New Boyfriend + Cheese = Happy Erin

  Honfleur and Paris, France
Friday, May 14, 2004

Ok, I know its been ages again but here we go with an update of my adventures over the last 8 months.....

I'd say this year so far has been a different type of adventure altogether- much more sane and satisfying and good for the old mental health. As some of you may recall from my visit to Calgary at Christmas, I was quite excited about the prospect of a date I had arranged on my return to London. Well it turns out that date went extremely well (we went for an Indian and saw Love Actually and then chatted till 4 in the morning) and my adventures have included one particular Englishman named Douglas Barns ever since!

I know, you're saying - what! an Englishman! all they do is drink tea and whinge and have soccer brawls! Well this Englishman has no illusions- he is sitting here agreeing but there is so much more too him and he makes me soooooooooooooooooo happy!


My Lovely Englishman!

So enough of the sap, what have I actually been doing? Well in late march Doug and I went off to gay Paris and a little coastal town called Honfleur which is in Normandy. It was a bit of a fiasco to say the least. To start, Doug is terrified of flying. He has to sit on the front of the plane, the only hitch being that we were flying budget where they don't actually give you a ticket let alone allocate you the seat you want!Thank goodness we got there 20 hours early so we could be at the front of the queue! We did manage to get him on the plane and into Paris airport where we then waited ages for a train into Paris before being told that there was a bomb scare/suspect package and there would be no train services that day. We then sorted out a bus into the city but it was just a tad too late and we missed the train to Le Havre which would have connected with the next bus we wanted to get to Honfleur. So instead of being there late afternoon to enjoy our beautiful fishing village we were eating deep fried I don't know what with bacon fat salad in a shitty little cafe in industrial Le Havre.


My GQ Man - Pity you can't see the child's airplane ride he's sitting on!

Nevermind, Honfleur was absolutely gorgeous. I think the sea air made us a bit lazy because we slept and ate a lot, but there wasn't heaps to "do" anyways. The village was really cute with little shops and bakeries and galleries and a beautiful harbour. We went to the Saturday market with local produce to die for - just imagine the best cheese and roast chicken and pate you've ever had and times it by 100! It's a bit of a colder region so rather than being famous for wines they have gorgeous gorgeous apple cider- its a pity really we didn't drink more of it. The motel we stayed in was sweet, quiet, CLEAN, and friendly. The owner couldn't do more for us and served us homemade croissants in our room every morning.

Click here to see the motel website and more pictures of Honfleur - I only put this in because I just discovered how to do it - don't feel obligated!

Honfleur is the place where Doug discovered wine and salmon- he previously would not eat either but was sucked in at the cute little restaurant where we ate 2 nights in a row called Le Corsaire (isn't that pirate en francais?) and I tried monkfish which is a bit of a funny texture but had a lovely saffron sauce to make up for it. And just imagine slices of homemade pate the size of a dinner plate for starters! Yum! Enough about the food....


I Love My Camembert but Doug Thinks it Smells Like Feet!

Well we didn't really do much other than eat. On the last day we went to the "Naturospace" where they had a butterfly enclosure thingy. It was very cool at first, the butterflies are quite beautiful, but it did start getting scary when the huge ones started coming at us. We left that to walk around in a storm, settled into a nice cafe for savoury lunch crepes (mmmmmmmm) and then headed back to Paris for the evening.

By this point we were getting a bit ratty with each other so we had a wee argument in the matchbox hotel, conveniently located near the Bastille (or is that Place de la Bastille since the Bastille doesn't exist anymore?) and once we got over that, set out to find something to eat. Even thought it was about midnight we were still able to find a place to eat at the Denny's of France, Hippopotamus, a jazzy joint that was open until 3am. This is where we first discovered that all the phrase books must be wrong. They tell you that saying "L'addition, s'il vous plait" means "Can I have the cheque please?", but every time we said this on the trip we were handed a dessert menu and then the waitress buggered off for 2 hours. And we also discovered that when you do the polite thing and try speaking a bit of shitty french to the french they automatically assume you will understand everything they say back to you even though your pronunciation was little better than a dog's and should have indicated that you could not conduct an entire conversation en francais. Guess I should have paid more attention in french.


Flossing in the Shoebox that was our Paris Hotel

The next day we blew a bunch of money at a supermarket (still not sure why a bit of cheese, bread, shitty pate and tomatoes cost so much) and trekked down to the Pont Neuf. From our hotel that meant walking along the Seine, past/through Notre Dame and to the end of the small island that divides the Seine. The Pont Neuf is a quiet little park on the end where the birds tried to get a fair share of our meal and we discovered the departure point for one of the riverboat cruises. Ideally a riverboat cruise gives you a good overview of the main monuments and buildings in Paris. However between the retarded chic from Saskatchewan who was sitting behind us (she had moved to California, was proud of the fact that her husband was related to Dennis Waterman (the star of some old British drama series) and dressed like she was trying to be Jessica Simpson) and the torrential downpour that blurred the view of Paris' finest, I don't think we got much out of it. We did however manage to down an entire bottle of wine and get ourselves into an argument about the Irish.


Notre Dame

After a beer and a visit to a pet store we sorted out our differences and decided to hang out in the Louvre since the rain was killing any other plans. As on my previous visit to the Louvre, the place sucked us in and we lost all sense of time. The place is just soooooooooo huge, but I was happy to revisit my favorite things from the last time instead of rushing around trying to take in too much.


I know I'm a comedic genius but I really don't remember what he was laughing about - the Louvre did drive us a bit mad

Our last day was rainy again and we were forced into discovering a sweet little pubby place where a man dressed in tight black jeans and a black silk shirt (cleverly buttoned to reveal his sumptuous chest hair and gold necklace) served us some lovely french onion soup and some so-so beef bouguignonne.

We left that afternoon, booking a cab just to play it safe, and the flight back to London was definitely an easier one for Doug.


The airplane ride whilst waiting for our flight.

As for events after Paris- we went to an amazing Damien Rice concert that blew us away - I had Doug's mom and step dad over for Easter dinner. I threw my green bean casserole all over the floor by accident and mucked up the icing on the bunny cake see below.



This has already been long enough so I'll do up the rest of our adventures later.

Love you all,

Erin