Paris

Where do I begin? Well. I’m in Paris. That might be a nice place to start.

We left our apartment at 6:30am Saturday, got on a bus to Luton at 7, got to the airport at 9, boarded at 11:55 and arrived in France at 2pm (French time; they’re an hour ahead of England apparently).

Hour bus to the Arc d’Triumph, 4 minute walk north, 3 minutes of 5 flights of stairs, and we were in our apartment for the week. And holy goodness, it’s adorable.

Traveling is a lot different than I thought it would be. When Nicole and I arrived in London and stayed there for a week, we were jet-lagged, exhausted, and virgin international travelers. It was a fun week, but it was stressful, and I wasn’t even the one doing any of the planning. Being in Paris has, so far, been a completely different experience. Besides one hiccup at the Easy Jet check-in counter (where my “carry-on” luggage apparently didn’t count as carry-on and I had to check it for 20 pounds each way [read $65]), getting to France was completely stressless.

Since we’ve been here, there have been no major mishaps (besides being stuck outside our apartment door for 20 minutes because our key wouldn’t work). My futon-bed is comfortable, our espresso maker makes a mean cup of joe in 20 seconds or less, our view is great, our stairs are spiraled, we’re 5 minutes from the Arc d’Triumph, 20 from the Eiffel Tower, and found out we are capable of walking the entire length of the city in a few hours. Today, we had wine, baguettes, cheese, and salami on the grass beneath the Eiffel Tower, then took a nap, then played Bullshit under the Parisian spring sunshine. I was wearing a t-shirt. It was glorious.

Basically, this week has been as close to perfect as a vacation can get. It did cost quite a bit more than I thought it would, so I’m most likely changing my plane ticket back to the US for a week earlier, but I’ll still have 12 days to travel here once our official quasi-secondary-term is over.

In other news, Britainne, Tyler, and I turned in our capstone pitch today. It’s an awesome first-draft-of-a-script and I think it could be really fun to work on, and really funny to watch, which is a change from the doom-and-gloom, everybody-gets-raped-or-abandoned-and-hates-their-lives stories/films that I usually write/work on. A comedy. Who’da thunk?

The other cool thing is, even if we’re not chosen, I’m totally cool working on someone else’s capstone as a production designer or something. It’d be fun to take on a completely different role and get more across-the-board experience. As long as I’m doing something creative, I’m happy.

Speaking of, I’ve been busy designing tattoos for friends this semester. I wanted to do one for myself as well (because how cool would it be to come back from Europe with a custom-designed tattoo as a souvenir?) but no inspiration has been striking for a design of my own. Which is fine, because I have a general rule about tattoos: if I design something, I have to wait 6 months to see if I still really like the design/meaning/symbolism/placement before I’m allowed to get it. Which is sort of why I still only have the one tattoo. But I still like that tattoo, so my rule seems to be doing pretty well so far.

In other news, my niece and nephew turned 1 recently. I bought them both adorable little shirts at Primark for a pound apiece. They’re both getting so big, I hardly recognize them anymore. At least I’ll get to see Amelia when I come home this summer.

I’m jumping around. I just took a shower. I meant mentally jumping around. Physically, I took a shower. Places still to go in Paris: the Bastille, the Louvre, Perlachise, the catacombs, and some sort of café. I just ate a bowl of cereal. It’s 11:41 at night. Mmmmm….

I haven’t taken a shower in two months. It’s been really nice to take a shower here in Paris. In Oxford, I only have a bath, with a shower head thing, which makes washing my hair really difficult. I really like showers.

I also love espresso. Holy con carne, it’s good. I want some now, but I also want to go to bed, and the two are sort of incompatible.

Paris is beautiful. Amen.