Bonjour Blagueies! I have just returned from a wonderful reunion weekend in Paris! Alex and I flew out on Thursday, and we had one connecting flight in Dusseldorf, Germany. Apparently the weather in Dusseldorf was dicey (fog ya know), so our flight from Prague was delayed, and we actually had to run through the airport to catch our connecting flight to Paris! I found this strangle exhilarating and couldn't stop giggling. But we did make in onto the plane! And we arrived, albeit a bit late, in Paris in time to meet Annemarie and Breanna for a late lunch. Breanna arrived a day earlier, and had already walked the entire geography of the left bank by the time we arrived! Haha.
Annemarie and I were reunited at last! We had delicious salads - by far the healthiest meal of the whole weekend. Afterwords, we walked quite a ways through the center of the city past Notre Dam and other large and imposing historic buildings.
Notre Dam remains a constant on the Paris landscape, and we even had some friendly American tourists take a group picture of us ladies. (Please see Annemarie Everett's blog!)
We walked across the River Seine and into Annemarie's neighborhood. She lives in the Latin Quarter, which was on the opposite side of the River from our hotel. We had a long, lovely walk over to Annemarie's apartment, where we relaxed for a bit and made some plans for the weekend while sipping a lovely Bordeaux purchased from the corner wine store. ;) Keepin' it classy!
After some lovely wine and catching up, the four of us walked over to Rue Mouffetard which is lined with small food vendors and restaurants. For dinner, we had savory crepes and let our stomachs recover for about 10 minutes before getting rose-shaped gelato. Twas quite delicious! I had coffee and stracciatella flavor - both of which I would highly recommend! After all this traveling and walking and eating, we were all quite exhausted and headed home to rest up for the next day.
The next morning Alex, Breanna, and I walked by this funny looking statue on our way to Annemarie's neighborhood to start the day! She took us to her favorite neighborhood baker (a very friendly curly-haired Frenchman) for pastries. I had the classic Pains au Chocolate, which was not the healthiest breakfast, but quite delicious.
We then walked through Luxembourg Gardens to Annemarie's school, and visited her favorite cafe for coffee. We stopped in a couple churches (can't remember the names... bad Julia) as well, and attempted to find all the best bakeries and pastry shops in the area.
The most amazing place we went to was Laduree - very famous for their delicious macaroons! We took these macaroons and other goodies to the Eiffel Tower, and ate them with a wonderful view of one of the world's most famous landmarks!
French macaroons are not at all like the gross coconut balls we get in the States! No no. The are delicious cookies with ganache in the middle. (For a technical definition of ganache, please see Annemarie Everett.) Actually, the taking of the above picture almost led directly to the theft of my camera. Two gypsy girls came up and were begging us for food and grabbing at our macaroons, and we're thinking, "For what we paid for these macaroons? You're gonna have to pry them from my cold dead hands." And as they start reaching for our food, I see one of them go for my camera! The nerve! So I snatched it up and said, "I saw you try to steal my camera!" Of course she denied it, but I was so angry that I just grabbed up all my things and said, "I saw what you tried to do, and we're not giving you any of our food!" And we made a scene and stormed away. If shame was their only punishment, I am satisfied. 
(We missed you Marissa!!!)
We took oodles of pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower, we took the Metro (finallyyyy my legs were killing me) to the Mosque in Paris for mint tea and bakhlava. And then it was off to the Louvre!
We did just a quick highlights tour of the Louvre, because we were all pretty zonked at this point. I'm pretty sure we walked through most of the city - or at least from one famous pastry shop to another.
After The Louvre, we found a great sushi boat place and had a quite tasty and economical dinner! By that night, we were dead to the world and I thought my feet would never recover. So we all passed out in our hotel room and tried to get as much sleep as humanly possible. 
The next day we met again for guess what - more walking! We saw some more amazing buildings, including the Garnier Opera (above), the Madeleine, and the Centre Pompidou. We were waiting in line for some falafel (below) when we decided that we would rather pay twice as much to sit down inside. And it was worth it! Easily the best falafel I've ever had - although I have to say I'm not the world's most knowledgeable falafel consumer, I was reassured of its goodness by Alex, who has much more sophisticated falafel knowledge.
After falafel, we returned to the amazing Laduree for tea and pastries. We spent a solid chunk of the afternoon being very girly over expensive tea and relishing the Parisian experience. Apparently I was having too much fun, because Parisians like to give me the stink-eye of disapproval when I laugh loudly. Who needs 'em? Then we had a lovely Middle-Eastern cuisine dinner in the neighborhood and then trekked over to the Eiffel Tower one last time to drink wine and watch the lights show!
Aaaahhh, isn't she beautiful all lit up at night? :) We saw a few exuberant ex-pats in Halloween garb, but definitely not the all-out costumes that I was used to! At least I didn't injure myself this year... Anyway, we crashed again Saturday night after a long day, and met Annemarie this morning for breakfast before heading back to our respective host countries. It was so nice to be reunited with old friends and share this experience with them. There was lots of hugs and catching up over food. I should probably mention at this point that I was in a constant state of fullness the entire trip. (Wish this was an exaggeration...) But other than feeling like I had to waddle back to Prague, it was a truly great weekend!
Next weekend: Krakow, Poland. NOT known for its delicious pastries, so I should be safe!
This is Julia Miller reporting for the Blague!
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