Paris weekend!

Wow! What a great weekend! I wanted to post as soon as possible so as not to forget anything! I decided to go to Paris for the Blogger's picnic put on by the fabulous Katia & KylieMac on Saturday evening. Since I don't exactly make it to Paris all that often I decided to take full advantage of my time there. I arrived at 10am on Saturday and was met by a great friend of mine from my university who is now living in Tours working on her PhD, we had a coffee and then wandered over to a Thai restaurant near Republique where we met up with our old French TA from our university. We had a fantastic lunch there, I had requested some sort of ethnic food for lunch as I don't get it often here in Normandy and that Phad Thai lived up to my expectations!!

We had almost finished our meal and non-stop catching up on eachother's lives when we heard a loud and obnoxious "S'IL VOUS PLAIT" screamed across the restaurant to get the poor waitress' attention. When Miss V. turned around to shoot the uncooth man a dirty look he smiled at her and his pearly whites instantly reminded her of something - "whoa! that's the second time Jean Dujardin is in the same restaurant as me!" she whispered to us. I turned around (this was afterall my first star sighting!) and saw him sitting there talking to 2 other people. I decided to feed his already-too-big ego and go ask for a picture. The movie star stuck chopsticks up his mouth, walrus style for my picture - so classy! His friend said to him, oh that's going to be all over the internet, to which I replied, no no just the American websites, that doesn't bother you right?? haha!
Afterwards by the metro we came up with soooooo many other ways to have talked to him but alas its like a comeback, the good ones always come to you long after the moment has passed. We said goodbye and I ran off to Place d'Italie to check out Aimee's cafe and meet up with the artist formally known as Sam and Leah. It was so much fun to finally meet Aimee and to see her adorable cafe. It is so cool to see someone's dreams come true :-) As we sat there chatting Andie walked in the door with her kids. It was so funny because I've meet up with bloggers before, but always when we had planned on meeting up. When Andie came in my first reaction was to say hi as if it were a long lost friend instead of someone I had never met! But she was great and her kids were so much fun begging Aimee for her homemade chocolate chip cookies.

It was time to go so we went over to the shopping center to pick up the necessities - wine, pringles you know... as well as some maple syrup. The only place I can find big bottles (1 litre!) of maple syrup is in Paris and since I've gotten Mystery Guest and his family addicted to pancakes I decided it would be best to stock up ;-)

We made our way over to the picnic on ile de la cite and had an absolute blast catching up with old friends and meeting new people. We munched on all sorts of goodies including some cherry m&ms which were sent in from the States. (no offence but ick! they taste like chocolate cough syrup!)
After the wind turned a bit chilly we wandered into the Marais for a drink. I left with the lovely Katia and her Muffin Man to stay at their place in the burbs. We crashed and didn't wake up until 11am the next day. I got a text from Sam and met up with her and the others for some bagels but the place was closed so we opted for Starbucks... what a pity ;-) When she had to go to work I met Ambre in the Marais and we went to go hang out on the grass in Place des Voges while waiting for another university friend traveling around Europe to call.
We finally all met up and was joined by another friend, I think it had been about 6 or 7 years at least since we had all seen eachother. Our little catch up (at Starbucks of course!) was too short but great to hear everybody's crazy stories!
I zipped out of there at 7pm and made it on my train with 3 minutes to spare :-) I think I took advantage of my Paris weekend, what do you think??? :-)

Thanks to everyone, especially Katia and KylieMac for organizing such a wonderful picnic! I'll throw some pictures up on facebook soon!