Last Sejour a Paris ...

After Tiff and Grube left, Andrea and I changed lodging locations for the last 3 days in Paris before going to Portugal. Our friends, the architect students, were returning on Sunday afternoon and had tons of work to do before turning in a big project at the end of the week … so we didn’t want to disturb them. So we ended up in another somewhat random housing situation. Long story short … we stayed with the family (mom, brother, and sister) of one of our friends from Rennes; he’s actually the boyfriend of Andrea’s Chilean assistant/friend from Rennes and we got to know him pretty well during the year. He said it wouldn’t be a problem to stay with his family in Paris, and it worked out really well. They’re Algerian/French and have an apartment in the Clichy area of Paris … cool because I’ve never really checked out that neighborhood before. His brother was our age and took us out one night … what was just a chill evening at a bar in the Clichy area turned into random encounters with an incohernt Polish student and an old Scottish guy.

Out in Clichy with our friend's brother, Aresski :

Our last day in Paris we did laundry so that we could start out fresh in Portugal, and then tried to do a bit of gift/souvenir shopping. Once again, was a bit difficult with the rain. We headed over to the Latin Quarter for cheesy souvenirs but ending up going into Gilbert Jeune, a great Parisian bookstore with tons of used & new books ... found a few gifts in there so that was good! Then we went to dinner at Chez Papa ... same place that Tina & I discovered via our new friend from Greece in February. This time Andrea & I split the escargots and salad - a lot better than trying to each eat one of those monstrous salads again. After dinner we went over to an area behind the Place d'Italie to meet up with our friends Helene and Maria ... seriously cool girls that I'm really lucky to have met this year (this is the group of friends that we usually stay with when in Paris). We had a final drink with them, followed by somewhat prolonged goodbyes-but-see-you-again type of thing. Next rendez-vous will be Chile, Brazil, or the US - we'll see!!

Saying bye to Helene & Marie in Paris: