London is all about Paris these days

The trendiest neighbourhood of London these days, you ask me? Paris, or course! (Yes, I went there recently, so it's a convenient thing to say.) But, it's not just me thinking this. The day after I came back, TimeOut did a frontpage feature on Paris in London. See???

"I told you so," she yelled in an annoying voice. First things first, I think you should listen to this very silly song while you read this blog post. It's part of the soundtrack from the movie Darjeeling Limited.

Now. Think about it - they should add the Eurostar as a new line to the London Underground map and then they can draw Paris Gare du Nord on the map, in like Zone 25, next to Croydon or somewhere else down in south London. It's only two hours on the train from St. Pancras, I discovered! Two hours! It will take you longer than that to go from Heathrow to Greenwich. You get what I mean? It's almost our neighbourhood!

Friday, I kicked off my trip with a tour of the US Embassy and UNESCO buildings since a friend of mine is doing an internship at the US Mission to UNESCO. It's always interesting to take a peek inside the sealed off world of diplomats and these opportunities don't come every day, so I jumped at it. These places are all conveniently close to the Eiffel Tower and of course I jumped and smiled and shouted with joy as we walked by. It was a very Carrie Bradshaw-esque "I'm in Paris, Paris, Paris" moment.

I thought it would be near-impossible to devise anything more complicated than the map of the London Underground system (Tokyo excluded), but I think Paris beats it. Also, I have to say that their metro is pretty dirty, but at least they make up for it with cute entrances.

Speaking of dirt ... Paris was the first time I saw slums in Europe. You kind of expect them in Delhi and Mumbai and Bangkok but France?! Well, I kid you not there are many little huts constructed out of scrap metal, plywood and fabric, lining the train tracks. You will whizz past them on your way from London as you approach Gare du Nord. My friends told me it's mostly poor immigrants living there ... but still I was pretty shocked by this.

Onto prettier things, Friday sightseeing included the Arc the Triomphe, the Louvre and afternoon snacks at a café on the Champs-Élysées ... followed by a fabulous(!) houseparty thrown by a friend of mine. What a shame houseparties are so hard to do in London, with the "huge apartments" we all live in.

Saturday, I woke up early in the morning and took a walk around my friend's neighbourhood, while the others were sleeping off their hangovers.. She's lucky to live around to corner from the Notre Dame! It was sunny and I bought a crepe on the street for breakfast and I loooooved being awake so early and walking around when most people are still asleep. The air is fresher on the streets when you don't have to share it with millions of other people.
In the afternoon, my friend Zuz and I rented bikes and did a cycling tour of the city. There's something to be said about having your own mode of transport. The independence just makes you feel a lot less like a tourist. (And if you read my blog regularly, you will know that tourists are my pet hate. And the only thing I hate more is being a tourist.)

After a steep ascend towards Montmartre, we ate lunch at a boulangerie (I love the boulangeries in France!!!), then visited the Père Lachaise cemetery where lots of famous people, including Émile Zola, are resting. At the Sacré Coeur we got told off for being too loud and not behaved enough like good Catholic girls should be. It was raining outside and we were just hoping to find shelter in the church. Apparently, God may save you from many things, only rain is not one of them. No, no no. So we found ourselves kicked out, and set out to search for the famous café from Amélie (one of my favourites), which was unfortunately being refurbished. I recognized lots of places from the movie around Montmartre, which made me go all ooooh and aaah and how cute. I love French movies btw.

Good Catholic girls also probably don't visit the Paris equivalent of Soho, which is the area around Moulin Rouge. They even have a Museum of Sexual Art, which shows the sickest porn movies from the 1920s - imagine group sex involving dogs, nuns, hookers and priests ... Just like in Soho last time, I discovered that my knowledge of sexual toys and fetishes need updating. Did you know that people wear anal jewellery? Me neither. It's basically a butt plug with a big fake diamond at the end, which sticks out of your anus. They come in lots of different colours. I know, it sounds sick, doesn't it? But I saw a guy buying one! Really, what would you do if your boyfriend turned up to bed with one of these things? Laugh, laugh, laugh, then piss myself laughing, the run away screaming. And they said that Sex and the City covered everything there was to cover about sex. This one, not. And I imagine it would make for a funny episode.

Late afternoon, the sky gave us a few showers and the one-way street signs everywhere started to become really annoying, so we stopped to dry off in a little Middle Eastern eatery, where I munched on a delicious toasted wrap filled with lamb kebabs and my friend had falafel. On the way home, we took a look inside the ultra-modernist Centre Pompidou ... and then it was on to knocking on those big wooden doors near the Notre Dame and jasmine tea and girly chatting before a dinner of pizza and a crazy night out at the Café OZ, where we drank tequila out of fluorescent shot glasses and danced on the tables till about 4 am. Next day, Breakfast in America (which has crazy long queues of like one hour) and then hello London again.

Thanks to all the Paris friends who hosted me - you know who you are! :o)

Finally some pictures of Richmond

Two-weeks-ago is hardly news, but the trouble with having a packed social calendar is that there is no time (or energy) to write about it, right? So, as I am sure you have noticed, the weather has been quite nice and it was perfect time for a picnic (two weeks ago)! I packed some chicken satay, dips, naan breads, pina coladas, apple strudel and my old friend from boarding school, plus a couple of her friends and off to Richmond we went... It was delightful afternoon (daaaaarling), with lots of English humour (that I will never understand but nevertheless find amusing) and talking in picnic voices. Anyway, if you fancy a day in the country, but not too far from London, then Richmond is good, with many pubs along the Thames river, and it's the last stop on the District Line (westbound), so technically still almost in London, although the postcode is Surrey.

Here are some delightful pictures to delight your lovely eyes. Very picturesque old England. Oh, and did I mention that Virginia Woolf lived in Richmond? And that she absolutely hated it? And that there is a Curzon's cinema which shows a lot of great foreign movies? And that there is a great little chocolate shop on the corner of Richmond Green? Sold yet?

Moroccan Food Cravings

Long time no update (as if all of you, my zero readers, missed me) -but I have a proper excuse since I made a trip back to the motherland (and fatherland, brotherland, sisterland, sister-in-law-land ...) and spend a gloriously lazy week exploiting everyone's hospitality.

But before I did that I got a huuuge craving for Moroccan sweets, the kind of craving that makes you want to climb up the walls and eat the plaster off them. I craved of that summer afternoon in Aix-en-Provence when me and my friend Zuz sat in the park and ate all these too-sweet Moroccan sweets, which are easily available in large quantities over there, posing a major threat to people's waistlines. (But somehow, I suspect, the French girls are better at controlling themselves than I will ever be. They all seemed stick-thin.)

So, conveniently, me and the girls decided to check out Souk Bazaar on Litchfield Street, near Leicester Square station. Don't let the website fool you - the place is much smaller and less grand than you'd think from their photos. But the ambience was good and pretty quiet on a weekend afternoon and the mint tea was good and so was the squid and the duck and the hummus and the couscous and the sweets! Happy belly. And did I mention even their toilets were cute? So there, Souk Bazaar. Go.

Later on, we went to Trafalgar Square and there were lots of people chalk-drawing on the pavement ... used to do that as a kid, except my designs were not quite as obscene or politically motivated as theirs. Oh, and I didn't ask people to pay for taking a picture either! (Cheeks.)

Towards the evening, as you do, me and the girls took a walk around Soho and yes we went to ALL the sex shops and I found out that I must be a total prude and bore and that I don't even know what some of these fetish props are for! People have strange fetishes, I tell ya ...