Early January

H and I had quite a busy week after New Year's. 

Princesse Mia, looking cute while throwing a hissy fit :)

After seeing the Montels across the Seine (who couldn't party hardy because they just had a baby), I took H with me to hear Epiphany mass at the 8th Arrondissement. 

St. Joseph's Church is under a residential building so it could be tricky to spot. But on Sunday there are a lot of Filipinos going to the church - so if you want to go, just follow the trail of Pinoys on Ave Hoche.

St. Joe's is just a stone's throw away from the Arc de Triomphe.
Not that we recommend lobbing stones at national monuments here.

After the mass we finally, finally, FINALLY had our dinner-and-a-movie date. 

No more watching Gremlins at home for this couple! 

We saw the Harry Potter movie at the nearby UGC on Champs Elysees. The audio sucked eggs, and H left during the last ten minutes of the movie to complain about the sound and when he came back all he saw was the last shot before it went black. Not that he missed much. It was too bad because I wanted to join their movie club - 20 euros, watch-all-you-can for a month! Great on paper, annoying caveat.

The highlight of the evening was dinner. We walked for almost an hour looking for an Indian resto he attested to - which, for all I know, could be imaginary. I wanted pizza, to be honest, but the line at Pizza Pino was dishearteningly long; so we "settled for" an Italian resto next to the cinema. The clientele for the night was 90% Italian tourists ordering French food. Then came a gang of women with orange tans, solid black lashes and implants popping out of their bustiers (a Jersey thing?); accompanied by one oily but muscular stud. I swear, I saw my first porn stars.

A few days later we went to a galette des rois party where I practiced my French and got crowned! Not for my improved speaking skills, but because of the galette des rois. The rules of the cake stipulated that I distribute the slices, and by luck H got the "feve" or the little figure in the almond galette. This made him ad hoc king, and me, de facto queen.

Royal Couple

A few days later we went west, near Versailles, so he could race a Ferrari and ride shotgun with a true blue French racecar hero. It was a parting gift from his previous job. 

He showed me the place where he used to work, which was nearby. (It also occupies a page or two in the book Paris Vu Du Ciel.) Then we had lunch at Montigny-le-Bretonneux, in one of the Yveline's best kept secrets.

To kill time we went to Galignani, the first English book shop in Europe, where I incidentally found a contemporary Man Asian Literary Prize-winning Filipino novel... in the Chinese section. (I left my copy in Manila; was on chapter 4, I think.) I also got two paperbacks:

My new bedside companions. 

They're booty from a wager between Mrs. Dominican College (me) vs. Mr. Cambridge (him), who thought he knew the past tense of a certain word in English.

Then we met up with H's close friend from his peach fuzz days in Oz. We had tea with her at Palais Royal and she gave us an album of the wedding as a gift (she took the picture on the banner of this blog!). My brother and cousin kept taking pictures of her at the wedding because she looks like Filipina film legend Cherie Gil. But she's a real cherie, a true sweetheart.

Picture by H

Next day, a reunion with Jay, a close friend from Manila. He was supposed to be at the wedding too, but a busy career in a booming network held him back. This I used as leverage to get him to answer for breakfast at Ladurée.

Where the macarons are legendary... and fashionable.

For the sake of captioning: This is an egg.

And I went home with a box of St. Honoré. It was liberated before this picture.

It was a surprisingly clear day and we walked all the way to Tuileries to go inside Musee de l'Orangerie which houses Claude Monet's Nympheas...

Even the sky looked like a Monet that day :)

 

One wall of The Nympheas, which occupy two rooms on the upper floor of the museum.

Photo nabbed from Jazel.

And featured a Heinrich Kuhn retrospective. This man has haunted me since Photography 101 at university. I had finally come face to face with the photograph I'd been trying to capture with my inept Nikon F10 and pathetic dark room skills for 20 years: Verres et Carafe. I got sassed for taking a picture, but my skills at looking dumb saved the day!

by Heinrich Kuhn

The following day I worked until evening (to make up for all the free time I need to see friends in the next couple of days) and an unidentified cat hopped inside the house. Chasing the cat around was the highlight of my day.

On Wednesday I met up with Jay O and Jazel at Alma Marceau for the "Yearend" talk and then went to Trocadero so they can catch up with a friend who runs a hotel at Benjamin Franklin. It was quite nostalgic because I was with Jay O and other close friends the first time I saw the Eiffel Tower, aaand I was single at the time. 

Whether from the train or from the streets of the 16th Arr., the sight of it still makes me quiver. I wonder if I would pine for her if H and I ever decided to leave Paris.

Filched from Jay's Facebook. Pahiram, Jay!

After that, H picked us up for champagne and chit-chat at "Cherie's" party at Montmartre. A wonderful evening with a roomful of citizens of the world.