FUNdon & PariS!

Bon Jour friends and family!!!

I write to you from Madrid still in denial that my much anticipated desperately needed wonderfully glorious two week spring break is over and I have to attend that school thing tomorrow. Let's not talk about it, it seems less real that way. While spring break generally induces thoughts of tan lines, margaritas in the sand, and questionably safe trips to Mexico, I chose the less tradition more rain prone route. While you ordered that second Pina Colada asking the bartender if they could turn the air conditioning up, I dedicated a solid outdoor fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to reverse my umbrella after the wind storm had made it a casualty. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade places for the world.
Call me a product of my grandmother but when it comes to flying there is no such thing as arriving to the airport too early. Unfortunately the day I flew to London I found out there is. After breezing through security and check in I found myself so early that even the departure gate wouldn't tell me where i was going. Two and a half hours and two almost boarded flights to London ( not my airline) and Ireland ( still not sure how that one happened) later I made it safely on the flight and was greeted upon arrival with a dozen red roses-- always so dramatic-- by the one and only Patrick Strapazon. For those of you who don't know Pat there isn't a description to save my life that could do his ridiculous personality justice. All I can say is hope you havn't just chugged a few liters of water during a two hour plane flight because you very well might pee yourself from laughter. One unpaid for train trip and a pricey taxi later we arrived at his "flat" number 18 on Bloomsbury street. I was Julia Roberts in Notting Hill already, minus Hugh Grant and add a pack of USC students. Naturally we finished off the night reciting lines to Legally Blonde and dissecting Reece Witherspoons love life. The following day I had two choices: attend a three hour lecture at Pat's school or venture the neighborhood with the Disneyland wannabe map mother had given me. Seeing as I had already slept a decent amount of hours I passed on the presumable snoozefest and true to form located the nearest Starbucks. Not trying to figure out how to translate " what direction is the closest Urban Outfitters" from Spanish to English I already felt right at home. The entire city looked like a more accurate version of the Universal Studios back lot, it was adorable. Cute parks, quaint book stores, this was the least manly city I had ever been to. My first stop was to commemorate the trip with London Flag boxers and unnecessary souvenirs that friends from home will look at and then toss off only to find again in about ten years. The majority of the day was spent leaving various clothing stores with a look of disgust at the current conversion rate and trying to figure out how to use my scarf as a head umbrella without looking like a Russian grandmother.
The sloths have nothing on Pat, the kid can sleep like it was his major. So at the crack of 3 in the afternoon the following day we made it to the London Eye, a national landmark I kept referring to as the Red Eye or " the big carnival ride". Unlike its amusement park counterpart however, this thing moves at the same rate I do when getting ready in the morning. Pat was making a documentary of decade long event for a class of his, interviewing me on my knowledge ( lack there of) about London and I have no doubt I will make a FABULOUS gag reel. Unaware that I wouldn't be able to afford a pencil at the decadent department store, we made our way to Harrods. Now why anyone would ever want to spend 300 pounds on a dog collar is beyond me but I guess when you just dropped 700 big ones on Chloe baby jumper its a small price to pay for man's best friend. You know you're in the big leagues when the 1st floor is entirely dedicated to the art of tea and chocolate. It was a diabetic's nightmare, I spent the majority of my time on this floor wiping up my drool. Pat and I danced our way through the pistachio gelato and plethora of Godiva to land on sampling my first Dim Sum. Why wouldn't there be an elegant sit down Chinese Dim Sum bar among the edible paradise? The little boiled bags of deliciousness put me over the edge and Pat was forced to gurney me out of the infamous department store. We ended the day with a late run to Pizza Express with the Curtis twins Melissa and Lauren, a perfect La Canada reunion in London. It's the simple things in life like being able to order without pointing to the option on the menu that I relish now. We reminisced on scandals of our teen years reporting break ups and expulsions like it was the front cover of US weekly and Lauren drank her first foreignly legal red wine.
If you are thinking this post is revolving entirely too much around food you would be right that seemed to be the glue that held the entire trip together and thus I continue... the following day Lauren, Melissa, Pat, and I scoped out Borough Market. This puts any previous farmer's market I have been to to SHAME with cheese from france, homemade pesto from heaven, and a vegetarian and nut stand that should be retitled " Chrissy's idea of perfection". Sampling was free so basically lunch was on the house. I don't think it can be called sampling after one comes back four or five times but what the vendor doesn't know won't kill them. Pat purchased some Turkish Delight, a dessert I thought only existed in the world of Narnia. To me it tasted like a plant and I was forced to find the nearest trash can. Melissa, Lauren, and I continued on a walking cliche, signing in the rain with our umbrellas all the way to Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and Trafalgar Square. Gravity pulled us to London's Topshop after a long day of sightseeing, a four story haven for any grunge or vintage aficionado where you could leave with nails done perfectly and eyebrows threaded to perfection. Few stores can boast that much.
I apologize that this blog is turning out to be longer than the Civil War, I'm very long winded. So I quite literally ran into my family at the airport looking scarier than Morticia Adams from my lack of sleep or makeup, I could tell by the look on their faces that ' wow you've let yourself go' was running through their heads... they welcomed me with prolonged hugs and kisses anyway, gotta love family. A run to the hospital to check for broken ribs is not at all uncalled for given the strength my dad used to hug me. We settled into our hotel in Madrid and mom spent the majority of the night commenting on the opulent chandeliers she coveted and if we had confused our hotel with the royal palace. They did have a Rolex store in the lobby and a gigantic stain-glass dome in the dining area... understated elegance. I focused my energy on a shower that didn't result in internal bruising from storage of space to move and hot water that didn't revert to its opposite after the extended duration of five minutes. Having lived in Madrid for some time now it took some arm twisting to get me to leave the hotel room. I spent the following day showing them around the Palacio Real, Parque del Retiro, Sol, and other tourist hot spots where there are no shortage of pickpockets and bizarre street performers. Mother held onto her purse like it was her child and dad walked two feet behind at all times to scope for potential suspects.. it was great. I wasn't embarrassed at all. Judging by their shock at how beautiful they found Madrid the clearly thought I was living in some dump in the middle of no where. I took them to my favorite tapas at Lateral for dinner where dad's disgust of the surrounding smokers could be seen miles away and ordering in english provided a challenge. We determined not telling dad what he was eating and force feeding him with a spoon was the best way to go. Blake stuck to chicken being the adventurous eater he is.
We finally made it to Paris and our hotel next to the Tuilleries gardens, as usual Blake and I received the more spacious of the two rooms so the parents took to relaxing at our place often. We went to lunch at a local brasserie that mom and dad had come to on their last trip to Paris and died over the cheese plate and bread. It took about 30 minutes into the lunch for them to realize that we were not in the same place the came to but being too lazy to move, we stayed. We walked around the Tuilleries gardens and Place de la Concorde and even under a comatose of tired the city was incomprehensibly beautiful. There could be lightening and hail and the architecture and landscaping would still take your breath away. For dinner we went to Le Coup Chou which was a redone hole in the wall former residence so authentic France the waiter didn't understand a thing I was saying. There were drapes, fire places, book shelves, and winding stairs that were a health risk to walk down, it was GREAT. Before coming to Paris I thought I had tasted good food... I was wrong. Maybe it was part sustaining off of power bars and coffee all day but every plate we ordered was the meal you would want if you had one day to live. I hadn't the slightest notion of what I ordered, only that i was meat free. The appetizer was a tomato and garlic number with.. wait for it.. whipped cream ( i took it off, I'm not that crazy) on top. Call me old fashioned but I don't combine my meal with my dessert. In overtly American behavior the four of us could be found delving over plates to sample each others dinners and ordering bread baskets like it was water. We left full and with the acquired knowledge of how to say "how delicious" in french.... I think.
To work off some of the food intake I unknowingly was recruited to a FOUR HOUR bike tour of the city starting at Notre Dame and end, well I won't know where because... well I'll get to that. Blake, Mom, and Dad had done this same bike tour in previous years so they knew the guide better than I know some of my closest friends. On a first name basis, I quickly learned all about Christian, where he lived, his daughter, and where he grew up. Mom makes friends easily and treats them like family even easier. Penguins could have waddled by at any moment the tour was so frigid but thank goodness I was easily distracted by the beauty of the various arrondissements. We biked the river Seine and Christian repeatedly wounded us with phrases like " when it gets warm..". Unfortunately Blake felt the need to go and injure himself on the tour by removing one of this fingernails and a whole bunch of gross I don't want to know about. The Penidos ditched the tour early in search of an American Hospital and some painkillers. After bbming Nick with this news he responded with sincere concern " man he's a bad traveler". Dad flipped into paramedic mode and took Blake to go get stitched, x-rayed, and injected while mom and I took our minds off the accident with some retail therapy while the male's couldn't complain. I saw the extravagant Opera House as we proceeded into department stores of endless levels and stain- glass ceilings complete with corinthian columns. Shopping back home will never be the same. After returning to the hotel to find Blake heavily sedated and Dad watching him like if breathed wrong he was going to call the ambulance, mom and I were on our own for the Louvre tour. My previous awareness of the Louvre was what I had seen of a glass triangle in The Da Vinci Code so I was blithely unaware of the MASSIVE size of the previous home to the royals. Mom and I got lost so many times that I think we past the egyptian art section at least seven times. We made it to the Mona Lisa who looks more like a man that I had ever imagined. Everyone and their mother surrounded it so I didn't get a great look but from where I was, I was thinking 'thats a dude in a dress with a wig'. We saw Napoleon's crown-- man did he have a small head-- and numerous jewels all of which I was tempted to take off their hands. Mom and I stopped by a brasserie on the way home for some traditional French food and wound up at Welcome Cafe where hot dogs came right before crepes on the menu and nothing but American classics played in the background.
In attempts to salvage the food we brought home for an unconscious Blake we took drinks out of the overpriced minibar and shoved the steak in. This is without prior knowledge that each item has a sensor on it and is considered purchased upon lift. It took some time to explain to the concierge what we had done and how we didn't want to pay the hundreds of euros we had racked up on our bill. My bad. Our first day without injury and all of us in tow we set out for Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Elysee, Luxembourg Gardens, and the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel remains one of my favorites despite the fact that upon reaching the top I dropped a souvenir in the gift shop, breaking part of it, and I am entirely convinced that If we were not as high up as we were the store lady would have thrown me out. I won't be going back any time soon. The whole city was like a movie, I honestly couldn't find a piece of trash or unmanicured tree anywhere. I don't care if the French are snobs, as they should be. For dinner we went to Le Fontaine de Mars a French place mom had been talking up for months thanks to the Obama's visit there during their stay in Paris. Naturally I was obscenely overdressed but did not let this stop me from pretending cocktail attire was the order of attire. I think my dress was a bit too short seeing as a borderline homeless man grunted ' ahhhh sexxxyyyy' with a heavy french accent later that night. My family was beaming over dinner I had no idea that all it took was was nice red wine and very expensive french food to make them ecstatic. They ordered a roasted Daffy Duck for dinner and I opted for some fish I couldn't pronounce. If I'm giving out awards here this one takes the cake, no competition. The cost of the plane flight to Paris would be worth it just to try one of their green beans. Again maybe the power bars came into play but really the French are just so much better than us in every way. I even like their accent more. We sat for hours and talked about grown up things, I played along. If only Nick and Holly had been there it would have been a Penido vacation to rival all those Chevy Chase family vacation films. We booked it out of there to catch the end of the Eiffel Tower light show which looked like a real life version of every girls desire to glitter and bejewel the world. So basically the city of lights stole my heart and I plan on taking up residence there as soon as possible. I promise I'll write...


MISS YOU ALL!!!!!!!

xoxo

Chrissy

p.s. I will be SHOCKED if anyone gets through all of that