First day of the new decade: 2010

Bon jour mes amis!

Wow...we have had such an amazing whirl wind Paris trip, Noel, I, Lori, Heidi and Andy all living in the 10th arrondisment. Noel and I got engaged under the Eiffel Tour on Tuesday night the 29th. Heidi and Noel had there bday on Wednesday the 30th, and we had a great time (Heidi having an amazing private French lunch and Noel up in the Eiffel Tower and Musee Rodin) then dinner at Au Pied de Cochon and a cabaret show at the LIDO on the Champs de l'Essey. The LIDO was an amazing extravaganza of topless dancing girls, and boys, and ice skating and fountain dancing, and circus dancing with a horse, and acrobatics, and Bollywood dancing, and Cabaret the musical and so much more!!! Ooo la la!!! http://www.lido.fr/us/cabaret-paris.html

So a little mixed up, but let me tell ya a little about our first day of the New Year, of the new decade...the teens...in Paris. Tonight we had a lovely dinner party in our apartment with Jo and Wes of Seattle/Vallarta (friends of Eric via Noe) and Chip and Gordon (friends of Noel from Chicago). The 9 of us had an lovely New Years dinner of roasted chicken from the 7th Arr. (on Rue Clair, by the Eiffel Tower), veggie and salami pasta, different french cheeses, and many bottles of Beaujolais Noveau wine. Before our 4 hour dinner in our flat, we came from a couple hours in Pere La Chaise cemetary just northeast of us. It's an amazing historic cemetary from the 1700's up till today, with huge museliums and crypts. We saw the plots of Edith Piaf, Gertrude Stein, Max Ernst, Oscar Wilde, Chopin, and Jim Morrison of the Doors. We missed Ingis, Delacroix, and other artist because the sun was setting and we had to leave. Well...Lori, Noel, Wes and Jo went one way and met at a cafe outside, but Andy, Heidi and I went the other direction (this place is HUGE!), and ended up getting locked inside the cemetary at 5:45 when the sun sat...and hiked down to the main entrance only to find it was locked. Soon 5 Texans, 2 Italians and a Frenchman met up with us, and for almost an hour we were trapped in the cemetary. It was dark and spooky. The Frenchman called the police and the Texan straight guy say "let's scale the 10 foot wall and save the women". Finally a security guard came and saved us, but before then, I was dropping hints to the Texan girls that this is how horror movies start out...that we were all going to die one by one... HILARIOUS!

Earlier in the day, we all woke up at 1:30pm...shocked...kinda...

We had got home on New Years Eve from partying with Jo and Wes in their hotel by the Eiffel Tour at 5am! YIKES! We had gone to their hotel at 9pm and had cheese and champagne and partied in their room until 11pm then schlept to the Eiffel Tower with all the crowds with Vueve Clicquot in hand. What an amazing experience at the base of the Eiffel Tower it was, all shimmering and bright and with the lighthouse strobe above. How fun it was! Then back to their hotel room to have some Origina and vodka drinks. Chip and Gordon showed up at 1am with a guy they had met at the Trocadero (across the Seign from the tour), and we partied till 2 and decided to all venture out to find a bar open. As we walked we were all kinda over it and found out the Metro subway stopped at 2am...suddenly it was 3am and were were screwed...no metro and no taxis to be found, and we were on the other side of town. We all started walking home hoping to find a taxi. It was 20F degrees, and we found one taxi but they were going to charge us 50 Euros ($75 US) and we needed 2 taxis...so we kept walking. Chip and Gordon walked off to the Marais and the 5 of us kept walking home for 2 hours!!! We got home at 5am and were all DEAD TIRED! Yikes!

Earlier in the day Noel and I went up the Tour Eiffel since we had reserved 9:30am reserved tix. It's such a fabulous experience to go up in the tour! What history, what fun. The visibility wasn't great, but still cool. After we that we went to my favorite place Musee D'Orsay. Love Manet! Monet! Degas! Latrek! Cezzane! After the museum we met everyone near that in Rue Claire which is a beautiful street for shops and restuarants, incredible boulangeries, boucheries, fromageries, cafes, etc. We grocery shopped for the New Year dinner and ate cheese and has coffee. We met some great peeps. This lady in the cheese shop was so cute she ended up selling us on a magnum of champagne along with all the cheese. LOVE PARIS!

The day before? Ok, it's now 1am in the morning and I have too much wine, but...let's see...

We went to Musee Rodin which I love, and now has a Matisse show too. We also went to a couple chocolatiers that Noel was in heaven with. The French ladies were so friggen cute. Parisiens are so lovely.