So Saturday morning Hillary and I went and visited Hotel de Ville, the city hall here in Paris. This weekend was Journees de la Patrimoine, where some of the government buildings that are not normally open to the public have special exhibitions. In addition to seeing some sweet ballrooms and the mayors office, we contemplated the merits of 14 foot chandeliers and why anyone needs to many "antichambres."
Saturday night ended up being the craziest and best night of my life! We started out a Lauras and cooked and excellent dinner (which ended with a delicious chocolate tart compliments of Hillary) and some goofy games. We sat around and talked about everything from school to politics to how people in the south make their hair so poofy.
At about 11 pm we departed for the evening and went to this crazy place where the tables are bathtubs and the sound booth is a car. It was really cool but super crowded and hot, so eventually we hopped back on the metro to check out another place.
This is basically where hilarity begins and things turn crazy. Of course we miss the last metro by like two seconds because that is what always happens to us. So we go outside and try and decide how we are going to get to the latin quarter. We decide it is nice out so we might as well start walking. At this point we are trying to conserve our cab money because this is a big point of the whole evening. The metro closes at 2 and re-opens at 530. We figured that since we were just going to sleep over at Lauras (did I mention her host mom was out of town) we could all save money by taking one cab to one place. So we decided to hoof it.
Of all the people in all of Paris, what are the chances that we would run into the one and only Boris, our crazy Parisian friend, outside Bastille? I am going to guess one in two because whose voice did we hear calling "Hey..Margaret...Hillary...Margaret!" So of course we adopted Boris and walked on over to Footsie. When we arrived about a million years later, the bar was closed and it was 3am. At this point I was super bummed out! It was 3am, we had only been to one place we didnt even really like, and nothing was open. It seemed like the night was about to be a bust!
Luckily, Boris used his "fantastic" people skills to talk to people in the street, and eventually we followed some nice girls to a bar that involved the weirdest shortcuts ever. If I had a treasure map to get to this place I would never find it. So we hung out there till almost four, dancing like crazy people when the DJ played summer nights from Grease.
At this point I realized how totally insane things were. Of course we had left to go out pretty late, but it was four in the morning. Thats barely even night anymore! But there were still tons of people out! It looked like 11pm on a saturday night at college! In our little group of friends, we are the well behaved girls who never get in trouble and never stay out late, but there were were closing down a bar at 4 in the morning and going to hang out at another one down the street!
After visitng that bar and also seeing it close down, we went with a big bunch of people there to another bar down the road, which is obviously a place for bartenders and bouncers other nightlife sort of people (who else in their right mind is up at that hour?). We met this two crazy chefs (one of them was a fish chef) who were trying to explain all about cooking and the people they studied with, but of course this meant absolutely nothing to us.
When we finally left, the sun was starting to peek out over Notre Dame! Of course this was more or less the most horrific thing ever because we had actually stayed all night, which 1. we never intended to do (the metro had been back up and running for like, two hours, so our little cab plan in the end was pretty silly...) and 2. none of us are stay out till morning sort of girls! But there we were.
Then, the best part of the night happened. As we were sitting on the steps of the Seine, I was taking pictures of us. As margret smiled for a picture and crossed her leg, she inadvertantly KICKED HER SHOE INTO THE SEINE!!!!! As we saw it float away, a look of total shock swept everyones face. As Laura and I ran up and across the bridge to monitor the shoes motion, Laura started tearing off her jacket and dropped her bag, seriously contemplating going in after the shoe. As we saw the shoe begin to sink, I luckily persuaded Laura that it wasn't really going into the seine for a pair of Steve Madden ballet flats, even if they are really really comfy.
At this point, Margaret had no shoe. After we laughed and she cried for about half an hour, I noticed that the markets were setting up for morning. Even though we wanted to deny it, it was pretty much morning. One of the stands was a bird stand (like with a jillion little chirpy birds) and I asked the man for a plastic bag to tie around my friends foot since she lost her shoe in the Seine. Thinking that I was insane, he just started at me blankly. After realizing that I was being serious, he handed over a bag, which I lovingly tied around Margarets cold, now dirty foot. After a metro ride of shame (the morning people were coming out) we arrived at none other than McDo, where we proceeded to manger les frites and revel in our craziness.
Of course this was another time I really had to go to the bathroom, and another time when there was no bathroom. The ten minute walk from McDo to Lauras might have been one of the most painful experiences of my life both physically and emotionally. If you have read all this so far you can probably guess, but walking home at 9am after numerous wanderings, a lost shoe, and a McDo feast is probably not the classiest thing we could be doing on our Sunday morning.
After picking up the stuff we had left over at Laura's for the sleepover (I look back and now cannot believe I really though that I would need something to sleep in. That night soooo transcended sleepover...) and headed back for our second metro walk of shame, which was ultimately far more shameful than the first. Although we didn't really look like people who had been out all night (but lets face it we probably did), all the nice tourists were getting on to go to the Louvre. Actually the Louvre because that is the line we were on. While everyone else is preparing for a day of beautiful art at one of the best museums in the entire world, wearing their cute little sweater vests with their homemade little sandwiches in their bags, we are hiding behind our big sunglasses counting down the seconds till sleep. Again, what could possibly be classier.
Although I cannot imagine that staying out all night is something that is going to be a regular thing (I sort of hope it never happens again), I am so glad it did. Not only do I feel a little bit more like a real Parisian now, I spent the most wonderful night with some of the most wonderful girls in the entire world. Studying abroad and leaving all your friends from college to go to a new country where you don't know anyone is not easy, but with friends like Hillary, Margaret, Laura, and Sarah, I would be excited to study abroad in Antartica so long as we could be together!
While my mother and any other adult who is reading this is probably shaking their head in shame, I know you were all young once too, even if you don't remember and you did crazy things when you were twenty too. This is what leads me to believe that even when we get the unapproving stare from middle-aged people on the Metro, I am pretty sure it is only 10% unapproving, 80% knowing, and 10% jealously knowing that we are just some fun, young, happy girls who had the best night of our lives!
