February 1st Friday

We welcomed in the new month by waking up around 11:00. I had some chocolate cereal for breakfast. I do enjoy being able to eat chocolate with breakfast. It’s such a happy way to go.

We played on our computers and read for a while around the house. Lunch consisted of some leftover quiche and the ham from M. Choupin. I also went to buy a baguette.

Karuna eventually came back from the party that she’d gone to outside of Paris the night before. She was able to get cleaned up in time to go out to another party in the evening. I went with her. We ended up in the northwestern part of Paris at her Norwegian friends’ apartment. It was at the very top of the apartment building. We had to walk up many flights of stairs. It meant that the apartment had an amazing view but it was still just too many stairs for me. The friends were lots of fun. Their apartment was shaped in a very interesting fashion. They had a doorway that was very skinny on the bottom and got bigger at the top. It was a cutout of a shape with five sides but did not look at all like a pentagon. Of course we had to go pose and wedge ourselves into different shapes in the doorway to take pictures.

We’d arrived early to the party since we had other places to go to afterward. More people started showing up looking just as winded as I had been. Most of the people there had gone to the American University of Paris. It was fun to talk to them.

Karuna and I had to leave and each go to meet separate groups. She had a dinner party to go to. I had gotten a call from Heidi to go meet her near the Oberkampf station. I took the metro that way and ended up having to walk a little bit to the meeting place. I entered the Café Charbon and fought through the crowd at the bar toward the back. I met up with Heidi, Amanda, Leonel, and Heidi’s boyfriend Bastian. The bar/restaurant was very interesting. It had a sort of mining theme to the decorations. The ceiling was fairly high and made it feel more open. We stuck around for a little but decided it was too crowded. We left and tried the place across the street. This one was called Café Justine. It was smaller but not as crowded. I was happy to see that the drinks here were much cheaper than the other bars I had seen.

I tried a glass of white wine. It was one of the cheaper wines but I enjoyed it. I will have to go back to Café Justine during the day to try a meal. Some people were eating dinner in the restaurant portion and the dinners looked amazing.

The bar had a fun little feature. There was a small bucket attached to the wall behind the bar. It said that whoever could put a €1 coin into it would win a “free” drink. We each tried with a coin. I almost broke the glasses that were sitting just to the right of it. Then Amanda got smart and started throwing ten cent pieces instead of a Euro. It was pretty silly.

Amanda also saw a container of suckers behind the bar. It had one long green stick with a red sucker on each end. Folded over, it looked like a couple of cherries. It was a fun idea. We had some fun joking around and taking pictures of the sucker. The bartenders wanted to get in on the fun. The two men each put one of the suckers in their mouths for a picture. They turned out to be really fun.

Karuna was able to join us after a while and showed up at the bar. Around this time though, I had to slip out to the crêpe/sandwich place next door. I wasn’t very hungry but knew that I needed to have dinner at some point. I ended up getting a panini with steak, cheddar, tomato, and sauces on it. It tasted pretty good and did a good job of filling me up. The strange thing about paninis here is that they take the beautiful bread, fill it, and then press it flat in a grill. It makes it hot and crispy but also very two-dimensional. It suddenly looks like a lot less food.

I went back over to the bar where Karuna and Amanda were having hot wine. After trying theirs I had to get a glass for myself. It had orange in it and came with sugar to sweeten it. It was very very good.

The only other event of the evening was that a few of the men at the bar started talking to me. A few guys were talking to us and joking that they owned the place and we were allowed back at any time. Then later, a man wanted to try his English with me. I usually try to speak in French to the French, but since he wanted to practice English I indulged him. He seemed really excited about the fact that he was speaking in English. He probably doesn’t get to use it much. The man was there with a woman and when she came back from the restroom she looked at me as if to say “And who are you?”

We ended up missing the last metro. Karuna, Amanda, and I got in a taxi and headed off. Originally, Amanda and I were going to head to the club called Cabaret to meet Katharina but then we were headed to Bataclan to meet Carlos. The taxi dropped us off and took Karuna back to the apartment. The front of the club was very crowded and there was a line to get in. Some people in the group tried to get us in through the line for people “on the list” which of course didn’t work. While at the front of it the bouncers said that my friend was too drunk to go in. It was late and I didn’t want to go that much anyway so I told the others that we’d see them later.

Amanda and I tried to catch a taxi. All of them were full. It felt like it was near freezing outside. I was wearing a T-shirt and my long sweater. We tried for ten to fifteen minutes to catch a cab. I finally called Karuna to ask if she knew where I could catch one that was empty. She advised me to go to the Place de la République to stand in the taxi lines. We were only five minutes from there so we walked over. We only had to wait behind two people to get a cab. I was so happy when we finally got in the interior. I told the driver to go to the Musée d’Orsay. It only cost €6.90. I was very happy with that.

Amanda and I finally made it to the apartment to discover that Karuna and Adrienne were still awake. Adrienne was talking to her family online. Amanda went and curled up in bed while the rest of us got ready. Adrienne was on her fold out bed. I climbed in the middle of the big bed while Karuna got in the side toward the wall. We got to bed after 4 or so. Before bed I emailed M. Choupin to tell him that we would be busy on Saturday but would be free on Sunday to talk about staying in the apartment.