weekend

We had a nice quiet weekend.  Went on some long walks close to home, up on Montmatre, saw the best view in the city (not the Eiffel Tower, in case you're wondering), ate some delicious food, crepes, curry, steak and all together too much crusty bread; I would have given a lot for some serious pain killers last night for the jaw.

Interesting tidbits for all, with delightfully cryptic, earmarks for those who I know will enjoy them particularly:

For the Tam-Flam:  Nick and I stumbled upon a cafe called the Pink Flamingo Cafe; didn't have a camera but may go back just for you.  Also, ordered a g&t yesterday and it came with gin in one glass and tonic, ice, and lemon in a separate small carafe.  Mix your own, to your tastes.  Genius!  I've seen this a few times. Tanqueray also seems to be the favorite here, silly Frenchpersons.

For my dearest illusion:  You are not allowed to come to Paris/France.  At least not without a giant bottle of ibuprofen and an ice pack for each side of your face.  That said, I found an art supply store the other day.  Ooh la la!  It was beautiful.  I really wanted to pick up some pastels, because I managed to come to Paris with the only medium that I find consistently disagreeable...but at 1.5 to 2.5 euro for a stick, I decided to hold off, though it saddened me greatly.

Brotha Z:  I saw someone who could have been your twin in Jardin du Luxembourg the other day.  Leastwise, if you had a twin with rather blondish hair.  The way he was sitting in the sun with his head tipped up, it looked like it could have just been the light and made me do a double take.  I do this all the time with different people.  It's like my subconscious is looking really hard for someone I know.

D Ele:  I found our hotel from sophomore year in high school.  Not a bad location, definitely missed out on some good night life.  Unfortunately, I rarely have the energy for night life here...by the time the French deem it appropriately late to begin living, I'm pretty much ready to go to sleep.  On the upside, I get to watch the city wake up all the time and that's pretty awesome.

For Z Lace Lady and others:  Here are pics from our trip out to Chantilly last weekend.  It's a quaint little town with a chateau formerly belonging to some member of French nobility and a racetrack, reachable by commuter train from Paris.  The weather was drizzly bordering on rainy, blustery and miserable with some deceiving moments of sun (most of these were while we were deciding whether or not to take an umbrella, of course).  

Chateau de Chantilly

Stables, but a likely looking chateau to the uninitiated

Turns out that what we thought was the chateau, was actually just the stables/horse museum.  The man loved his horses.  The chateau itself, after having been destroyed during the Revolution, was rebuilt and now houses a very nice art gallery and museum.

The man himself, Henri d'Orleans

  The surrounding area is filled with gardens, parks and lots of little byways on which to amble about; originally we went mostly to walk about in the quiet, but the weather put the kibosh on that.

 The museum in the chateau was also home to a very few examples of Chantilly lace, a handmade lace that is created using bobbins and a pillow, set up like this.  Through some miracle of time and patience that I will never truly understand, you get things that look like this:

This, is not bobbin lace.  But I wouldn't mind if it came home with me.