A taste of home

In front of Hotel de Ville

Paris is beginning to feel less like a scary, unfamiliar place and more like a place I could feel at home. The weekend has started out great! Last night, Mark and I met up with friends at Minibar for a couple of drinks and some good conversation. Today, we began our weekend with a beautiful brunch from the tea house around the corner from the apartment. It was amazing! For 8 euros, we got freshly squeezed orange juice, a specialty tea or hot chocolate and an assortment of breads with house-made spreads.
Mark then went to work, while I walked to Rue Saint-Germain to meet up with my friend, Aliya, from high school who I hadn’t seen in four years. It was great seeing a friendly and familiar face and we reconnected instantly. We did some window shopping and caught up before meeting her friends from Sciences Po for coffee at Café de Flores, a famous café that has hosted most of the French intellectuals during the post-war years. It is said that Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir would meet here and discuss their philosophy of existentialism over a drink. At some points when our conversation became a little more philosophical, I imagined us filling their shoes and thought about how we were sitting in the exact spot those philosophers once sat. Cool! Three hours later, we parted ways but I was happy to have made four more friends in the city.
It was about time for dinner and I knew Mark would be home at a reasonable hour tonight so I stopped at the Monoprix and picked up groceries to make a BIG mom salad! We made dinner together and are now drinking the loose-leaf green tea mom sent us from home. All in all it’s been a great day and I feel a little more at home here everyday.

Love,
Alexis