la coco noire.

Way back when I was doing my GCSE's I had a little board of 'motivational' pictures pinned up in my bedroom. The point of these was to try and tempt me to revise harder and do really well, cos you know - pictures of handbags and shoes and all the stuff I could buy with the money I would have after doing so well in my GCSE's and landing a 100,000 grand a year job is motivation for anyone to sit down and learn about photosynthesis right? ...just me on this one? Whatever. Anyway, don't get me wrong - I know in the grand scheme of things that GCSE's are childsplay and when you finally hit university, you would cut off an arm and a leg to babble on about something as simple as mode, median and..who cares what the other one was, BUT at the time they seemed like a big deal. Just like your first kiss seemed like a big deal until you realized it really wasn't quite as important as you thought it would be. It was just a bit sloppy. Yeah, you get my drift. So basically, on this motivational wall board of motivation there was the standard hand bags and shoes - all of which, I might add, where diabolical choices and I'm glad I didn't land that dream job at 16 years old - but as well as all of the material stuff, there were pictures of three places. The three places I would go with all my hard earned money. The three places I wanted to go more than anything. Two of them are unfortunately still on the bucket list: the Marina Bay Sands Resort in Singapore and the One and Only Reethi-Rah Resort in the Maldives (a girl can dream hey!!) but the other one, well... Despite the fact that all the other pictures that were stuck on my wall haven't quite fabricated into anything other than hopeful wishes yet, I have accomplished one thing I wanted to do. Paris is no longer just a picture on my bedroom wall, it's home. And seriously, it feels so much better than I ever dreamt it could be. And if this is what Paris feels like, heaven knows what sort of crazy happy looney dance I'm going to be doing when I finally touch down in the Maldives... 


 So anyway, enough reminiscing. Soz. SO, TODAY? Me and Mikey went wandering around the Eiffel Tower which was bloody lovely although the sun was being a total tease and hiding half the time, only deciding to poke her nose out every half hour or so. 'Twas Mikey who snapped these pictures of me because he's a total babe. I think I should also mention that in the past week he has cut, dyed and then dip-dyed my hair and if that's not trust then I don't know what is. I'm really quite impressed at how it turned out actually. and counting my lucky starts it's not green. I'm also pretty happy that not only do I have a personal chef, but also a personal hairdresser too. Weeeeey! But joking aside, recently I'm finding it easier to list the things he doesn't do for me rather than the things he does, which is always a nice thing to find yourself saying about your boyfriend. ♡ ♡ And I'm sure there will be a new blog post soon of photos of his lovely face once I've convinced him to let me shoot him again. But for now, it's just my big old mug to fill up the blog post. Sorry about that.

I genuinely had butterflies of excitement floating around my stomach as we pulled up in the taxi at the Chateau de Versailles. If you're ever in the Paris area, I would seriously suggest going to have a nosey around this building, it's huge, it's lavish and it's really quite impressive. And what's even better is if your from England and between the ages of 18-24 it's freeeee! What's not to love?
 

Today me and Mikey went wandering down to Chatillon as it's my day off every Wednesday, yippee! Being the snap-happy person that I am, I obviously needed to take some pictures of the places where I've been working for the past four months so that in a years time when I'm stressing over a dissertation and unknown french verbs, I can look back and cry over the fact I was a totally carefree Parisian living the dream. Oh, I can already see how much my future self with be tortured. WOE.

It is going to be so strange living back in England again and as much as I'm looking forward to free food à la Mum 24/7, I can't even pretend I'm not going to be absolutely gutted to have to leave here, although, there is not a doubt in my dreaming-big mind that I won't return here countless, countless times. Because after all, as Audrey Hepburn once said "Paris is always a good idea". Amen Aud, preaching to the choir.

Anywho, here is me gallivanting around outside both my cute little french schools. Admittedly, French schools aren't the prettiest looking buildings, I guess being so near a big city there's not much room for the green playgrounds I'm used to in tree-loving Surrey, but they have heap loads of character - I mean would you just look at that blue and orange colour scheme...
 

This last picture made it in here solely because I'm hoping in years to come I can look at it at smile. At present, this is the bus stop where I spend half of my waking hours waiting for bus's that never seem to be on time, that are apparently driven by kamikaze conductors, and don't come for 20 minutes and then come 5 all at once. Getting to work on time is always such a hoot with the good old 295. Typically, they've been building a tram line alongside the bus route since I arrived here in September and it's looking to be finished this summer, just as I'm about to leave - intact with all my pent up bus aggression. Gah.

Because my working timetable is so incredibly amazing, I was finished today at midday and home by half past 12. Mikey cooked the most delicious carrot & coriander soup for lunch. My absolute favourite soup flavour ever. I gave up 3 pairs of shoes to squish the soup-maker into our luggage on the flight back to Paris but it has got so much use in the past 2 weeks, I'm not even missing my pumps. Everyone should know how to make it because it is crazy good.

 4 carrots  /   1/2 onion  /  1 clove of garlic   /  4 sprigs of coriander   /  50g butter  /  1 stock cube  /   Salt & pepper to taste  / Grated cheese

Cut up the garlic and carrots into small cubes. Put them, plus the coriander, onion and butter, into soup-maker. Add a cup of water mixed with stock. Aaaand that's literally it. Yep, all you gotta do is let the soup maker do it's thang and then add salt and pepper and sprinkle cheese on top. The cheese is a must. Easiest but most incredible soup recipe in the world.
 









The rest of today is being spent catching up on The Voice and drinking copious amounts of tea..and probably eating chocolate and cookies seeing as my willpower to eat healthily cracks the second I hear the word "milka". xo

Yesterday was mine and Mikey's anniversary, (vom vom, soppy post). It feels strange that it's such a small number when I feel like I've known him simply forever. We were talking earlier about the amount of places we've been in the past two years and the crazy amount of things we've done in such a short space of time. Safe to say it has been a very, very busy and packed two years while also being the happiest, smiliest and funnest time I've ever had. ♡ ♡ ♡

To celebrate, M cooked me the most insanely delicious meal for when I got home from work late afternoon. It's so difficult to look at the pictures without my mouth salivating and craving. Seriously, the second I finished it (not far from about 10 seconds) I just wanted to start again, eat it all over. It was amazing. After that, we walked up to Montparnasse and had some cocktails in the bars around Gaite with some macarons. Just sitting in a bar in the middle of Paris with a cocktail, a full belly and the promise of many more happy years together was such a content and heart-warming feeling.

10/03/2012.

Paris in the spring is living up to every single rumour I've ever heard about it and so much more. When the sun shines here, it genuinely feels like heaven on earth; Parisian's come alive, bars are crammed and wine is everywhere. You don't even have to do anything, it's simply enough to just walk and watch life pass you by. All the tiny little backstreets with one-off shops, all the cafe's with the doors thrown wide open bursting with chatter and cheese. And there's just people - people everywhere. People trying to sell you stuff, people lying in the sun, people jumping on the metro, people in bars, people on bikes, people everywhere. It's amazing. This city is amazing. It's so ridiculously full of life when the sun shines and it's so incredibly beautiful.

This weekend, we unintentionally walked past the Moulin Rouge while looking for a cash point for cocktails. Stumbling upon such a world famous landmark by accident is just so typical of Paris, you can walk for under 30 minutes and see about a million incredible places you've read about in books. That evening, we went out for drinks and as it was so warm we decided to walk the slightly long distance home while half of Paris slept and the other half were loudly filling every single bar we came across. We wandered inadvertently past the Louvre and it suffices to say that being able to walk home after a night out and pass one of the worlds most famous museums is a feeling like no other. Last Friday we had a drink in a cafe boat on the Seine while the sun started going down and today we took a picnic and sat under the Eiffel tower and lazed around all afternoon in the sun eating strawberries; it doesn't sound enough to say that living here is the biggest blessing.

It's is a bubble, a little dream bubble of everything that makes me happy. I'd dreamed of coming here for years and years until my parents took me for a long weekend almost four years ago. We stayed in a little hotel in Porte D'Orleans and ate breakfast in a bistro next door before seeing as much as we could physically squeeze into three days. Since then I've loved Paris and everything about it, I never thought in a million years I'd be living here, doing my shopping on the Champs Elysées and eating in bars with a view of the Notre Dame. It's funny that I landed here by chance too, but I'm thankful for the best bit of fate that's been handed to me so far.

I wouldn't change anything right now. Paris is simply indescribable.