Tristram Shandy

Should I try to read Tristram Shandy before seeing "A Cock and Bull Story"?

Who am I kidding, it's never going to happen, is it?

Busy Saturday night

This weekend, I had one of those nights that young urbanites with any disposable income at all are supposed to have, if you judged by books and TV shows. My life is usually much calmer and home-bound, which, to be honest, I prefer. If you're coming to Dublin and wish to see what the range of pub/bar/club/alcohol-serving-establishments is, here're the venues.

Early evening (pub): had a couple of drinks with a friend at The Globe on Georges St. A fairly basic pub. Big scarred wooden tables, young-ish crowd, music (but not too loud), okay beer. Not one of my usual drinking holes, but okay for a Saturday night, meaning not absolutely packed. It had started getting crowded when we left.

Later evening (bar): I have no clue what this place is called, but it's a converted church at the intersection of Mary St. and Jervis St. on the north side. As if the sacrilege of turning a church into a bar wasn't insult enough, they turned it into a fake swanky, soulless place, populated by twunts (as someone I know would say). It was all blue lighting along the bar, shiny metally table and counter tops, white leathery club chairs. It was someone's idea of good design, if that someone had only looked at blurry pictures of "cool" places from the tabloids. It was filled with overly-cologned young men in striped shirts and women in pointy-toed shoes with trowel-applied make-up. It was totally silly. Fake fake fake. Soulless soulless soulless.

Midnight on (club, I guess?): Went with Convalescing-GothBoy to Dominion, a goth/metal/whatever place in the basement of Fraser's, on O'Connell St. Filled with chicks with long hair, in black PVC, lace and boots, and guys with, uh, long hair, in black leather, geeky t-shirts and boots. Both sexes wore more make-up than is strictly prudent. Music was...pretty much what you'd expect. I recognized some Nine Inch Nails and the Cure. Convalescing GothBoy knows the Dominion organizers, so I got to sit in the DJ booth with all cool "in" people. Aren't I great? Don't you wish you were me? Anyway, I clearly didn't belong there, but I think I got groupie treatment. Everyone was very nice, and hugged me and offered me alcohol and stuff.

Got to bed at 4; didn't leave the house the next day.

Uhh...is that a compliment?

In my book group, there had been some recent discussion about whether the men and women in the group rate books differently and like different books.

When I got into the bar yesterday, people were discussing who had chosen this month's book, and one person said that she would guess that a man had chosen the book, but if it turns out a woman had chosen it, then it'd have to have been me.

Is that a compliment? As it turns out, I had chosen it. What does that mean?

How to make yourself feel utterly inadequate: a recipe

Ingredients

Portugal (if too expensive or out of season, substitute any other non-English-speaking country with a young, well-educated workforce)
1 Portuguese friend
a dozen friends of Portuguese friend
awkward attempts to speak Portuguese, to taste


Instructions

Go to Portugal. Stay with Portuguese friend. Who is studying in Paris. And writing her PhD dissertation in English.

Go to dinner with friends of Porguguese friend. Discover that they are all poly-lingual. Realize that, out of table of 9 people, you are the only mono-lingual person. And that they therefore must speak in English. Which is fine, because, in addition to Portuguese, French, Spanish and German, they are all fluent in English.

Go to drugstore, awkwardly ask if they have vaseline lip balm. ("Tem...vaseline?" while self-consciously gesturing at lips.) Have drugstore counter chick say, "We don't have vaseline, but we do have a selection of other lip balms in this tray here" in flawless English. Buy lip balm and slink out.

An Irish country Christmas

Well, darnit, aren't they just the sweetest people down there in Offaly! My friend and I took the train out on Christmas Eve. His sister picked us up at the train station, and we squished into her car, along with her 5-month-old and her 5-year-old, who went all shy and quiet as soon as he saw me. This apparently classifies as a Christmas miracle, 'cause I was told that, usually, you can't shut up him up. Went to visit another sister, who was in the hospital (she's fine, just in for a scheduled operation), then along home to meet the parents, who were just the nicest people on earth.

My friend's parents are in their '70s and his father was a dairy farmer. When it became clear none of the sons was going to take over the lifestyle, they sold the farm when he retired and used some of the money to build a new house to retire in. They kept some of the land around the new house, for a large garden and a field that they rent out to their neighbors as grazing land. The new house is large and on one floor, and one whole half of it is taken up by the huge kitchen and open dining room. Though they have a sitting room as well, all the day-to-day living is done in this huge space. There was always a fire in the fireplace, and the mother liked to sit in one of the comfy chairs next to it. Although she's not sitting still very often. They are both quite active, still, and as soon as one of them sits down, the other will get up to make some tea or get more wood from the entryway, or to wrap up some scraps for the neighbor's dog and cats who come calling to the back door (they have already figured out that no one uses the front door). The neighbors, as well as assorted children and grandchildren, also call often at the back door although they aren't given scraps.

His mother had apparently said, "Oh, God!" when informed earlier on the phone that I was a quasi-vegetarian. Her plea of, "Won't she have even a little turkey?" was answered in the negative. So when I arrived, I found that the father had gone out to the greenhouse, picked some lettuce and herbs, washed them, and had put a huge plate of it in the fridge for me. They cooked a fry-up for dinner, making me an extra egg and offering me enough toast for half a dozen people. After dinner, my friend and his father went off to midnight mass (at 9; I don't know either). His mother had been feeling poorly that day, so she stayed in to listen to the mass on the radio and said she would go to the Christmas morning service. They did not expect that I would go with them. They showed me where the DVD player was, and where the various foodstuffs were kept and told me to make myself at home if they were gone to mass when I got up the next morning. I was relieved and disappointed. Relieved because I didn't have to go to a Catholic service I knew nothing about and would have to sit through awkwardly; but disappointed 'cause it would have been an interesting thing to see. I've never been in any kind of a church service before.

The parents were great. They just mostly liked to sit about and talk and they've lived together so long and it totally shows. She does the cooking; she takes her time, moseys about, does a bit here, a bit there. He does the dishes, and sometimes she'll join him at the sink to dry. On Christmas Eve, they made the Christmas dinner dessert, which was a fruit, cake and sherry trifle. They'd done this so many times that it was like a cozy, choreographed dance. He opened the can of fruit, she cut the cake into slices and they both put their respective ingredients into the bowl, then he pours in the sherry and jelly while she stirs. It was so cute. Plus, the dessert smelled great while they were making it. They're totally cool. I asked about the service after they came back from mass, and she was saying how everyone loved the new priest, 'cause the old one was all fire and damnation and everything was sin sin sin, and this new one is totally more upbeat and happy and was really good with the kids and young people.

Christmas day was spent at the house of one of the sisters. Another sister came by for Christmas dinner while we all sat around and played with the kids' toys. The 5-year-old had gotten a robot that shoots out these foam rings; it was cool. Dinner was turkey (here, and in the UK, Christmas dinner means turkey and brussels sprouts), goose (which I stole a little bite of, as I'd never had goose), mashed potatoes, yams, brussels sprouts, and two kinds of (veggie) stuffing. One of the sisters had already started cooking me some fish before I could stop her and say that the veggies would be more than enough.

The next morning, I sat around a bit, the father showed me the paintings he'd done since he took up the hobby when he had hip surgery and couldn't work, ate some more salad, at lunch (salmon for me, turkey leftovers for them) and then they drove me to the bus station so I could get home to feed the cat.

Oh wait

It turns out one of those half-hearted invitations wasn't so half-hearted after all, and he really wants me to go home with him, 'cause then he wouldn't be so bored the whole time. And since he quit grad school, I don't see him very much anymore, so I'm going to wonderful Co. Offaly for an Irish country Christmas. Woo!

It's especially interesting to go 'cause my friend is gay, and his parents, of the old-school religious variety, don't know and have many times expressed disapproval of "those people." It's a teeny town, and he really is the only gay in the village. So my mission is not to drink too much and start harassing his parents on their views on homosexuality. Wish me luck.

Poor little me

I am spending Christmas alone.

Actually, this is not especially tragic, as I care very little for the whole Christmas thing, except for the sparkly lights part. That I like. But anyway, I have a couple of half-hearted invitations to spend Christmas with the families of some of the lab guys ('cause for them, it is an unthinkable tragedy to spend Christmas alone), but I'm not really feeling up to faking Christmas cheer, y'know?

So here I am. Housemate A has gone home, and housemate B has yet to move in. Other people with whom I am friendly have also buggered off home for the holiday, so I've got a few days to myself. I've got a few fake logs ("Crackles like real wood!") for the fireplace, I've got booze (although, you know what they say about drinking alone...), I braved town today so that I have enough food to last me through the days when the shops are closed. I've got a couple of knitting projects I want to at least get started on, I checked out some DVDs from the library (they had Porgy and Bess! I was so excited). Those plus the books I've already got, not to mention internet surfing, should probably keep me more than busy.

I'm kind of looking forward to sleeping in and being able to hang out all day in my robe and not have to worry about anything or anyone except for the cat. And if I get really bored, I can always clean the house; but really, how likely is that?

Reading: Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and flipping through Nigella Lawson's How to Eat, usually while I'm eating. If that woman's prose was any more purple, I'd have to bleach the volume before the type could be read.

Hah!

The department's Christmas party was last night, and a full half of the lab isn't in today. They really should have learned by now and schedule these things for a Friday. I left at a reasonably decent hour, and, more suprisingly, had stopped drinking at a thoroughly decent hour, but I heard that a good number of the hardest partyers only left when campus security came to clear out the room. We seem to have done a pretty good job, actually- all the wine was gone, there were only a few cans of beer left, and plenty of Coke and orange soda still there this morning when we went to help clean up.

The only disappointing bit was that the dude doing the music didn't have any Bangles songs- I requested Walk Like an Egyptian, 'cause it would annoy the grad student who'd had it stuck in her head all day, but he didn't have it. And he didn't have Eternal Flame, either, which would have annoyed the whole room. Darn.

Damn you, Murphy!

So. One housemate has moved out and her replacement won't be here for another few days and the other housemate is in Australia for two weeks. The cat and I have had the place all to ourselves for nearly a week now, so it's the perfect time for - you guessed it- locking myself out of the house.

I had pretty much assumed this would happen at some point, and had even been vaguely thinking to myself that I should make a copy of my key and keep it at work, but for it to happen just when both housemates are gone? That's cheeky. Two things conspired to make me forget my key this morning: the Boy had used my key earlier last night and then put it back just far enough away from my wallet and mobile (where it normally lives) so that I didn't see it this morning; and I had chosen to ignore the fact that it was pissing it down and decided to wear a skirt, so no suspiciously empty pockets to remind me. I didn't even notice that I didn't have my keys until lunchtime.

When I discovered the key's absence, I thought, damn, well, how much do locksmiths cost? Looked them up and called a few (by the way, totally off-topically, why the hell are there pages and pages of locksmiths in the Dublin phone book, but barely half a page of veterinarians? Isn't that totally backwards?) and apparently they charge €75-90 to come and possibly break your lock and/or door to get you back inside your house. So, fine, plan B: break into my own house.

The Boy, who is inherently dodgy, was delighted with this plan and immediately started modifying lab tools to be used as lock picks. We had two approaches: a) pick the lock and b) get a stick of the correct size and shape to put through the letter slot and work the latch from inside. As you can probably guess, neither worked. As a last resort, we looked at the window above the sink that had always been kinda loose. After a bit of prying, you could just about insert a thin lab spatula under it and unlatch it, which we, surprisingly successfully, did. So this window is a slit of a thing, maybe 10 inches tall and high off the ground. Took off the boots and got a boost up to the ledge and figured I'd maybe just be able to squeeze through (in the skirt! a bad decision for the day for several reasons, apparently), but it turned out not to be too tight of a fit at all. In no time, I was in my kitchen, with the cat staring at me wondering what the hell I thought I was doing.

I took the spare key with me into work, which is its new home.

I'm so old

I'd bought some fake logs ("logs" made of sawdust and wax) for the fireplace for Thanksgiving dinner and liked having a fire so much that I bought some more last night. Plus, it was absolutely freezing last night, so it was the perfect time. I pulled one of the couches as close to the fireplace as I dared, and sat there, knitting, with the cat on my lap, for hours. I had some wine, but now it occurs to me that hot chocolate would have been ideal.

I always aspired to growing old disgracefully, but so far it hasn't happened yet.

I also quite like London

Ha, this blog is like A Tale of Two Cities! Except not at all, really.

I spent last weekend in London, for my November trip. I flew in on Friday early evening (Aer Lingus into Heathrow, as I like to avoid Ryanair whenever possible) and flew out late Sunday night (BMI, first time I've flown them, and they were quite okay). I've been to London maybe half a dozen times before (although never for more than a few days at a time, unfortunately) and did most of the touristy things the first couple times, so now I go there usually with something specific in mind to see or do, in addition to the random wandering about. It occurred to me more than once throughout this trip that I wouldn't at all mind living in London.

This time, my mission was threefold: 1) find a good bowl of pho; 2) see the Chihuly exhibit at Kew Gardens; and 3) visit Loop, a yarn shop that I'd heard had just opened in Islington . (It's getting seriously cold, and my knitting activity is inversely proportional to the temperature.)

The yarn shop I found by looking up British knitting groups on-line and the pho I found by asking on the Lonely Planet message boards. It turns out there is a cluster of Vietnamese restaurants in Shoreditch on and around Kingsland Rd. We passed a few quite promising looking ones and settled into Song Que, a longish trek from Old Street tube station. It was a good choice. The pho was great- I'd forgotten how much I missed the stuff, and the whole meal with drinks was about GBP10 each, so cheap as well.

The yarn shop was small, but lovely. They had a smaller selection of yarn that I am used to (their whole collection would barely take up one free-standing display case at Weaving Works) but everything they carried was beautiful. I couldn't find the Debbie Bliss cotton in the color I wanted (I'm in the middle of a wavy pattern scarf and ran out of yarn) but I did buy some very soft kid mohair that I'm planning to do something in a lacy, open-work pattern with. Not sure what yet. The best part about the yarn shop, though, was getting to it. It's in Islington and and I took the tube to Angel station and walked to the shop. And discovered a great neighborhood in the process. I passed by merchants packing up stalls from what must have been an antiques and second-hand merchandise market. I was sorry that I didn't make the trek out earlier in the day, 'cause a lot of the stuff still out looked quite interesting and browsable. There were lots of little independent shops as well, which is a nice change from the chains. We stopped at a cozy looking pub for a quick pint (of bitter, since it's harder to find that in Dublin) before dinner. This was one of those times when I felt I could really enjoy living in London.

The Chihuly exhibit at Kew (I know, all way across continents just to see Chihuly) was totally awesome. I mean, yeah, glass art is just sort of inherently pretty and cool, and Chihuly's stuff definitely as a large "wow" factor, and there were lots of pieces at Kew that showed that off. The bits I liked best, though, were the simpler sculptures. The best ones were pieces where the glass mirrored or copied the shapes and colors of the plants around it. There were a couple times we stopped to admire a plant or to touch the leaves, and didn't even notice for a long time that the "plant" next to it was one of the glass sculptures. The other installation I liked was the blue and white "Heron", where the glass pieces, blown into shapes reminiscent of herons and long-necked birds, were put into one of the lily ponds. We had only intended to spend two or three hours at Kew and then spend the rest of the day at Camden Market (highly recommended by some friends) but we liked it so much we spent the whole day there and only left when they closed. That's okay, that means Camden will make the perfect excuse for going back.

And you know what else?

I totally dig the Saturday market in Meeting House Square in Temple Bar. Organic fruit and veg, a crepe stand, a French baker's stall, a chick who sells flowers of the kind that you would actually grow (sweet peas, wildflowers) instead of your fake-looking standard hothouse lilies and roses, two cheesemongers, a few butchers and plenty of other stands filled with food you can buy to bring home or eat right there.

The absolute best thing, though, is that it's open during decent hours. Now, I'm as excited about farmer's markets and local produce as the next person, but who the hell wants to get up at the butt crack of dawn on a weekend to rush to the market? That's just positively uncivilized! On a Saturday or Sunday morning, you want to stay in bed at least a couple hours past when you'd have to get up for work during the normal drone week. Then lie around, maybe read the paper, have your first cup of tea or coffee, then make your way leisurely out of the house and have a pleasant stroll to the market. Who the hell wants to get up while it's practically still dark out, shivering and tired and sleepwalk to the market so you can get there before all the good tomatoes get snapped up? I mean, Jesus, no wonder most people take what they can get at Safeway.
The Temple Bar market, however! Now they know what's up. I get there between noon and three most times, and it's still swinging. The workers at the big veg and fruit stall that anchors the market are still bringing out fresh stuff, the chick who works at the baker's stall is still reinforcing her wall of bread at her table, the guy who sells cereals, grains and dried fruit still has his sacks of product half full. If you get there at three, there's still a good couple hours of browsing and buying. At the places I tried (rarely) in Seattle, stalls were packing up as I got there in the early afternoon. It makes no sense.

The only way they could impove upon this market is to open it on Sundays, too. But I won't look a gift horse in the mouth.

And now for something completely different

Since the last Dublin post was a whinge, this one shall be a rave.

I love the Georges Street Arcade. It's awesome. For one thing, it's just a great building- all red brick and little turrets. Mostly, though, it's because the teeny shops in there are a great relief from the British high street chains on Grafton St. When you get tired of the endless sameness of Next, M&S, River Island and whatnot (and you get tired of them quickly), you can pop into the Arcade and find shops selling, among many other things, heaps of ethnic silver jewelry, piercing jewelry, hippy-dippy "oriental" clothes, funky alterna-wear, used CDs and books, secondhand German military jackets, cheap Chinese copies of the trendy clothes you see elsewhere, organic foodstuffs, handmade soap and a stall selling nothing but cool hats. It's just great all around.

The second time I was in Dublin, I wandered in while strolling around the city centre and was totally excited at what I found. The next time I was in Dublin, for the job interview, I tried to find the place again, but no luck. (I have absolutely no head for directions, so I had no clue where it was, except that you could get to it from a side street off Grafton.) When I moved here to live, I made it a quest one weekend to find it. Now, I'm happy to see that some new stalls and shops have opened, but I'm sad that one of the guys selling used books is gone.

Holy rusted metal

Now, I'm all about the Firefly- I left work early yesterday so's I could get as many episodes in as possible before going to bed. I managed eight episodes and would have finished the whole series if it wasn't for the need for an early start this morning.

However, much as I'm loving the Firefly, I have to say: Joss! What the hell were you thinking with that theme song?! It's horrific! It's so cheesy it makes triple-creme brie seem like microwaved Velveeta. Now, maybe you thought you'd just take the Western theme the whole way with the cheesy Western theme song? Is that it? Maybe you wrote it specifically to be really bad and cheeserific? That's what I'm gonna think, because surely you didn't think it was good?

Reading: Nuthin'. Knitting. Can't read and knit and watch DVDs at the same time, dammit.

Mmmm...Joss Whedon

I borrowed the Firefly DVDs off a friend, 'cause I semi-wanted to see Serenity, and was advised to watch the series first. And damn! They're good. I watched the first disc last night and was only barely able to stop myself from going right on through the night. But I tell ya, I'm glad I didn't have to sleep alone after watching about those Reavers. Scary.

Mildly frustrating

Okay, I usually try not to do the bitching about Ireland that a lot of people here do, 'cause I think one should be generous with one's host country and, besides, what's the point of moving somewhere else if I expect it to be just like home? However, there are a few little things that I feel I'm justified in whinging about.

For a country that managed to turn itself from one of the poorest to one of the richest nations in Europe (hey, highest standard of living in 2005, according to The Economist!) mostly by luring in high tech companies, it sure is a little strange that, high tech-wise, Ireland is 5-10 years behind. And I'm not talking about the big life-changing things- I'm sure the hospitals here have the latest machinery, and I know the universities are fairly well-equipped. I'm talking about the little things that make my life just a teeny bit more difficult.
For example: the Dublin public transportation system. Look as long as you want, there is no page on their website that will show you a map of the bus routes superimposed on a street map of Dublin. The web site shows you what neighborhoods the various routes go to. That's it. However, this is not surprising, because even if you went to the Dublin Bus offices, there are no such maps. There are maps of some of the neighborhoods with the bus routes, but why they can't make a big one with all of Dublin on it and put it on-line, I don't know. There isn't even a little cartoon of what streets the buses go down and what the cross streets are. The information on the poles at the actual bus stops are less than useless: they simply ugly up the street. And on-line trip planning? Ha!
Example two: high speed internet access is a joke. You can get broadband if you have an Eircom land line. The resulting connection is, I'm told, barely adequate. The land line costs you €40/month and the broadband is €30. If you are unlucky enough to move into a place that did not have an existing land line, Eircom will happily charge you upwards of €100 to put one in. If you don't want to pay the exorbitant sums Eircom insists on, then you could go for one of two other choices. For both, the coverage is patchy at best (doesn't even cover all of Dublin, for Pete's sake) and will randomly cut out on you.

None of this is horrible. Mostly the solutions involve my having to walk a little bit further or to have to stop by an office and talk to someone rather than do what I want over the computer. But I'd gotten too used to being able to do practically everything from the comfort of home. Perhaps it's just as well that this kind of thing forces me to move my ass out of my chair, huh?

Find something else to talk about, people!

Everyone else has linked to this article, so I may as well: excerpts from NYTimes columnist Maureen Dowd's upcoming book Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide. Okay, listen up, people, it was entertaining for a while, but I am now sick and tired of books, articles, blogs, movies, TV shows, and other crap purporting to report and comment on how difficult it is for the "modern woman" to hunt, find and catch a husband and then, if the stars are aligned and they get that magical band around their fingers, how to balance a career and family. I am convinced that the authors/producers/directors/whatever of these cliches masquerading as commentary with real insight live in some alternate universe. Okay, so you and your two buddies, one a high-powered Wall Street trader and the other an interior designer who counts Julia Roberts as one of her clients, are having trouble finding "Mr. Right". Maybe you're too good at your job and you're scaring them off? You were told that you should always let the man pay because otherwise you're not feminine enough? And once you find this magical person and somehow manage to reproduce (after rounds of IVF treatments at $10K a pop, of course, which you will write about in Salon), should you cut back on your work hours, or just quit entirely? After all, it's not like that law degree that you spent 3 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on is worth anything, really, compared to the Miracle of Motherhood and Being There to see the little snot-nosed brat take his first shit in the plastic potty, right?

What universe do you live in?! Most women, wives and mothers have to work because two incomes are necessary just to pay the damned mortagage. Many people married their college or high school sweethearts because they fell in love with the pimply-faced, gangly dude who made them rice crispies bars in their dorm kitchens, not because they want to be wined and dined by property magnates in shiny Prada suits. Many women have normal jobs, that pay somewhat less than decently, and they meet their dates at the local bar with the sticky floor; they get taken to the Olive Garden and make random chitchat. But of course, you! Jesus, how difficult your life must be! Those sample sales are a killer, aren't they? Those charity balls and book signings just get soooo tedious, and the men you meet there keep giving you mixed signals and never respond to your e-mails, anyway. Shut up! Just shut up! The only people who live like you and share your experiences are your buddies at those press junkets. You comprise maybe 0.2% of the population and have 10% of the wealth. The first couple of books and movies and whatnot were entertaining in a "Hey, see how stupid and miserable the rich people are" way, but now it's just getting insulting and, worst of all, boring.

Reading: Alice Sebold's Lucky: A Memoir, and the Susanna Clarke.

Not surprisingly...

I totally forgot about the time change until I overheard some chick talking about it on the bus on the way into town this morning. So now I'm at work an hour earlier than I need to be and none of the shops are open yet, so I have an hour to kill...

Tomorrow is the Dublin marathon and a holiday here. If I had known this earlier than, say, Thursday, I would not have signed up for instrument time today and could have taken off for the long weekend. Damn.

And now for something mildly disturbing: I usually keep the cat indoors on Halloween, New Year's, July 4th- pretty much any time when there are likely to be fireworks, 'cause I don't want her near kids setting them off or getting too curious about what that shiny sparkly thing is (she is my cat, after all), so I thought nothing of it when people warned me to keep the cat indoors this weekend. What I did think was strange was that, after this warning, they would go on to say something along the lines of "Oh, cats go missing a lot on Halloween, you know...people do awful things to animals then...." The first time this happened, I was like, Uh-huh, a little paranoid, are we? And then when other people kept telling me this, I just started wondering what the hell kind of people live in this country. Seriously, do people torture cats here or what?

Reading: Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Very good. Excellent read. It's part fantasy, part history, part fairy tale, part ghost story and part good old-fashioned "what happens next?!" novel. Clarke's got some imagination on her, I tell ya.

Feh.

Dammit, I'm sick again! How does this happen? In the 13 months I've been here, I've been sick more often than in the last five years put together. What the hell? I've gone through packets and packets of Sudafed. This is ridiculous.

But anyway, Paris trip. We took Ryanair into Beauvais airport. Ryanair is cheap, but infamous for flying into teeny regional airports that are miles and miles from the cities that they claim to serve. This keeps their airport fees down, but the tickets are never as cheap as they seem because, for instance, to get into Paris proper from Beauvais, you have to hand over €13 for their shuttle bus. Which takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r. I find it hard to believe that French drivers actually obey the speed limits, so I can't think why this bus did a steady 40 mph all the way into Paris. An hour and a half later (mind you, the flight to Beauvais from Dublin only took an hour and 25 minutes), we're at the Port Maillot metro station, where, after some confusion as to how to actually cross the street against streams of neverending oncoming traffic, we meet the friends we're staying with. We take the metro back to their place (god, I love subways- so efficient, so simple, so fast). We're starving, so we buy bread, cheese, pastries and other foodstuffs on our short walk from the metro station to the flat and stuff ourselves while the guys catch up with each other and the girlfriend and I roll our eyes at their jokes.

So we spent nearly four days in Paris and here's some of what we saw:

Notre Dame: really cool and lit up at night, but that meant we didn't get to see the stained glass window in all its glory. That's okay, it's unlikely we'd have wanted to wait in line and pay to go in anyway.

We strolled along the Seine and looked at the bridges and buildings. The Pont Neuf has all sorts of gargoyles along the sides, which are awesome.

And despite all the Amelie hoopla, we went to Montmartre:
Montmartre was the most "touristy" of the places we saw, I think. There were lots of people selling postcards and trying to draw pictures of tourists to sell and lots of shops filled with random tourist tat. Yeech. But the side streets are nice and winding and eventually we found our way down to another neighborhood, where we bought some pastries.

The Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower and stuff were cool. We didn't go up to the top of either, though. We didn't feel like waiting in line and paying and anyway, we got a great view of the city from the hill at Montmartre.

So on to the important things: what we ate. Breakfasts (or lunch, really, considering how late we managed to leave the flat every day) mostly consisted of bread, cheese and other pastries we bought in the shops around the flat. We'd take the stuff to a park or somewhere to eat. The food was all awesome. Once we went to a creperie for lunch, and couldn't decide whether we wanted savoury (made with a savoury, heavier wheat batter) or sweet crepes (made with lighter, sweeter batter), so we got both. Ha. They were awesome. I had a mushroom and cheese one and then we shared a citrousy creme one. Everyone at the tables around us also had two crepe courses, so at least it's pretty common to eat your lunch crepe and then get a dessert crepe. They apparently also drink cider with them, but we couldn't face that at 11 in the morning, so we passed.

The restaurant we went to for dinner the first night was pretty good, but I can't remember the name. It's right on the Seine and the waiter guy was really nice and funny. I had trout. I really like trout.

Dinner the second night was at La Cave de l'Os a Moelle, which was really cool. Get this: it's an all-you-can-eat French restaurant. How cool is that? They've only got three tables set up, so you have to share with whoever else is there. The starters are all set on the table, along with gherkins and other little nibbley bits. On our night, they consisted of a beetroot salad, marinated mushrooms, a pork pate loaf thingy, cauliflower or vinegary cucumbers. The soup and main course are kept heated on a teeny old stove at the back and the desserts and cheese (and there were dozens of both to try) were on a long table at the side. The main course on the night we went was a beef stew, so I couldn't eat it, but damn everything else was good. The soup was pumpkin. We stuffed ourselves, and, though we managed to try a good half-dozen of the dessert offerings, had to pass on the cheese, 'cause then we wouldn't have been able to walk out of there. The bottle of wine was €9 and the dinner was €20 per person. We got off the metro a few stops before ours so that we could walk off some the food.

Dinner the last night was at Chez Papa, in the neighborhood. It's part of a small chain of restaurants, and was packed. They also didn't take reservations, so we had to wait a bit, but they gave us little garlicky bread things to nibble one. I had the fish soup and a salad with warm potatoes. They were both HUGE. I couldn't finish. The others had goat cheese salads and duck in pepper sauce. I tried some of the duck- it tasted meatier than I remember but it was really really good. I think the whole bill was €70 for the four of us and wine, which was way cheap.

There were lots of other restaurants that we had been given recommendations for and didn't have time to try. Dammit. Will have to go back and forget about the sightseeing and just eat.

I love Paris in the springtime...I love Paris in the fall

Tower, schower...look, a bee!

You will all be very happy to know that I actually took my camera to Paris! It even left my bag! Pictures were taken with it! Not by me, no, but still.

I spent four days in Paris a few days ago and it was awesome. I ate so much I frequently couldn't move enough afterwards to order the cheese plate for dessert. If I ever go back, I'm totally eating dessert first. We stayed with friends of the Boy, who live in the 14th arrondissement, near the Tour Montparnasse. They lived right off the Rue Daguerre, which had shops galore. The many epiceries, fromageries, boulangeries and patisseries brought out their wares and set them under umbrellas and canopies along the pedestrianised street. Most days we didn't manage to leave the flat before noon, so mostly we picked up bread, pastries, cheeses and such on the way to the Metro station, then had a picnic at a park somewhere, thus integrating sightseeing with stuffing ourselves.

More details later...