I am feeling extremely content right now; it's been a good weekend. Let me tell you about it. This might be long, be warned! I'm in a chatty / typey mood.

:: Comme d'habitude, my weekend began in earnest on Thursday. It always does, but it especially did this week because we decided to skip our class (we were having a double session of the really boring one and just couldn't handle the thought of going). I was exhausted anyhow; I had had a legitimate amount of work (a long paper in French and a final in the Louvre class) during the beginning of the week and was a little burned out. So I took some time on Thursday to see some stuff. I decided to visit the part of Paris called "Les Grands Boulevards," the epitome of Paris's distinctive style of wide (perhaps even grand) boulevards and homogeneous bourgeois architecture.
The main attractions of the area are a church called La Madeleine (built in a neo-classical style and quite pretty), the famous opera house, and "Les Grands Magasins." Magasin is the French word for department store; it was here that the department store was born in the 1800s, catering to Paris's booming middle class. I was especially excited to visit them, expecting huge temples to consumerism, at least as splendid as churches. Alas, they didn't quite turn out that way; the one I explored, Au Printemps, looked an awful lot like Bloomingdale's on the inside. The top floor did have a famous tea room called La Coupole with this gorgeous outsized stained glass dome taking up the entire ceiling, and it was suitably impressive, but overall I wasn't amazed.
Not really that swept away by Les Grands Boulevards, I went to Montmartre. I thought I'd have a lot of time to see stuff, but by the time I got there, it was getting late; I only had the chance to see one thing on my list, a church called Saint-Jean-L'Evangeliste. The church combines Islamic arches, art nouveau brickwork, and a classic church design. It was pretty cool. The funniest part was that it was at the métro stop we always use when we go to Montmartre. But we're always there at night, so I'd never even noticed this lovely building! I felt kind of lame and unobservant.
After that, I went to meet the others on Île-Saint-Louis for some gustatory pleasures. We went first to Berthillon, a famous ice cream shop (not a gelaterie) and supposedly the best glace in Paris. Well, it was delicious, but not otherworldly or anything. I enjoy our local gelato chain (Amorino) much more. Then, after some chill-out time on the banks of the Seine, we went to Angelina's, a Paris institution famous for its hot chocolate. Well, this is not a phrase I use lightly, since I love all things sweet and chocolatey, but this hot chocolate was honestly too rich. It just sat in my stomach and was a chore to finish. Eek.
So, Thursday was a day of disappointments. But that's okay -- they were all things I had to see or try, and were worth experiencing. :) Better to find out they aren't as good as the hype would have us believe!

:: I spent most of the day on Friday finishing up a paper, sadly. But I did have time for the most traumatic experience of my time in Paris, and a fabulous all-night revel after that. It was a busy, wonderful day! Hold on; this one might be long in the telling.
First the trauma: it was just another language disaster, but by far the worst one I've ever had. After I finished my paper, I decided to do my week's grocery shopping. It was getting late and I wanted to go out Friday night, of course, so I didn't go to my usual, preferred grocery store and instead went to one nearer my dorm. Well. I gathered my desired purchased, including some tomatoes, and made my way to the check-out. The tomatoes were the last to go through, but when they got to the lady she picked them up and said:
"Mumble mumble mumble."
Me: "Comment?"
Her: "Mumble mumble mumble!"
Me: not understanding.
She rolled her eyes and did this exasperated gesture with the tomatoes, putting them into the palm of her hand. And I couldn't understand for the life of me what she was trying to say. Finally the woman behind me in line turned and said, "Weight. Weight!" in English. So I guess I was supposed to weigh them myself somewhere. Looking madder, the cashier pointed in the direction of the produce aisle and gestured for me to go there. And I hurried over, cheeks burning, seeing the whole line of French people either looking amused or angry.
The worst part was that I couldn't find the scale or whatever. I saw nothing, not a sign or a scale or anything. Flustered, embarrassed, I just ditched the tomatoes where I'd picked them up and raced back. On the way the security guard stopped me. "You have to weight the tomatoes! You have to weight the tomatoes!" he told me, in English. I just ignored him, threw some bills in the cashier's hand, grabbed my other groceries, speeding out of there and feeling like crying. Oh my god, it was horrible. It may not sound like much, but it was so embarrassing. Not only did I fail at French, but I couldn't even find the stupid scale! I can never go back there again. Anyhow, it put me into a really bad mood. I went home and ate half a jar of Nutella with a fork to console myself.
I'm afraid my bad mood followed me for a few hours. After getting back, I went to meet Silvia and Vicky and La Rhumerie, a Brazilian bar, where we'd been dying to get some fried plantains. They were good, but I was a little upset. These things can be traumatic.
Then, however, everything started to go well. We split ways because we all had different plans for the evening. I, for one, was going to a free concert I saw advertised. To be held in a church very near the Stanford center, it was a Mozart concert featuring the choir and orchestra of the 6eme arrondissement, our neighborhood. I'd been kind of wanting to go to a concert in a church so it seemed like a good idea.
Well, it was a lot of fun. For one thing, it felt like a community affair; these were the community ensembles, and everyone seemed to know each other. People were waving and talking across the pews. It also felt very intimate and familial. The orchestra was not that great, and there were some obvious mistakes... and when they happened, the French people all gasped and cackled and murmured, even though it was in the middle of a concert! I was amused and a little horrified. But I don't think they were just being mean... at the end, they clapped ridiculously hard and summoned the groups for an encore. I guess they just felt comfortable being honest. Anyhow, it was a great evening. I felt very... absorbed by a random French cultural event, and it redeemed the French in my eyes. I just think it's really cool that the government of Paris (the Mairie) puts on stuff like this. Good for Paris.
Anyhow, feeling much better about Paris and the world, I headed out for the distant 20eme arrondissement to meet up with Nafis, Vicky, and Silvia for dinner. They had been to a different concert in La Maroquinerie, a "Fortress of Culture" in the youth-oriented bohemian area we visited last weekend, and we ended up eating in the restaurant part of the complex. Actually, it was very good, edgy cuisine of the kind you don't see in Paris that much. I got "spaghetti," which was actually an organic vegetable salad with all the veggies cut (or naturally) in spaghetti-like strands. I also had a crème unbrûlée for dessert, which was better than it sounds. :)
After dinner, we picked our way through the slightly seedy and emptying streets of the area towards Oberkampf, a currently-trendy nightlife area. There was a bar there called Café Charbon we've been meaning to visit, and although it took a while to get there, we settled in there for a great evening. Oh, was it ever a wonderful place! Probably my favorite bar I've ever been to. This is supposedly a converted 1920's dance club; it has beautiful carved ceilings above but a gritty bar below, with a DJ mounted on the wall, playing familiar rock / dance hits. We were lucky to score a booth in a prime location and settled in for like 3 hours.
We had two interactions with French people at this bar. A sketchy old dude sat next to us and creepily tried to engage us in conversation. Lamest line ever: "Where are you from?" -- We don't respond -- "Ask me a question, any question, and I'll tell you where you're from!" As though that's a game we want to play. Vicky rocked this situation, though; she turned to him and said, "I'm sorry. We just don't want to talk to you." And turned away. Way to fucking go, Vicky!
Anyhow, feeling anti-French, we were less than eager when the dude next to us tried to engage us in conversation. But somehow we all realized, in unspoken agreement, that he wasn't scary, and started talking with him in French. He was suitably delighted that we spoke his language, and we had a long and scattered conversation about France, California, and other things. When he found out I lived on RER B (my métro line), he embraced me and said something along the lines of, "I'm so sorry for you! It's the smelliest one!" (Which validated my own personal belief that RER B is hell on wheels, incidentally.) Anyhow, we all drifted back into our own conversations again eventually, but when he and his friends left, he shook my hand and gave Vicky and Silvia bises. I know that, realistically, he was probably just talking to us to gauge his chances of taking one of those two home, but it was nice anyhow. It's fun to talk to non-frightening people!
Have I mentioned our plan of staying out all night again? We were doing well at this point. We left the bar when it closed, a little after four, and set out into the night. Miraculously, there was an open pâtisserie, so we bought some pastries and savored them. Then we picked our way over to the Bastille area for a café. By the time we finished there the sun was rising, so we headed over to the Seine. We had some champagne in Silvia's purse, and wanted to drink it in this one park at the head of Île de la Cité. Well, we walked over, and on the way saw people having sex on a bench. Real sex -- I'm not exaggerating. We saw them take off their pants! Quite exciting. Anyhow, we did drink our champagne, feet dangling over the Seine, enjoying ourselves, even though once again there was no sunrise -- just a gradual lightening. Oh well.
Part of our reason for staying out all night was because we wanted French breakfast from a café once more during our stay, but knew we'd rather stay up until restaurants opened than wake up before they stopped serving breakfast. We definitely were the first customers in the restaurant we chose, a café near Place Saint-Michel. And it was delicious.
By then it was really time for bed, so we went home. I fell asleep around 9:30, loving Paris once again. At first I was afraid it would be a waste to stay up all night again, thinking I had more to do in the daylight. But honestly, I am so glad we did it! It's so interesting seeing the city wake up. Sure, there are people having sex on benches, but there are also quiet, lovely streets empty of their daytime bustle. We saw, for instance, the plaza in front of Notre-Dame completely empty of people. If you've ever been to Paris you know how impossible that is! The plaza was a little barren and filled with litter. But it was ours, and it was wonderful to see.
So big thumbs up to all-night Paris.

:: I don't know how this happened, but I woke up ready to go at 12:30 on Saturday, and decided to take advantage of it and do some sightseeing. I spent the afternoon a little north of where I had been on Thursday, in a clean bourgeois area of Paris. It was not without its faults. I was really thirsty when I got there, but couldn't find anywhere to get something to drink! No restaurants, hardly any cafés, everything closed... very bizarre. Most of Paris is madly bustling on a Saturday, so seeing these rich, empty streets was strange. But I had things to see. I visited a church called Saint-Augustine, a Neo-Gothic pile with steel supports in the inside, actually pretty cool -- though there was some weird ceremony going on in the church in which hundreds of children were wearing white robes, so I felt bad looking too long, or at all, really. I also went to see the Russian church of Aleksandr Nevsky, finding it a little smaller than I expected. And then I headed to lovely Parc Monceau. I had good intentions of finally seeing the sights of the park, but when I got there tiredness hit me and I just perched on a bench and people-watched. It was nice... so this was where all the rich families came on Saturday. Lots of young families were hanging out, as were teenagers and joggers and old people and everyone else. It was lots of fun. Singing Man was there, a man who apparently listens to opera on his iPod and jogs around belting out songs (he was there last time I came to this park). I enjoyed the chance to relax, and tried to figure out (from my observations) whether I want kids or not.
After that, I met up with the others and we had what I think was one of the nicest adventures of our time in Paris. The Bois de Vincennes is the crosstown cousin of the Bois de Boulogne (the home of the prostitutes); it's supposed to be the cultured English one, but in reality looked the same to me. Anyhow. We went for the purpose of renting a rowboat and going for a promenade (as the French quaintly call it) on the water. For some reason I was filled with this (possibly tiredness-fueled) sense of dread, expecting something terrible to happen. The boat rental place would be closed, or we wouldn't find it, or we would drown, or something. But none of that happened. Amazingly, the sun came out for our visit to the Bois, and we found the rental place when there was still plenty of time to get a boat, and had a great hour on the water. There really is something romantic and relaxing about a boat. This Bois has a large ornamental lake set up in a figure-8 shape, so we meandered among its curves and channels, chilling out with the swans and bridges and main island's fake Roman ruins, soaking in the sun, feeling the breeze, chatting and relaxing. It was unspeakably pleasant. We returned to land just as the sun began to set.
We worked up an appetite during our promenade, and went for an unspectacular dinner near Place Saint-Michel, and then headed home. I was still tired from before so I was not sad to call it an early night. I feel like the boat was enough happiness to last me a while. God, that was nice.

:: Today, Sunday, we had our last day trip, an adventure into the countryside to visit Monet's house and garden in Giverny. We made our way there without incident, although the walk from the train station to Monet country was much longer than we expected! Anyhow, Giverny is a cute little town with bountiful flowers and charming houses and lush hills. Monet's name is everywhere. This is where he set up camp after he was successful and when he had the privilege of creating a giant garden for inspiration and painting, like, ten thousand water lilies. We saw both his house and his garden. The house was one of the lamest tourist attractions I've ever visited. There weren't any plaques or exhibits or explanations, just empty rooms and some reproductions of paintings! It must be said, though, that man had good taste in color schemes.
The gardens, however, were worth the trip. We've all seen Monet's paintings of water lilies and bridges and ponds and all that. Well, he actually built a Japanese-inspired garden in Giverny. It's quite an elaborate set-up... pretty nice. I would be inspired by it if I were artistic.
Although this might sound somewhat silly, we ended up spending the most time at a long, lingering lunch. We all got grandes salades and a Normandy cheese platter afterwards. It was really good! Amusingly, it was at the terrace of Givenchy's other big attraction, the Museum of American Art; there were so many Americans around, and the bathrooms felt like they'd been airlifted right from Omaha or something. But I've found that museum-affiliated cafés are always good, so I felt no guilt for being there among my countrymen. It was such a good lunch that we completely lost track of time and ending up missing several trains home! It was worth it, though.
Now, we always have Sunday dinner out; since this is our last one, we wanted to go somewhere nice once we got back to Paris. But we didn't really plan adequately and so ended up eating at a very normal restaurant of the type we've always chosen, especially back at the beginning -- a reliable French bistro with a menu (prix fixe). At first I think we were all a little disappointed by the ordinariness of our meal. In the end, however, it was very good -- genuinely. I guess we don't really need that nice of a meal, after all. We do indulge a little every weekend! Seriously, I'm actually glad we just paid homage to the kind of restaurant that's served us so well during our séjour.

I think that's the end of the narrative. Sorry that was so long -- I'n cramming a lot into these last days! Um, I'm actually feeling complicated feelings about Paris and the prospect of leaving it, but I think I'll save them for another day. It's time for bed. Thank you so much, however, for reading. Comme d'habitude. Ciao!