Paris

Oh, the lovely Paris. My husband was kind enough to grant my wish of going to visit a very dear friend of mine and her husband, Leslie and Dave Arnold, who live in Paris. Leslie joined Dave to live in Paris one year ago when they were married and I knew if I wanted to make this trip, it had to be before baby #2 came, even if it meant being 7 months pregnant. It was such a wonderful trip, spending quality time with a great friend of 12 years and touring this charming city that was only something I had seen in movies. I must include several pictures for my own benefit, so enjoy what you see until you get tired of me and that's just fine.

A few pleasant surprises about Paris:

1) It is INCREDIBLY clean. Trash cans readily available on every street and they never fill up.

2) Clean drinking water readily available, even on the streets! They have nice little statues that you would think are just pretty fountains with a thin stream of running water. It is actually for you to fill up your water bottle and it tastes great! Those alone must have saved us 50 euros!

3) No bumbs, no crime. Everyone out and about that city is respectable seeming. I wouldn't have been scared wandering a strange street at midnight by myself, everything is just charming.

4) The city is not very big. I didn't realize how close in proximity all of the fabulous sites were. Dave took me on a little vespa tour of the city my first night and I think I saw it all in less than 25 minutes and we were back at his front door. I had no clue.

5) Everything about this city is charming. I guess that wasn't so much a surprise. The Arc de Triomphe. This is where I took the bus into from the airport. Les was here to meet me as they live only a few blocks away from this gargantuan landmark.

Les and me after my first marvelous dinner in Paris. Yes, all the streets are this cute.

That dashing cute couple, Dave and Les.

Notredame at night, so beautiful.

A woman I tutor frequents Paris and suggested I must go to this place for ice cream. It is over on the little island Saint-Louis. Dave was able to translate all the flavors but the one I wanted. It looked like "gold medal ribbon" from baskin robbins and I said I wanted it anyway. This pic was before I took the venomous bite I will never forget. Immediately upon swallowing my throat was in flames. All I could do was run to get a bite of Leslie's to tame the sting as I blurted out "this has liquor in it!" Well, we decided to google this flavor when we got home and it was a type of brandy swirled with prunes! Could you imagine anything more gross!!!?? Trust me.

A lamborghini with Saudi plates, just chillin on the side of the road.

View off of Dave and Les's balcony
We took a little ride on the metro just outside the city to St. Germain and enjoyed an afternoon of lots of cute little streets and shops and plenty of beautiful things to look at.

There's that lovely couple again...

Too many beautiful things in Paris, even down to my cone of gelato being shaped into a flower

Le Louvre. It was just so freakin big, this picture does not do justice, a panorama shot would be much cooler. DaVinci Code was on TV the day after I came home, it was definitely kind of fun to watch since I'd been there 2 days prior.

Okay, totally lame pic of the Mona Lisa. I have a new camera with a different software and I can't seem to find the "crop" feature to get this dude's head out of the way. What's funny is, does anyone really care that I have a picture of the Mona Lisa? Frankly, I don't really care but for some reason I felt pressure to take a picture when there were 100 gazillion people pushing and shoving to get their stupid picture of it. I stood there wondering what in the world ever made this the most famous painting when as I looked around the room there were so many beautiful paintings 10 times the size and 10 times more beautiful, I don't get it. Art history majors - any thoughts??
My fabulous tour guide ;) I think we had just as much fun people watching in this place as we did "art watching" ;)

I thought this pic was pretty sweet. It was actually taken through a glass window from inside the louvre but you can't even tell.

Hotel de Ville, Paris' city hall.

side shot of Notredame in the daytime.

Doors at the entrance of Notredame. All of the intricate carvings and fine details throughout the design of this chapel are just so unbelievable on both inside and out.

This gives a decent view of the inside of chapel but I could have done a whole post dedicated only to the massive windows of the incredibly beautiful stained glass.

Beauty in Paris definitely goes beyond the architecture...

An author was doing a poetry reading of some sort in front of this favorite bookstore of Dave and Leslie's "Shakespeare & Company" - but what I want you to notice is this FABULOUS fountain with pure drinking water, my bottle got some great use! This is what I was talking about at the beginning of my post
Routine had it that Dave would call to find our whereabouts at the end of a work day and come cruising up on the scooter to meet us for a lovely dinner. Here we dined in a hip little crepery to enjoy some fabulous crepes.
Sacre Coeur was definitely my favorite place to visit. It is located on the highest point of the city and is a beautiful Roman Catholic church or "basilica" dedicated to "the sacred heart of Jesus". When we walked around inside there happened to be a religious session going on with people in attendance. Of course it was all in French but it made it a fun experience all the more.

It was fun to walk right around sacre coeur. It was a cool little atmosphere with this place called "painters square" where all these painters had their artwork on display and you essentially walk around this big square to view and buy the art.
How cute is this little truck? It was visibly clear by the textures that this pic was hand painted.

This was in the Jewish district. Leslie had been telling me we had to go get fallafels at this particular place and they were spectacular! We enjoyed them on a bench in a park and I now wish I lived there just so I could come order from this place every single day for lunch!

The bikes in Paris are free to use, you just have to slide in your bank card when checking it out (so they can charge you if it doesn't get returned) and then there are all these places around the city you can check out and return bikes. Easy access and so much fun, we biked over to the eiffel along the river and I took lots of video footage. I cannot show the video footage b/c you would think I was endangering my unborn child. I promise I wasn't, I learned the art of dodging scooters on a bike in Taiwan and I never had one accident.
Seine River
Goodbye to lovely Paris, thanks for treating me well and thanks to the Arnolds for being the host extraordinares!

Holla for Challah!

I belong to a gourmet club that gets together every other month for a gourmet feast and socializing. The intent behind g.c. is for people to learn how to cook/host/entertain for special and not so special occasions. Our group is very casual compared to some, we mostly like to get together to catch up with everyone's crazy lives. It was Courtney and my turn to host this month so we did a "breakfast at tiffanys" theme on Saturday morning. It was a lot of fun and we had fantastic food if I do say so myself. I wanted to share my favorite which was Challah french toast and buttermilk syrup....mm..mm..good! Challah (Hallah) is a Jewish bread that is thick, braided, and divine. Here is a pic of the bread as is, but the french toast is a recipe masterpiece. You can find it in a number of places but we got ours at Leslie's bakery in Holladay, highly recommended.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/challah-french-toast-recipe/index.html

They suggest a different syrup but the buttermilk syrup we used which is delish can be found here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Buttermilk-Syrup/Detail.aspx

Courtney was in the kitchen just working away like a madwoman

......as I was busy getting the table set

Well apparently Jen sensed my disappointment that our 2 most Audrey Hepburn look-alikish friends Dree and Mikell were not able to make it, so she brought me my own full size Audrey to make me feel better, she added a great touch ;)

Thanks for a great time girls!

So frank and innocent...

Well I knew the day was coming. You hear those stories and get the e-mail forwards of kids making embarrassing comments in public and you are found helpless in trying to delete what was really just said. There are those comments that are made at the cost of your own pride, and those that so viciously attack strangers though the intent is purely innocent. I experienced both in the last week. While picking up groceries a few days ago, my tummy was feeling a little unsettled. And well, I accidentally let one go. Or maybe not so accidentally I don't remember. Anyhow, Kimball's acute hearing did not bow in my favor. Next I knew, he let out a big darling smile while giggling, "mommy farted, ewww". I couldn't help but kind of laugh too because he was just so cute when he said it and who really cares about the one lady that might have heard, she was probably laughing too. But he really embarrassed me today at the checkout line when he had to go and attack a stranger. The man was definitely not just large, but extremely large. Unfortunately Kimball had to notice right as he was ringing up my items and just candidly stated, "this man has big tummy mommy" --wow!! What do you do in those instances? We both clearly heard it and we both ignored it. How awkward, I just didn't want to make it more awkward for the man by acknowledging the comment and reprimanding Kimball so I pretended it never happened and then tried to explain to Kimo in the parking lot that some things are not nice to say. Poor man. Feel free to share your own embarrassing "toddler funnies"

Davis: a charming rarity

With a population of 65,000 residents and an additional 30,000 UCD students, Davis still pulls off a seeming small town atmosphere. The Davis theme song should come straight from "Cheers" - our favorite 80's sitcom. It's all so familiar and it just feels like home. Living in a predominately conservative population (myself included) I often tend to forget about my good time granola roots. Davis is a university-oriented city with a progressive, vigorous community noted for its small-town style, energy conservation, environmental programs, social innovation, parks, preservation of trees, red double-decker London buses, bicycles, and the quality of its educational institutions. Davis residents boast the highest level of education in the state of California with more than 80% of Davis' adult population completing a minimum of one year of college training and more than 60% having attained at least a four-year college degree. And let's just say that when all my friend's parents asked where I was going to college, a state university was anything but impressive or worthy of conversation. But I bet I had a whole hell of a lot more fun than they did! ha ha. I find all this recent emphasis of "going green" funny because, Davis went green long before I was born. In fact, I even remember as a kid people watching us in disgust as we'd pack our car with paper/plastic grocery bags when they'd walk away hauling their canvas totes, though I really didn't get it at the time. Unique to it's own, Davis features more than 50 miles of bicycle paths and more bicycles per capita than any other city in the nation. It's a Northern California Mecca for artists of many media, featuring dozens of public and private galleries all within a few blocks of this quaint and homey town. No matter what direction you turn, the stroke of a local artist is evident. Truly a rarity, Davis is just Davis and there is nowhere else like it. I have received a few of these email forwards in the last year and I thought it would be fun to share. It's just a good summation of those crazy Davis idiosyncrasies… and a place I'm proud to call my hometown

…your family owns more bicycles than there are people in your family.
...the highest crime rate is bike theft
...you have a whole section of town devoted to Lord of the Rings...you don't find it odd that we have a whole section of town devoted to Lord of the Rings

...THE place to hang out, is Borders

...you find nothing odd that there's a whole grocery store that caters to vegetarians and vegans.
...you see a vegetarian homeless person
...you see a BUSH04 sticker and realize there are other political parties.
...your neighbor's house sold for a million dollars when, in any other town, it'd be worth four hundred thousand.
...your water is heated by solar panels.
...you have picnic in the park and Dinner at the Dump.
...you know of people getting a noise violation for snoring
...you know 5 different routes to the same location because all the roads in Davis are connected
... a city ordinance was passed to dim the streetlights so that you could see the stars better at night.
...all directions anywhere start with "you know where Baskin Robbins is?"
...we have 2 holidays over spring break: Easter, and Picnic Day
...you always buy Mother's Day gifts at the Whole Earth Festival.
...in high school you bought your clothes at the Salvation Army and were cool for it

...and you were even cooler if you bought them on Telegraph Street in Berkeley (consignment shops of course)
...you get pissed off in a line of 3 cars.
...Gay Pride Day gets proclamations from the City Council and County Board of Supervisors and a straight city council member shows up in drag.
...anything, and everything you say, can be twisted into something community leaders will consider to be offensive to any group imaginable in the entire human gene pool, including but not limited to one-armed bald eastern European midgets who talk with lisps. The city council would then instill courses into the curriculum to raise awareness that such groups even exist, and remove anything valuable from the curriculum to make place for the new courses.

...you didn't bat an eye when the Holmes Jr. High mascot was changed from "minutemen" to "minutemen & minutewomen" - much more p.c. of course
...any kind of a controversial issue instantaneously spawns town-wide panic, protests, marches, emergency city council meetings, candle light vigils, TV news stories, apocalyptic hysteria and other bullshit, all to establish some moronic politically correct status quo for something that never was a real issue in the first place
...nobody thinks its strange that a 60,000 population town is a "nuclear free zone."
...a corporate record business (Tower) goes out of business before a private business (Armadillo).
...the city council votes in favor of and builds a tunnel for toads.
...the postmaster's father builds a town for and writes a book about the tunnel for toads.
...you get really nervous when someone goes to put a plastic/aluminum bottle in the trash can.
...everyone you know got their braces from Dr. Chin
...Wednesday night means Farmers Market
...the police let the homeless guy keep a garden down by the railroad tracks.
...You don't know how to get to your friend's house by car because you have only ever gone by bike
...you call it Murder Burger [note: The name was changed to Redrum Burger because some folks thought that "Murder Burger" seemed too violent -- yes we have city council debates about such things!]
...you understand the archaeological significance of potholes
......you see nothing unusual about a Nutcracker whose cast of characters includes teddy bears, gnomes, country line dancers, swing dancers, bugs, bees, and insects.
...You met a Republican once. It happened in Sacramento. You screamed and ran away

....You think you're better than people from Woodland

....You have at least one friend with dreadlocks

....You have been pulled over by a police officer... while riding your bike

....It has a population of over 60,000, but you still consider Davis a small town

....You say you're from Sacramento because no one outside of Northern California has heard of Davis. Then you correct yourself, because you can't stand the thought of people thinking you're from Sacramento

....You will forever be part of the 'bubble' no matter where you end up.