Hildy à Paris!

This past weekend Hildy came to visit and we had a simply marvelous time.  We walked around St. Germain des Pres and went to Laduree, the best chocolaterie/patisserie in all of Paris (well at least for macaroons).   She had caramel and I had lemon and they were bothe equally wonderful in their own way.  We visited Notre Dame and St. Chapelle (how can there be so much stained glass in one building??).  And, we went with to an awesome forest.  Yes, I said that correctly.  There is a forest in Paris.  It is, however in disguise as a park.  It is ginormous and awesome.  It would be a perf place to go for a long bike ride.  We walked around part of it and found a sweet waterfall which had a cave that we walked through to get behind it.  We also explored a bit of the Marais (the Jewish/gay quarter with little boutiques, vintage shops, ect.  Probably my favorite area of Paris) and got wonderful falafel from the place next to the world famous falafel stand (I swear this one was better than the time I went to the "world famous" one...  Largely because this one had fried eggplant that was the best thing ever).  We went to a very cool market in the Marais that sold everything from scissors to fruit to bizarre meat to clothes.  H. and I heartily enjoyed smelling soaps.  We also did a bunch of bar hopping, as Paris is the perfect place to do it.  Here are a few of our hopping highlights (keep in mind this  was not all in one night):


Le Piano Vache


This is a crazy awesome bar in the latin quarter that has posters covering every inch of the walls, and live music sometimes.  We got a beer here and really enjoyed the atmosphere.  Fun fact:  its Johnny Depp's fave bar in Paris.  They had some sweet tunes playing when we got there and there were some nice Parisian hipsters.  


Le Kitch


This one has the most random stuff ever on the walls.   Its pretty small and cute though.  They have one Shrek mask, and naturally because of this their signature drink is called a Shrek (sort of like a blended mojito-->a.k.a. awesome).  There was a guy there who showed us this really weird painting and told us his friend painted it, and that the heart on the stuffed animal/person in the painting (yeah, it was a really weird painting) was his heart.  I didn't really know how to respond so I just said it was beautiful.  Go French skills!


La Belle Hortense


This is a bookstore/bar that is supah cool.  It has all these wooden built-in shelfs filled floor to ceiling with books.  It was mostly an older crowd, but the place was so cool.  They were playing Arcade Fire, which made me automatically fall in love with the place.  Hildy and I also got our first martini's ever, and they were bomb.com.  It's always good to find another enjoyable drink.  


L'Alimentation Generale


This was my favorite of all (and that's saying a lot).  We looked up some places with live music and this band seemed cool, so we decided to try it.  The band had two female singers and a bunch of stringed instruments.  They sang in French, Spanish and English, and played swing and swing-esque music.  During the band's break, the bar played original swing music and tons of people started dancing swing!  Everybody was having a ball and there were some really impressive dancers.