Because We're Worth it...

I spent a super-duper fantastic weekend in Paris, enjoying my quality-time with the Empress and being totally wowed by her chic apartment. I had missed those types of girly weekends, visiting a friend who lives abroad, ever since l'Italiana moved to the U.S. London just isn't the same without her.

Back to Paris. As I had "done" all the major sights on previous visits and the massive queues in front of all museums apart from the totally obscure ones were quite repellent, we focused on the important things instead: shopping (more about that later), bitching and eating. Having walked around for hours on Saturday, we wanted to boost our sugar-levels with a little pit-stop at Ladurée, but hordes of people seemed to have had the same idea. After several other futile attempts, we finally parked our tired selves on the leather benches of the Café de Flores where we ordered an eclair with coffee cream each. Prices for sweets were not listed (or we did not check), but the prices for hot drinks (cappucino for more than EUR 7, anyone) made us tell the waiter - who replied by turning his eyes heavenward - we were fine with just water. In retrospect, I find 7something EUR for a coffee quite decently priced as one (!) eclair was...ta-dah: 12 Euros. Admittedly, it was a good eclair and thankfully, neither the Mermaid, nor my mother were present to deliver a lecture and to remind me how much this would have been in "old currency". The iced water was excellent, too...

On Sunday, we finally made it to Ladurée ("cheap" in comparison) where the Empress treated me to an ice-cream with (iced) macarons. Yummy!

 

The Empress chose an even prettier creation, a rose-flavoured macaron with a lychee-creme filling. Very elegant indeed. 

On Saturday night we had dinner at Le Relais de l'Entrecote, which serves only one main course, entrecôte, with a famous secret sauce. It was really good and worth waiting for almost 30 minutes outside, although the sauce was a bit on the (very) rich side. Afterwards, we went to the lounge bar of Pershing Hall, an über-stylish place where the beautiful and surgically enhanced people hang out. Cocktail prices match eclair-at-de-Flores-prices, but it's the atmosphere that counts, after all.

I can definitely see the attraction of living in Paris and there are no doubt plenty of opportunities to spend lots of money on beautiful things you absolutely need, not only on culinary delights, but having to queue for everything can be quite tiring for an impatient little creature like yours truly.