Are You In Seine?

The streets of Paris are beginning to look like new year's in Manila. 

H drove me to the embassy today to get our marriage registration papers. They were due for pickup last Friday but we didn't have time to go so we said we'd do it this week. Well, it's been ten days (12 if you count the weekend) and guess what - it's been resting on a desk the whole time! Apparently someone went on an emergency trip to the Philippines and just left it there to gather dust. They don't know when the person is coming back and there's no one else who could do it. For real?! For real. The consul told me not to expect it next week either.

It bugs me that no one told us we had to post-register at the Philippine Embassy in Paris (not even when H went there with the wedding requirements last May and forked over 75 euros) so therefore we registered late and had to pay an extra 25 euros aside from the 25 euros they charge for the processing. Okay, I'll pay the fine! But when they do things late they're just sorry.

Oooh! A pile of leaves! Reminds me of the embassy.

Word. Up.

I met the ambassador last week at a friend's art exhibit and she gave me her business card. I wish I was the kind of person to pull out cards and just ask for favors, not that I'm sure it would wield results, but you know, just pull some strings and get the rusty gears of bureaucracy turning. But I'm not. But I could, I really could. And I should.

But I can't!

So I'll just have to wait. Just like I have to wait forever to get my last salary from my former employer, whose sticky web of redundantly unnecessary legal procedures is keeping me penniless and living off my good looks until now.

No, honestly, I'm not. Thank you, mom, for giving me emergency money. I love you very much.

You know ma, I went to the Notre Dame yesterday and went inside and remembered how you forced us all to listen to French mass. I even went past the pew we sat on. And the column where I tried to sit my tired ass down while you and Allan checked out the church treasures for an hour and a half.

This is what the Notre Dame looks like now:

They were cleaning the chandeliers.

Three years after my first time inside, this place still leaves me in awe.

But it still bothers me that insensitive visitors just walk anywhere they please 

and talk loudly during mass.

I would still say this even if I wasn't a catholic:

The Notre Dame is still a place of worship, it's not just a museum! 

Take it to Sainte Chapelle. 

When we came last August it was only me, mommy and Allan in the plaza. 
But it was 7am, so what do you expect?

There are a lot of people angling for position here in front for a picture...

Because not a lot of people know the best side of the cathedral is its derriere.

Its flying buttresses are the stuff of gothic legend.

Sending architects into throes of ecstasy.

The South Rose exterior, which features a retelling of the Old Testament in colored glass, 

looks just as spectacular as the inside.

You are looking at the original heart of Paris. No, not the old couple.

This is the tip of Ile de la Cite.
The original settlers built the city here
2,000 years ago.

A temple to Jupiter stood
where the Notre Dame now stands.

It also gave ancient lovers the best views of the sunset over the Seine.

On one side it overlooks the Rive Gauche, or the Left Bank, where great writers, artists and philosophers spent whole afternoons in cafés being all sorts of creative; what with all their drugs and shit. This was the birthplace of bohemianism. If it was the 19th century, and it wasn't so cold, I'd be pitching tent here so their genius could rub off on me.