Americans in Paris

Mom and Dad were in Paris for a few days, so I got to spend some very nice quality time with them! They had to come to the city for a toy show and decided to extend their trip so they could take some time to see Paris...and boy did they take advantage of their time here! They had only had two days of free time and by the time I met up with them, they had already seen the Eiffel Tower, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Louvre, found a restaurant famous for its steamed mussels and crèpes, and figured out the metro system. Wow. Talk about productive.

Yesterday evening, after they spent some time at the Louvre, I met them by the big glass pyramid and sat and talked for a little while. Then, I took them to the Boulangerie de Papa where I get my dessert pastries and croissants and got espressos and sat at an outdoor table and talked some more. My parents commented on the fact that all the cafés and restaurants have outdoor seating facing the street, hehe. Then, we set on a nice long walk to the Boulevard Montparnasse to eat a seafood place that was near my parents' hotel. I don't remember what the restaurant was called, I just remember that the dinner was RIDICULOUS. We ordered a 60-euro (like 90 U.S. dollars) platter of various seafood from their raw bar and ate that for dinner split between the three of us with white wine. Such a giant splurge, but SO worth it. When else would I have gotten the chance to eat an obscene amount of expensive seafood with my parents in one of the most glamorous cities in the world??
We were each given an array of various seafood-eating tools: the shell cracker thing, a scoopy thing that looked kind of like a screwdriver a little bit, a pointy thing that looked like a fondue skewer, and a tiny little needle thing with a plastic handle. I didn't know what that was so I asked the waiter and he giggled a little and then showed me how to use it.

The waiter had placed a little metal bucket next to our table, so we emptied our shells into it. Turns out it wasn't for shells. It was the ice bucket that would hold a hypothetical bottle of chilled white wine that we didn't order so didn't need the ice bucket for. So the waiter who looked eerily similar to Barack Obama came over and was like "oh, I'll take your plates, this is for the wine bottle". Me, being my naturally easily-embarassed, wanting-to-camouflage-in-my-surroundings self turned bright red and said something about how that's embarrassing. But the funny thing is that after that, the waiters were SUPER nice to us and treated us really nicely. Maybe they're so used to having snobby customers with fat wallets that it's nice to have people who don't eat expensive shellfish and caviar all the time in their restaurant. Then, we had after-dinner coffee and then walked to a big street crèpe stand where we each got a crèpe for dessert and then headed back to the Citadines. All in all, a wonderful evening.

Today, Mom and Dad came over for breakfast with myself and Steph and we had a LOVELY breakfast of coffee, baguette, a few different kinds of cheese, and figs. And then because it was beautiful outside, Mom, Dad, and I went walking around and then I dropped them off at the Musée d'Orsay and I took a couple hours to start reading over my class notes for our exams this week. Yes, exams. Bleh. Then, after Civilisation class, we met up and Mom and Dad bought me a GORGEOUS new black dress and then we went out for a 2-hour dinner with Steph.

And then I said "see you later" to Mom and Dad. Tomorrow, they are off to Cologne in Germany by train, and I will be in class. A short but very sweet visit :)