The Poetist

Last Thursday I flew to Paris for a petite vacation; the plan was to spend the weekend in Paris and the week in Aix-en-Provence, relaxing and boning up on my spoken French. Here are some of the highlights of my trip:

Thursday/Friday
1. On the plane I sat between a cute but slightly bewildered older American lady, and a cute but slightly bewildered older French man. I knew he was French before he opened his mouth because he had his sweater draped over his back, the sleeves tied at his chest. A number of people wore their sweaters this way, all of whom turned out to be French.

2. The French man and I chatted quite a bit en français during the trip, and I even told him about my wheat allergy. I had forgotten to look up the words for flour and wheat before I left, so when he asked if I was going to eat the piece of bread and crackers that I had left on my tray I explained that “no, I have an allergy to… things like this.” After listing a few other things I couldn’t eat he understood what I was trying to say: la farine. We talked a bit about how much it sucked to not be able to eat so many tasty things that contained la farine, and I explained that even beer was off limits because of it. He was very surprised. La farine? Non! So I was like, mais oui! beer comes from la farine. The man was genuinely surprised and I wasn’t sure if he belived me. I realized a few hours later that I told him beer came from FLOUR (la farine), and not WHEAT (le blé). So he was correct; beer doesn’t come from flour.

3. I managed to sleep on and off during the flight from Minneapolis to Paris which was great, because I went straight from the airport to the hostel to drop off my bags – and then straight to the Facebook office in Paris because I had to kick of my vacation with… work. It was nice to meet the Facebook Paris crowd (shout-out to Xavier L.) and see another Facebook office. They too are well stocked with Red Bull, which I dearly appreciated.

4. Back in the hostel there were two other girls in my room – Heather and Julie – and we decided to go out and about in Paris together. One of Julie’s friends told her that students could get into the Louvre for free after a certain time on Friday evenings (or something like that)… and it worked! We didn’t even have to be students, just 25 or under. As it turns out, discounts for les jeunes is very widespread, and I was able to get one almost everywhere. It kind of made me sad that I have less than a year left of being 25.

5. As we were staying in the Marais, we set out to get the best falafel ever at L’As du Falafel. Some friends introduced me to this place when we were studying in Paris in college, and Heather’s guidebook said that Lenny Kravitz was a huge fan. Fortunately, Heather’s guidebook also had a detailed enough map of the area that we were able to find it pretty easily. Unfortunately, it was closed; but there were at least 4 other falafel stands around so we just had some that wasn’t the best ever.

Saturday
6. The three of us set out for brunch together and found a brasserie near our hostel with free Wi-Fi. When ordering I put my newfound (newly remembered) vocab to the test, asking of the sauce for the plat du jour had de la farine or du blé. The person who took our order (and who was filling in for our waiter until he showed up) assured me that it didn’t. Unfortunately, when my waiter brought out my meal it came in a big bowl of pasta! I explained my allergy to him and asked if they could switch out the pasta with some rice. He said they didn’t have rice but that he could give me fries, so I accepted the fries. When he brought the plate back out it had rice.

7. No, Paris is not a great place to have a wheat allergy. And I couldn’t be in Paris and not consume a crepe or a croissant, so I tried to choose my poison carefully. I ignored the bread that came with meals, made sure I wasn’t ordering dishes with wheat, etc, and then “splurged” on a crepe. At least in the beginning. Towards the end of the trip I was running out of money so I kind of started eating anything… but more on that later (stay tuned for Sunday-Friday).

*if you’re my friend on Facebook or in one of my networks you can see my photos at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2097692&id=2900336&l=b68028be93*