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‘Look Tegan, it’s the Eiffel Tower!’

Look Tegan it’s the Eiffel, Look Tegan it’s the Eiffel, Look Tegan it’s the Eiffel!!!

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I just spent a chaotic weekend in Paris, which served as a nearly-one-year-later reminder to just friggin’ post already about the trip we took last June.

Because Sameer is chronically tied to The Island (i.e., it’s hard for him to get longer/any visas to Europe), I headed off to Paris a few days early.

Which mostly meant that I finally managed to spend some much needed time with these two three:

We did a lot of gossiping, and a bit of looking at trees, including a trip to the botanical garden near their outside-of-Paris home.

Here is us with some giant grass.

And here me with some tiny trees:

Plus more:

Iman and Ewa didn’t live in Paris proper at the time, but we nonetheless traveled up to the city.

Partially to see this old guy:

(But mostly because we wanted to stuff ourselves with delicious Persian food).

Speaking of food…

I also got to catch up with Shreya, and we did some more eating and gossiping, which was partially lamenting about how shit it is to move to a new country right at the beginning of a pandemic.

The conversation was good, but the experimental macarons- pandan, choco-coco, satay, thai tea, mango sticky rice, kalamansi, citronelle and jasmin- were slightly less so.

I also stopped by to see Alix and Antonin and their family (somehow all my plant scientists have migrated to France), but never manage to take photos of them.

And then, at some point on a Saturday Morning, Sameer appeared.

Sameer hadn’t been to Paris before, so we started with a walking tour, which hit all of the major central sites (but, between me and you, was a bit wordy at the end).

We walked around a bit more, headed back to the flat, and then went for dinner and some Tower.

Which seemed to break Sameer a bit. Queue ‘look Tegan’.

I snuck out early on Day Two to go to the Alix-recommended bakery and get Sameer a selection of must-taste croissanty things, which we ate on the balcony of our airbnb.

And then it was off walking again, through the greenery of Paris’ promenades….

And up (with a little help of the train system) to Montmatre:

Cool buildings and even cooler street art.

Our ultimate destination was the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, which we spent some time milling around outside…

… and also inside.

Impressive!

We decided to walk back down the hill, past the red windmill, and onwards to Galeries Lafayette, which is effectively just a fancy store.

But one that comes with a very pretty roof, and a very very pretty rooftop view.

The evening was happily spent with friends, a gathering of Alix, Ewa, Shreya and Iman and I- all Max Planck Survivors, as well as Antonin and Sameer.

We had nice food, and managed to peer pressure Sameer into eating Snails.

Our third and final day involved exploring the street art of the 13. arrondissement (suburb where our flat was).

And then walking back to more central locations, to continue with exploration, coffee drinking, and getting a little too much sun.

Our final stop was the Champs-élysées, which both of us found to be too busy and a little bit awful.

And then, with just a little bit of panic about visas and the implication of missing our journey back to The Island, we headed back to the train station to take the eurostar home.

To round it all off, are some photos of us being art.

Pretty sure I make a beautiful “La vache qui rit” (laughing cow).

But nothing is as beautiful as this:

(The weekend of June 11th, 2022)

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