la vie à paris: petit frère à paris!

As I mentioned last week, my 19 year-old bro Jess came to visit me this past weekend! He was here for four days and I surprised him with a 2-day excursion to Amsterdam!!!!!!!!!! Remember when I said I had some secret plans a brewin? Violà! We had a jam-packed four days of sightseeing and me once more playing tour guide in both cities.

{louvre}

Our first day in Paris, Thursday, Jess hadn't gotten any sleep on his way over, but I made him stick out the day in anticipation of our trip early the next morning. At this point, he still didn't know my sneaky mcsneakster plan. Muahaha. We began our day with brunch at La Salle à Manger on Rue Mouffetard, which has an excellent array of breakfast goodies and tartines and an oh so yummy looking array of bread spreads. Highly recommended for a lovely brunch in a fresh, young restaurant. More info on the place here.

{shakespeare and co.}

The rest of the day consisted of walking the Latin Quarter, stopping at Shakespeare and Co. and Notre Dame, and through the 1st to the Louvre, Tuileries, Place de la Concorde and all the way up the Champs-Elysées to the Arc du Triomphe, then onto the mètro to the Eiffel Tour, followed by a traditional French dinner at a classic and freaking delicious restaurant. (I had a chèvre chaud salad with little puff pastries filled with warm goat cheese, and Jess had a dish called a parmentier, which consisted of shredded duck meat served in a personal casserole dish with mashed potatoes and bread crumbs baked on top. The smell was beyond amazing.)

{amsterdam}

The next day we woke up super duper duper early to catch our 6:35 am train to Amster. Jess was SO SURPRISED when I told him at 3 am when he got up to use the bathroom where we were going in a couple hours. The whole trip was totally painless and we stayed at the Flying Pig Uptown again! The weather was perfect and we spent most of our time wandering the streets, discovering cool vintage and record shops, stopping by markets and taking lots of pictures of bikes. We did get touristy and took the Heineken brewery tour, waited on an hour-long line for Anne Frank house and walked every inch of the Redlight District at night. We also ate some really stellar food, including poffertjes (bite-sized pancakes), Australia ice cream (which I had twice and sampled a total of 4 flavors--Belgian chocolate, mocha, cinnamon and speculoos), FEBO (possibly the coolest, grossest concept in food), and Thai food at Bird in Amsterdam's Chinatown, which was the BEST Asian meal I've had in a long time (considering the amount of Asian cuisine I eat in Paris, aka none- ha!). We also met up with my lover Barbara Schustaaaa again, who had about seven hours of downtime before her boyfriend Austin and his boys from London arrived. So what did we do after walking around, hanging out and eating dinner? Bought nail polish at H&M, went back to the Flying Pig and painted our nails obvi! Barb got shiney purple and I got turquoise, in case you were wondering. Anyway, that was Amster for ya. A WHOLE different and better world in the sunshine and warmth.

{outside amsterdam train station}

We got back to Paris on Saturday night early enough to make it out to Coolin, an Irish pub by Odéon, for Danielle's 21st birthday! They were blasting oldies and we were all getting our grooves on like woah. A few of my guy friends were there and had some pleasant bonding time with the brosky, which was perfect. Definitely one of the best dancing nights I've had in Paris!

The next day we overslept a bit and headed straight to the Marais for L'as du Fallafel. The miraculously nearly non-existent line meant that we got our food quickly and were able to walk around the neighborhood for a bit. Next, we met up with my friend Cody to finally tour Père Lachaise and pay our respects to the Lizard King, Jim Morrison. Couldn't yet find my neon pink lizard to leave for him but I will and I wil return. Especially because I had to leave the boys for a couple hours to go home and register for classes and missed seeing Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf and others famous peeps. I met up with Jess and Cody after registration in Montmartre, where we walked a round a bunch and visited Espace Dalí, which seemed to be Jess' favorite activity of the weekend, by far. Afterwards, my friend Greg joined the three of us for the fondu/baby bottle experience at Refuge des Fondus (DUH), followed by mojitos at a local bar where I met some adorably sweet French girls visiting Paris for the weekend who wanted nothing more than to practice their English and come to America--we spoke mostly French anyway!

Really glad he came to visit and that we could share a bit of college traveling experience together! Wooot!

Paix, Amour et Néon,
Marisa