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One thing I adore about French culture is that a lot of the men can cook. And not just, like, throwing things together, though they can do that too. THEY CUISINE. Nico is no exception. Even 10-minute pizza renders a dish most exquisite.
Or a homemade masala with hard-boiled eggs, which goes from looking like this:
To this, which is messy but indescribably good:
UGHH. SO GOOD. One day he told me his best and favorite dish is canard magret, a duck dish he learned from watching its preparation throughout his childhood. I informed him in my uniquely Jenna manner of snobbery that I don't care for duck, since I had it one time and I didn't like it (thanks, Chinatown). He smiled and said, "But you have not had duck this way." His friend Adrien looked at me and nodded knowingly, saying only, "It's good." So last week I opened my mind and let the chef go to work.
With a sweet-and-savory carrot/potato purée and some grilled endives, the duck turned out... incredible. I don't know how else to describe it. Not gamey at all like my previous experience, it tasted closer to steak, and with the sauce and the side dishes, there were several layers of flavor - my favorite kind of culinary experience. My plate went very quickly from this:
... to this:
I can't believe I ate something with such rare red meat. I'm glad I did! It was amazing.
In most cafés and brasseries in Paris, the bathrooms are tucked away downstairs. I love seeing the different staircases in each one I visit and get a thrill of travel romance every time I walk down. This one was at a little place across the street from Notre-Dame de Lorette.
I had a tremendous success yesterday. I went to the fromagerie for the first time. Okay, not an actual store just for cheese (I am building bravery), but the fresh cheese counter at Monoprix. And not only did I have an entire conversation in French with the cheese lady helping me, but I even made a joke. Which she laughed at. I walked away feeling like a million bucks. (It's the small pleasures in life, you know?)
When I sat down to eat this most magnificent of cheese plates, Nico looked down at it and smirked, "Ohh, life is very hard for you, huh?"
Directly above my computer:
One day I woke up to the sun shining in the cold January sky and the sound of an accordion player. This dude was across the street from our window.
Romantic and joyous playing the accordion in the middle of a weekday in a non-touristy area. I was like, "Seriously, Paris?" The cliché is almost too adorable to bear.
In Montmartre...
Last Saturday night I went with Nico to see a friend of his perform in a burlesque show called "Carnival Tease" in a little theatre in the 20th.
Everyone there (except me) was dressed like it was WWII. The crowd packed every inch of the place, standing shoulder-to-shoulder to sneak a peak at the performers. ("C'etait blindé " - it was super full.) It was also sexy.
Nico's friend, Flora La Douce, came out and she captivated the audience with a firm Gothic grip.
This burlesque show was not of the stripping sort, more like an intimate, intriguing and sexy carnival.
The performers were lovely, fun and funny.
The audience was packed and very interested. The whole thing had an old-fashioned vibe, complimented by the 1940s-style singers from the UK called "Four Femmes On The Thames".
Afterwards, we zipped over to the 9th and had strawberry mojitos with Elsa, Charlotte and their friend (and my new friend) Sophie, a 20-year-old firecracker of a girl.
Saturday night in Paris: cold, dark, and full of pockets of beautifully-lit action.
As a resident of the vast, dusty skies of Arizona, the sharp, metallic canyons of New York, and now the uniformly ornate twists and turns of Paris, I know a good sunset.Here, it begins when you ascend the Metro.
And the caps of buildings are swathed in falling golden light.
Or the shadows of people in your neighborhood are elongated, stretched out like an arm beckoning you to explore the hills of varying light, calling to you with disappearing sun.
Silhouettes are sharper, the air is peaceful.
To me, Paris' halved, bouncing gold light thrown on the buildings plus its hazy, wide panorama available from the top of the city settled in yellow combines the best elements of my favorite sunsets. 
That moment you decide to wear a bracelet you haven't worn in three years, and tucked into it you find the diamond earring stud you thought you'd lost forever.
Last night I came across the most beautiful letter from Ansel Adams on the amazing site Letters of Note. "Art is both love and friendship, and understanding; the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of Things, it is more than kindness which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is the recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the inter-relations of these."Do yourself a favor and read the letter and its entirety, and perhaps spend the rest of your day perusing, at Letters Of Note.
Last week I met up with my friend Rafael, whom I met in New York many moons ago. It was strange to see him in his hometown, and to walk the streets in search of a café and to happen upon this view, instead of sitting on the PS roof and looking at the Empire State Building.
And find a café we did. You might recognize the colorful café in the background from an earlier (also first-week) post.
I ordered something with eggs (des oeufs) and ended up with something with eggs AND mussels. Whoops! It was still good.
And that evening I joined Viviane et les enfants for dinner. I gave the boys some lollipops from Arizona (with real scorpions inside!!). My favorite part of this photo is that Clément is wearing a proper suit, with even a tie, as he decided to dress up very special for my return to the apartment. He was quite gentlemanly indeed, and reminded me of his father coming home from work - a bit disheveled but still proper.
They enjoyed the lollipops, I think, and kept saying, "Il pique!" ("It stings!")
I see that really, for these boys, some things haven't changed.
Viviane cooked for us a wonderful meal of Thai rice, and she gave me a gift too - this dress. I thought perhaps it may be a bit big on me but non - c'était parfait. How this woman can choose dresses perfectly for a young lady who has to try on 15 dresses at H&M to find one that fits, well, it's beyond my comprehension. Absolutely adorable!!
... is walking away from this, not a penny spent.
