Parle Vous Un Croissant?

I don't speak French, but that doesn't stop me from trying.

We took the bullet train to Paris today, which was not nearly as cool as it sounds. The thing books though, it moves so fast that it creates these weird shockwaves that make your ears pop like every 10 minutes. That was kind of annoying. Paris is a very interesting place, pretty different from London. I haven't seen too much of it yet but it certainly is beautiful. I could write about that aspect of it, but I think my mom's picture post will probably do it better justice. 

There has been no shortage of good food here, we had surprisingly good  Italian food last night. I had some tasty smoked eel and beets as a starter, a blended strawberry champagne aperitif, and a taglierini with little brown shrimp and basil as my main course. It was all fantastic, and I seriously overate. But what else is new?

Today we had tapas for dinner, including but not limited to two types of gazpacho, stuffed squid, green bean salad with pickled peaches and radish, tuna wrapped in ham, and beets. It was all fantastic. Maybe I will go into more detail later.

I had a good time walking around with my siblings today after dinner - we decided to walk around down by the river by our hotel (which is very cool, I'm sure some pictures will be posted) because we saw that was where the french youth were hanging out. They were out in force. It was really cool actually, groups of friends would set out blankets along the river with food and wine playing guitar and singing. It would have been a blast if I had any idea how to speak French. Most of them were singing in English actually, one group were singing Nirvana's "Rape Me" loudly enough for us to hear them across the river. It went something like this:

(in a French accent)

I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE

AAAAAAAH I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE

AAAAAAAH I'M NOT THE ONLY ONEEE

mumble mumble mumble

mumble

rape meee

mumble

I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE

Which was probably a good idea as the group was mostly women and the riverside was moderately sketch. I wish I could have joined in the party, it seemed like so much fun, but it was very much segregated into groups and I doubt any of them really wanted the company of some Americans who don't even know how to order a drink at the park properly. At least I'm trying I guess.

The other thing about Paris is that there are people making out everywhere. And I'm not exaggerating, the only place where I haven't seen people devouring each others faces was the restaurant we ate dinner at and my hotel room. I bet if I looked down at the pub across the street I could see some in ten seconds flat. They all seem to be chanting things now, so maybe they are taking a break from the makeout sesh(s). Not that it bothers me or anything, it's just very different from America. I'm all for it really.

I am not, however, for the NO FUN ALLOWED rules they have at their parks. We went out for a walk to a huge park close to the hotel (the name is escaping me for now, I'll ask my mom and edit it later so it looks like I actually know what I'm talking about) and decided to sit down on a particularly nice piece of grass while Zach strummed some pleasant tunes on his guitar. It was really nice, there were pretty clouds and I swear it was the most comfortable grass I have ever laid on. And I've laid on my fair share of grass. Yet just as we are starting to get comfortable a French policeman comes up to us and says "Sorry no music in the park." This I can kind of understand, I guess they don't want panhandlers crowding up their parks or something. But then he adds "Oh and you can't sit on the grass either, you'll have to leave". Why do you have huge fields of comfortable grass if we're not allowed to sit on them? WTF homme? That was really lame.

All in all, things are pretty great though. I really want to cook... These meals have been pretty inspirational. It's going to be weird coming back home. But at least I'll be of "mayor edad en los eeuu" when I get back. I've got plans. Big plans.