février

1 to 28 February

1 to 2 February

After yet another normal week we continued our attempts to do more things around Paris in order to make the most out of this great city we live in while we aren’t travelling. On Friday Jer went to a Red Star FC match (3rd division French Football) with Steve and some other friends, while I met up with Liz and some friends at her place.

3 to 4 February

We were back to our normal Saturday routine again and on Saturday night our work weekends continued, this time at Ines’s apartment. For this round we enjoyed some French and Tunisian food and drinks. Sunday we both tried to get some work done while also relaxing a bit.

5 to 9 February

I would say this was yet another normal week for us, except this week we will call “The Week of Snow” here in Paris and far from normal in that perspective. It started snowing on Tuesday (the night we went down to Trocadero) and continued off and on through Friday. Coming from Pennsylvania snow is obviously nothing new to us, but the Parisians certainly are not used to, or prepared for that matter, snow so just a few inches and the place basically shuts down. Jer said that some of his student’s parents were stuck on the auto routes just outside the city for 8+ hours!

10 to 11 February

Another Saturday, another morning at the stores follow by an evening out. Tonight we were going out for dinner and drinks with Mike and Jeff though instead of going to someone’s apartment.

Our first stop was La Candelaria which is an inconspicuous taqueria in the front and a speakeasy type bar in the back. After a bit of a wait (the taqueria is very small) we got a chance to sit and try a few different types of tacos. Not surprisingly they were quite good and we enjoyed them along with a some margaritas. Once we were done eating we headed to the back to enjoy the actual bar. The drink list was very interesting and Jer and Mike both found a drink that they absolutely loved.

Next up was another speakeasy, this time in the back of a pizza shop, called Moonshiner. Mike has an entire list of speakeasies that could be found throughout Paris and wanted to try as many as possible. This one was much more crowded, but still fun, and again good drinks. As we were talking and enjoying the evening we all said the tacos hadn’t filled us up and how lucky were we that there was a pizza shop out front! However when we walked out they had stopped making pizza at midnight so we were out of luck. Our luck turned however as the area we were in had a lot of late night food shops so we made a stop to get some gyros before heading home.

Sunday was just a lazy day around the house with me trying to get some more work done since we are getting later into busy season.

12 to 16 February

Other than Jer having some changes in classes with the vacation coming up for the students we both had a relatively normal work week.

Wednesday was of course Valentine’s Day, along with Ash Wednesday so before coming home to enjoy a Valentine’s meal together we met at The American Church of Paris for their Ash Wednesday service. Another different thing this week was on Friday Jer ended up having to go on a mission to try to find our camera lens that DHL couldn’t deliver. If you remember we had a similar issue not far back where we had to go to a random center in the middle of nowhere to pick up something. This time it was worse because Jer was home when they were supposed to deliver this and they just didn’t come upstairs.

17 to 18 February

Yet another normal Saturday morning with one extra stop mixed in as we had to pick up some cakes for tonight.

Before we get to the reason for the cakes this afternoon we were in for a treat as we went to see Le Lac des Cygnes (Swan Lake) at Le Palais de Congres. I had found some well priced tickets and it was being performed by the Russian Ballet so I couldn’t wait.

After the show we made a quick stop at Marks and Spencer to grab some food and then a quick stop home to pick up the cakes, champagne, and wine for tonight. The reason for the cakes and everything else tonight was that we had another going away/birthday party for our friend Liz who will be moving back to The States at the end of the month.

We had a great time as we always do with Liz and Brandon and very luckily caught the last metro home, and by last metro I literally mean the last train coming through.

Unfortunately Sunday I had to go to work for a little while since next week is the end of busy season and I needed to get some things done.

19 to 23 February

It’s that time of the year, the last week of busy season!! While I worked to get everything done Jer had a different week than usual since his student classes are off due to the holiday weeks so he only taught his adult classes this week. Jer also got another haircut Wednesday and then Thursday went out to meet Brandon at Paname Brewery since he was back in town and they hadn’t got much time to talk at the going away party Saturday.

24 to 25 February

Rejoice! Now that busy season is over we can do more on the weekend again!

We started off my first Saturday morning of freedom by heading to Marché Président Wilson where we picked up some produce and some food for lunch. We then headed home to get some things done around the house and enjoy what we had picked up for lunch.

This evening we actually had multiple plans. I know we are really outdoing ourselves after being cooped up. First, we were headed over to Gabriel’s for his famed feijoada! After enjoying all the Brazilian goodness we headed to Experimental Cocktail Club to meet up with Mike, Jeff and Melanie. Place was absolutely packed so we decided to head Le Ballroom which was a cool underground bar. We enjoyed a few drinks there before calling it a night.

As you could probably guess with such a fun filled Saturday, Sunday morning was a very lazy morning for us. But we didn’t stay in the entire day as in the evening we headed over to Liz & Brandon’s again (this time just Liz since Brandon had already moved back to the US) as Liz offered up anything she wasn’t taking back with her, plus of course time to get rid of all the leftover wine and booze.

26 February to 2 March

After working so hard the entire month I took this week to work much less while Jer started another new adult class, this time on Monday’s. Other than another stop at Decathlon, for some additional ski trip needs, on Wednesday we didn’t have much going on this week and by the time Friday rolled around we were more than ready to head on our post-busy season trip.