I HAD LIKE 5 DAYS IN PARIS AND IT’S A MIRACLE I’M STILL ALIVE Alt title: PARIS 2K17: an excerpt of LONDON 2K17
So first of all, let’s set the mood: This trip happened when I was 19 ye ars of age, in London, studying @ London College of Fashion, as part of the program. That being said, keep in mind that I wasn’t on my own, there were like 30 ppl “with” me, I was not a minor in Europe or in my home country and I was also insane. As this is probably an intro, I had no idea of what I was doing most of the time, things literally just happened; plus I only read the travel tips LCF made for us this year, when I was cle aning my room and found it. It’s 2019, I am 21 now (and able to drink in the US, someone pls pay me to explore Chicago or New Orleans, thanks)
I had already been to Paris once, when I was 15, but I was there for only 3 days because my main trip was London, so I had some idea of the city, but had never been there with only my portuguese/english speaking ass. This time I had like 5 days and close to no goals; the only things I wanted to do were: go to the Louvre, and drink wine on the edge of the Seine, which I’ll tell you right now I didn’t do because no one wanted to go with me and I wasn’t going to walk around Paris drunk and alone. ANYWAYS
THE BASE PLAYLIST Don’t @ me bcs I don’t care, my mood for this trip was Paris by The Chainsmokers and Dolce Francia by Carla Bruni. Carolina by Harry Styles was my style mood.
+Summer Wind by Sinatra always reminds me of the first time I went to Paris and Raphael by Carla Bruni sets the mood of y’know the fun, cool and romantic parisian life I’ll never get to live.
Now I remember (jk I don’t, I read this in my journal) I had only slept for 2 hours the night before the trip because I am dumb and there was so much prep to do and I didn’t want to be late so I left extra early and walked to King’s Cross bcs Russell Square Station was still closed. I lived in Holborn so it wasn’t really that far Hot tip guys, check the tube opening hours/ bus lines available, I’m dumb and I didn’t. 17/12/19 EditSo I was sleep deprived, living off chicken noodle soup because my dumb-ass had fucked up my stomach with too much Itsu pepper, I also sent a very weird email on the trip to a guy who was not my ex, but we almost had something at one point and hadn’t seen each other in like 3 years but airports and train stations always remind me of him so I kinda had a breakdown and too much time between London and Paris. Ok, so we got to the city of light, proceeded to find a nice little restaurant close to our hotel and this brings us to, surprisingly, the first chapter of whatever this is:
WHEN IN PARIS YOU GOTTA EAT
I don’t know if London traumatized me with it’s terrible, terrible food, but I was so excited to finally be able to buy good food again, I mean, I cooked a lot in London, but to be able to buy cheap and great food, sit in a little restaurant and have nice a meal? Thrilling.
The possibility of having Passion Fruit Sorbet? Amazing.
My favorite dish costing 15 euros?
Groundbreaking.
I actually wanted this last one with fries but the guy didn’t get it and tbh I didn’t really care.
So after a day of boats, makeup and sle ep deprivement @julianaciszak.art, a friend, and I decided to go exploring the hotel neighborhood and this leads us to:
FREE SHOTS AND I, TO THIS DAY, HAVE NO IDEA OF WHAT I DRANK THAT NIGHT
It all started with a glass of white wine on an empty stomach, I had not eaten a thing since lunch and was starving and also having a mild anxiety attack for reasons I will not comment but were solely my own fault, so I, a dumbass, had a glass of wine for dinner; and Juliana had a beer and some fries bcs she’s clearly more reasonable than I am. 17/12/19 EDITThe reason I had an anxiety attack was bcs the guy I sent the email to answered it, not that it was bad, I’m just an anxious puppy who can’t process stuff, so I freaked out even when he ended his email with a cute reference to the days we used to talk that made my heart melt a little bit.
that’s @julianaciszak.art right there, pls don’t sue me, ily bih, let’s hang out
Now to the point, I’m not gonna lie, I’ll be honest, I was completely drunk after drinking 1 (one un.) small glass of wine and after this I just wanted to get the check and head back to the hotel, have a good night of sleep bcs we had to be up early the next morning. As I ask for the check I notice that not only the waiter is not the one who was working there the whole time, this other guy is fucking cute, like french guy, cute smile, wavy hair kind of messy and I ask for the check and say “Oh my God,
you are so cute!” and the guy is kind of shocked so he says “Thanks but my gf just went down to the McDonalds near here”
and I’m like laughing like a fucking hyena and saying something I don’t remember. We pay and BAM, guy and gf come to our table with free shots of I have no idea, we toast and drink together like buddies. Juliana and I go back to the hotel singing the whole way, it’s what people call youth, I think.
So yeah HOT TIP tell you waiter he’s cute in an attempt of flirting and see where it gets you.
The outfit I was wearing since 4 am in a lift mirror at who knows the time of the evening. The only regret I have from this day is not waiting for my noodles to cook when I got back to the hotel and eating them half-cooked, half not, but I was too drunk to wait.
FORGIVE ME, FATHER, FOR I HAVE SINNED IN THE COOLEST AND MOST GLAMOROUS WAYS POSSIBLE
We talked about getting shitfaced with one glass of white wine, and we’ll go back to that in a bit, but right now we’ll talk churches. Paris is very famous for its churches and I’m not here to innovate, I’ll talk about the most famous churches and I don’t care. When I first went to Paris, 15 yo with my family, my mom dragged everybody through cool churches everywhere, my mother loves churches and is very religious, she raised us believing in God. So first of all being in Paris without my mom felt weird as heck. She loves this city probably more than she loves me, I grew up with her talking about it all the time, it was her dre am city and tbh it still is. I was having the time and opportunity of my life, at that moment I was living in London, I was in a school trip to Paris, I had everything, the world was mine, and I wanted to thank God and Mary for that.
I sneaked away from the other girls who went to the Dali Museum and went to Sacre-Coeur alone, it was almost sunset, but still light, the city looked beautiful. I went in, sneaked some pics, and I’m telling you, if you’re looking for a place to pray, this is it, it’s so much better than Notre-Dame, don’t get me wrong, I love Notre-Dame, but it’s impossible to pray there, too many tourists. So I found a nice place, near a statue of virgin Mary and told her everything I was grateful for, I felt a lightness after that, I was so grateful to be alive and to have the opportunity to be there. I felt so blessed, it made me cry.
After that I walked to the nearest metro station, listening to La Belle de Jour by Alceu Valenรงa, everything was alright.
I WALKED FROM MY HOTEL TO NOTRE DAME AND BACK
Ok so I noticed you can go everywhere if you know if you’re going up or down the Seine, so in my head I was like: “If my hotel is near the Seine, it means that if I go in the right direction, I’ll eventually get to Notre-Dame” I wasn’t wrong but it took me more than an hour to go and and hour to get back.
So like I said earlier, my mom loves Paris and with that comes her love for french music, I have been listening to Charles Aznavour since I was a child and not understanding a word he says, so I thought it was fitting to listen to his songs on my long long walk.
The Playlist is: Emmenez-moi La Boheme Hier Encore Que c’est Triste Venise She For Me Formidable Yesterday When I Was Young I’m pretty sure I listened to My Way by Sinatra just bcs it’s one of my mother’s favorite songs and the whole thing just reminded me so much of her. On my way back I probably listened to a lot of Carla Bruni, so Chez Keith et Anita, Le plus beau du quartier, and Raphael; along with other stuff I don’t remember.
17/12/19 EDITFourth of July by Fall Out Boy for sure, as you may already know, I am emo as fuccccc, and Fourth of July reminded me of the guy I sent the email to.
DIOR
I’M GOING TO TALK ABOUT NOTRE-DAME AGAIN, DON’T @ ME
So I’m not crazy, but I was pretty drunk when this one happened.
Soundtrack for this party is Roi by Videoclub and Cheap Thrills by Sia We went to No42 @ 42 Rue de Sévigné, 75003 Paris, France one day and the guy who works there is 1) An Angel 2) So nice to invite all of the girls to a gallery ope ning party they were having later that day with free alcohol and snacks. Needless say everybody got s-h-i-t-f-a-c-e -d to the point that when the party was over, someone suggested walking to Notre-Dame and we did, the craziest part was everybody just agreed bcs what else we were going to do at midnight.
We had to stop multiple times to pee on our way there and someone almost left their phone on a bridge?????? It was such a fever dream, but we got there and it was glorious.
Alexa play Semaphore by Requin Chagrin. (I didn’t know the song yet because it didn’t exist but it fits the mood of this night so well that I just don’t care) If you ever have the time, go and stand at Notre-Dame’s door drunk at midnight and look up.
THAT ONE GAY GUY THAT PROVED PARISIAN NIGHTLIFE IS NOT AS LAME AS WE THOUGHT
Now that we are back to the bohemian life stories, yes this is a reference to the musical Moulin Rouge, lemme tell you about the night we went out for dinner only and I got back to the hotel at 3 am So we are in a little restaurant near our hotel, me and my friends, eating a nice dinner, having wine, our last night in Paris; when a middle-aged gay man starts talking to us, he tells us: “You won’t find boys to kiss here! This is the gay part of Paris!” he looks at our waiter, a very cute, straight guy and asks “Where can they find the heterossexuals?” At this point we love this man already and we are also laughing our asses off. The waiter tells us we can find heterossexuals in the bars near the Bastille.
He ain’t lying, we stumble upon RUE DE LAPPE after dinner and my God, french bars are weird, I genuinely would love to know what’s up with drinking songs, I mean, I never thought it was a real thing until I heard it with my own ears. Someone pls @ me. My friends start talking about leaving when I hear someone speaking Portuguese behind me and impulsively say “ARE YOU GUYS BRAZILIAN?” to two boys that were behind me; they are like “YEAH, WHERE ARE YOU FROM?” so we start talking, my friends decide to go back to the hotel and I stay with these two strangers. Oh boy, WHAT A NIGHT. THE MOOD FOR THIS IS O GRAVE BATER BY MC KEVINHO We found a bar playing Brazilian Funk and had some beers, talking about traveling, Brazil, life in general. We start dancing and suddenly we are not 3 brazilians in a parisian bar, we are like 10 and we are insufferable, it’s glorious. The guys who join us are brazilian too, working in construction in Paris, they tell us about being immigrants, about their families, about how they got there, how they manage to stay there without a visa. We dance, we drink, and me and the boys, the ones I met earlier, are sitting on the sidewalk just chilling, we’ll think about tomorrow when it comes, the world is ours, we are young, we are beautiful.
I step into my hotel room at 3 am, shower and the only thing I know when my head hits the pillow is that I’m alive and I am happy.
IS THE LOUVRE MENTALLY TRYING OR WAS I JUST HUNGOVER
It’s written in my journal “Woke up close to dead, packed and was at the door @ 10:30” so that’s what happened. The other girls wanted to go to a very dangerous part of town and bitch, I don’t walk around dange rous places, I can’t afford to be robbed?????? I’m poor and only have one credit card if I lose it I’m fucked. So I went to the Louvre by myself. First things firsteth, the Louvre is tiring, like mentally tiring, so be prepared, don’t drink the night before but consider drinking be fore going in, just thought of it but yeah. Most of the stuff is in french which is fucking hostile but you will survive.
The playlist is basically The Wilderness by Explosions in the Sky and here is my list of stuff to see there that is not the Monalisa:
1) The Nipple Painting AKA “Portrait présumé de Gabrielle d’Estrées et de sa soeur la duchesse de Villars” or “Presumed Portrait of Gabrielle d’Estrées and Her Sister, the Duchess of Villars”, artist unknown (Ecole de Fontainebleau), c. 1594, Louvre, Paris I love it, it has made me laugh like an idiot since high-school. It’s just so delicate??? Subtle????? IDK I just think it’s the funniest thing.
2) Eros and Psyche AKA Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss by Italian artist Antonio Canova (1787) This is one of my favorite Greek myths, I won’t go deep in it but lemme tell you a little bit bout it: Basically pretty girl Psyche is pretty, Aphrodite gets mAD and tells her son, Eros, Cupid, whatevs, to make her fall in love the the Worst Man Alive ™, but he’s a dumb boi and shoots himself by mistake bcs she’s so pretty. Babygirl can’t find a husband, no one ever falls for her and Apollo says “Bih, go up that hill and you’ll marry a snake or something” and she goes, finds a mansion, according to Grade Saver “enjoys fine food and luxurious treatment. At night, in the dark, she meets and falls in love with her husband.” She never sees her boi though, so her sisters convince her to light a lamp and stuff to discover who is the guy she married to. “When she sees the beautiful Cupid asleep on her bed, she weeps for her lack of faith. Cupid awakens and deserts her because Love cannot live where there is no trust. Cupid returns to his mother, Venus, who again decides to enact revenge on the beautiful girl.” (thanks @ Grade Saver) After this part it’s just a huge shitstorm until they finally live happily ever after.
3) Cupid of Antoine-Denis Chaudet (1802) Not my pic but I didn’t take a good pic of the whole thing bcs I was interested in the details, as you can see below Since you already keeping up with my boi Cupid, check out this other sculpture of him when you go see the sculptures
4) The Three Graces (?) Go there and do yourself the favor of posting them on instagram tagging two friends. “from left to right, Euphrosyne, Aglaea and Thalia – who were said to represent youth/beauty (Thalia), mirth (Euphrosyne), and elegance (Aglaea).” - from Wikipedia
5) Apollo Sauroctonus (Lizard-Slayer) , Praxiteles (350-340 BC) Ok, if you read “A Very Personal Guide to NYC” you already know I’m a huge musical theater fan, so yeah, what I mean by this is I love Les Mis with all my heart, so this sculpture of Apollo in the sunlight was everything to me bcs I love Enjolras. Prettiest boi Apollo.
HOT TIP(?) When I got out of the museum, I was talking on the phone and Louis Garrel walked by .
SILK SCARVES, FRESH FOOD AND NICE FRENCH PEOPLE
We went to the Farmers Market at Breguet Sabin, which was really nice, people say french folks are rude to english speakers but they are not, I mean, if you show enough good will and try not to sound arrogant they will be very reasonable and even try to help; I bought a wrist watch there and the lady was not only the sweetest she even went as far as helping me pick the color based on her opinion of how they looked on my skin. Might sound a little weird but I fucking hate we aring warm colors, they give me the impression that I look dirty, that my skin has a weird color against them, so I gravitate towards cooler tones, the old lady helped me pick a rose gold and grey wrist watch that I lost at the airport a couple of months later. I’m going to buy a watch again someday but this was my first one and it cost me 12 euros. I also found very cute silk scarves for very cheap, around 10 euros if I’m not mistaken. Bought one for my mother and she hated it, so I kept it.
Anyways this is the place to get fresh stuff, spe cially cheese, I wasn’t really into cheese before this but I really grew into being the cheese and wine person after this day. It was an actual activity, cheese tasting in a park after we went to the market and I didn’t really care for it then but now it feels like it changed me a little bit you know, there’s a little bit more of France in my tastes and in my life. One of my goals while studying in London, and I will talk about it in depth in the London Zine, was to come back home different and to never go back to my old habits and my old loneliness again. When I came back I had no idea of how to do it but had had a taste of what it was like to be who I wanted to be, so I was going to chase it. It became the quote that took an entire year to write on my mirror with post its:
“You will not belittle yourself. You won’t compete with ghosts, you won’t compete with other girls; You won’t let anyone make you feel unloved. You can’t predict the future and you shouldn’t worry about it. Do everything with dignity; and in case things don’t work out you leave. Gracefully.”
I was 19 and so tired of drinking cheap beer, eating junk food all the time and feeling lonely, getting my heart broken and crying just because that’s what people did, tired of feeling young and dumb and inexperienced. And it changed me, ordering wine with food for the first time because I was in Paris, hell, even ordering that glass of white wine on the first night, goat cheese and dried tomatoes... it didn’t make me anything more than what I already was, but it made me a little bit more fearless, it made me realise you don’t need to be this or that to enjoy nice things, you just have to try them. This is not where I intended to go with this chapter but fuck me this cheese tasting changed me a lot now that I think of it. From drinking the cheapest beer I could find to ordering a fucking Dry Martini. From feeling lonely every night and every day to rarely feeling like that again.
If you got here send me a food emoji. Basically I’d like to thank my friends who made this trip extra special, Juliana, Eve, Courtney and all the other girls that where there with us, Daniel and his friend, and specially the gay guy from the restaurant. Plus that hot waiter from the first chapter. And thanks LCF for making this trip real cuz it was cool as f***.
SO I GUESS THAT’S IT, PARIS 2K17 WAS A VERY SPECIAL TRIP AND I HOPE YOU ENJOYED READING ABOUT IT AS MUCH AS I ENJOYED WRITING IT. AS ALWAYS, IF YOU WANT TO FOLLOW ME, MY ART ACCOUNT IS @UNAVAILABLEPLUM, MY PERSONAL @HTHELENA AND I’M HELLINCONVERSES ON TUMBLR. AND FEEL FREE TO PAY FOR MY NEXT TRIP! LOL JK UNLESS...