Holiday Happy Time

Well, it's 2010 and that can only mean that its time to look back on the holiday goodness that was bestowed upon me. Sure, it was super cold(I am a California girl), but tempering that was the warmth of love surrounding me.

Yuletide Destination: Paris, my very first time in France!

Some France Gall to set the mood (little 5/4 gem for y'alls):



With all the crazy snow, trains were getting cancelled left and right in Europe, and I never thought that my penny pinching decision to take the bus would prove clairvoyant. But it did, and I got to Paris with hardly a hitch. Joyousness suffused every fiber of my being seeing two of my dearest friends in the whole wide world waiting at the bus station in Paris, Erin and Slaven.

We headed Slaven's studio, situated at the foot of the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre. Activities included plenty of flaneur style wandering, lots of noodle consumption (going for nearly 5 months without Pho is hell and I intended to make up for it), baguette purchasing galore, winter essentials shopping with Erin, and cinema pilgrimages: Truffaut's grave in Montmartre cemetery, the Cinematheque Francaise (my favorite items at their museum were Catherine Deneuve's Donkey Skin from Jacques Demy's film Peau d'Ane, and the telegrams from all the filmmakers who had supported Langlois in '68), and a screening of Buster Keaton's The General.

We did midnight mass at the Sacre Coeur, replete with choir and a service in French that only Slav could understand. For Christmas itself, we did it up with home made crepes, and ate curry the following day. Curry Crepe Christmas!

Here's a link to the photos.

Then it was back on the bus to Leiden, where I met up with Machilu, a friend I made in Cape Town, who's now studying in Italy. It had been two years since we'd seen each other, but it felt like no time had passed. Also met her BF Vincent, who studies in England. They had been in Holland well before I left, since Vince has family here that they were visiting. So it was three days in a row with them, just chatting and of course eating loads of delicious stuff from dim sum to oliebollen. We did a little day trip to Delft, and then discovering that pre-midnight there was nothing but firecrackers in Leiden just danced up a storm to music vids and clinked our champie glasses to ring in the New Year's in Koudekerk, a village near Leiden where Vince's relatives live.

Piccies right here.

'Twas lovely times, even if I couldn't be with the bio-family for the first time in my life. A great denouement to 2009 and auspicious launch to 2010.