Our new blog!

Hey y'all,

So I've decided to take our Paris trip blog and turn it into a general Nathan and Juliette blog. Here we'll update what (if anything) is going on with us. I can't say that it will be updated daily, or even weekly, but check back every now and then if you'd like to catch up with us!

So last night we got some new patio furniture, pictured on the right there, minus the ottoman. It really gives our back garden a cleaner, nicer look... and we got it just in time to entertain Juliette's work colleagues tonight!

take care~

Nathan

Lost Baggage

So, for anyone who has ever lost their luggage with an airline, you may be able to sympathize with this story.

Upon arriving in the states, you are required to claim your baggage and recheck it with the airline. This is the most inane process that I have witnessed, as the TSA made no special effort to inspect any of our luggage whatsoever. It was by all that I could see, just one of those endless rabbit holes of the bureaucracy of government.

Juliette and I stood around for about 45 minutes waiting to get our luggage from the carousel, we walked through the customs line where one officer was overlooking roughly 3000 people's luggage (at JFK in New York). We stood in that line for about 15 minutes, for the guy just to look at my declaration form and then wave me through. We then had the extreme pleasure of waiting for about 30 more minutes in a line to just put our luggage in its own special line. Then we had to stand in another line for about 15 minutes and be screened to make sure that we weren't sneaking any metal in that they didn't catch in Paris. Could they have just moved the baggage themselves from the plane to our plane? Yes, but in the age of terrorism, they need to justify the people who make you stand in a line and do it for them. Money well spent. If the TSA were actually checking any of the luggage I wouldn't have been so irritated by it, but all they were doing is herding us from one corral to the next.

When we arrived in Palm Beach one piece of luggage was missing, which contained all of our clothing and toiletries. We filed a claim at the office there and got a claim number. Juliette's parents dropped us off at home and I turned my phone on and started recharging it. There was a message from an anonymous agent at Delta. She said that they had found my luggage, but the bag tags were torn off. She left no phone number to return the call, however she did state that I should call the Delta customer care line. The only thing that I can infer from this is that they had gone through my luggage and found something with my name and phone number on it. The problem was that the bag was actually checked in under Juliette's name and so the claim was filed under her name. The Delta system apparently does not bother to look at anything other than your last name, if they were to search through and see that Juliette and my address match, we wouldn't have any problem. I have now called Delta twice, which farms their customer care out overseas. I am not a prejudiced person, but I cannot understand the very nice people who are the representatives of Delta, this is a problem because they are the people who I may be able to explain my situation to.

Thus far, I have had no luck explaining to the two people I have spoken with that in spite of the fact that Juliette and I have different last names, we do live in the same house and are both claimants on this bag. The bag was checked in under her name and did have personal items of mine within it, apparently which had my phone number and name on it.

At this point, the only thing that I can really foresee doing is going back to the airport to speak directly with someone at the Delta desk, because they do not list that phone number anywhere, rather encourage you to call customer care, which happens to not be in the airport that I need, rather half a world away.

And so far, that is the story.

Friday May 11th

Catching up now from the last two days... Juliette and I ventured out to Rennes, in the province of Brittany to visit with Gina and Damien. I was quite grumpy and spent much time chastising the stupid ticket machine that would not issue us our tickets for the train. We then had to stand in line for half an hour behind other enraged customers who were also having problems. It turns out that you have to have some special microchip on your credit card that they only issue in the European Union.

We ended up getting there just fine, the French country side is beautiful, especially when you're blowing through it at around 150 to 200 miles per hour. Juliette and I had fine french sandwiches and coca light and I napped most of the way. Damien met us at the station and Gina got off of work shortly after; we met with their friends and had a nice steak dinner and then proceeded to drink ourselves silly and talk late into the night.

The next morning Gina was quite persistent about waking us up, I guess it was 10:30 in the morning... we walked around the city of Rennes for a while and did some catching up. We also went through the market place, which I would kill for in the states. You can buy fresh produce, meats, cheeses, wines and seafood, just like in our supermarkets except the food is local and generally hasn't been frozen and shipped a thousand miles before it gets to you.

Gina, Juliette and I met Damien for a lunch of guillettes (buckwheat crepes) and then walked to another cafe for coffee and beers. Gina bought us some great super stinky cheese as a gift, very sweet of her, we ate one of the cheeses, the other I'm hoping customs will let us bring through. It's unreal to walk through a city that has so much history, hundreds, if not a thousand years older than any of the cities in the United States. It just opens your eyes and gives you a whole new perspective on the world.

Thanks again to Gina and Damien for putting us up and feeding us!

Our visit was unfortunately cut a little bit short because Gina had to work, so Ju and I hit the train and sped back to Paris. We went to an art show in the suburbs, where we met up with Juliette's friends and then had dinner at L'industrie with Olivier; Vincent and Gael, where I had my second steak tartare.

This morning was hell morning, we had to clean up and pack Juliette's apartment and then lug 12,000 pounds of luggage up four flights of stairs! We made sure that before we carried them up that we had split a carafe of wine over steak frites though.

We just got back from a chinese restaurant and are staying the night at Olivier's before catching our flight in the morning. I feel like I'm rushing through all of this, but I wanted to give some update before we're back in the States.

Talk to you all soon!

10pm Tuesday May 8. Paris
sitting in an internet cafe next to nathan who has been here since sunday morning. the time has flown since his arrival and internet access has been sparse so the blog updates have been too few...

to recap...

Thursday, May 3: i worked on cleaning out more of my apt. took a lunch break near Bastille around 1pm with Ol and Virginie at a cafe called "La Pause Cafe". so nice to see Virginie's smiling face and catch up old times. She is happily living with a man named Lionel in an apt he bought and completely redid near Republique. We talk about our love lives and how both she and i have both left behind our artistic careers in favor of financially fullfiling job offers. i return to the apt with olivier and we do some more cleaning. things are seeming bleak at this point with the amount of junk i had stored in there (and now must be rid of) slightly overwhelming me. ol leaves to go to work around 4:30pm and arrives delphes with chocolate eclairs in time for tea together. we talk about our love lives (a running theme in the catch up conversations with my close friends) and where we are in our life ambitions. she discloses that she and moka are ready to start making babies!!!. i tell her how hard it is for me to be going through the stuff in my apt and finally, officially, leaving that part of my life behind. she leaves around 7pm and i get ready to join up with marie amelie, my jewelry designer friend who people always take for my older sister. marie and i meet up at the metro bonne nouvelle near my apt and we head to St Paul where she takes me to the sister restaurant of the restaurant she formally worked at before now working for Hermes. (Incidentally and coincidentally, the restaurant i had dined at the night before with vincent and olivier called Cafe Vivienne!) We have a lovely (at late) evening catching up (again our love lives and our life ambitions). she is truly a darling person who i hope will have much success with the line of jewelry she has launched over the last year and is hoping to find shops to sell it in! i crawl home quite late to olivier's apt and sneak into bed with him to catch a few hours sleep bfore another big day...

One fish, two fish, monk fish, ugly fish

I originally tried to send this message from my phone, but as the data networks here are totally different than at home, it didn't work.

Visited with Ju's friends last night, they were nice although my total lack of french was a definite problem, it didn't stop us from playing a game where someone played songs from popular cartoons, mostly from the 80's and we shouted out the names of whatever show it was from. The words to the songs are different but I did okay recognizing the tunes.

For lunch yesterday I had a steak tartare, which is essentially raw ground steak served with an egg on top. It was delicious in the way that things are delicious when you're afraid of them, in other words, I went into it with a great deal of respect for the nearly living animal on my plate.

Today we visited with some of Ju's family way out in the suburbs, a very pleasant time, again minus my total ineptitude with the language. Another culinary first for me: monkfish or as her cousin Alain referred to it: uglyfish.  Highlight of the visit: playing legos with her 8 year old cousin, until he started shooting missles at me.

Tomorrow is another action packed day, lunch with Juliette's friends and then off to Rennes to visit with Gina and Damien.

Not broke yet but soon to be! Please send euros or emergency rations!

monday in paris

hello all, today is the first day that i have made it to an internet cafe, last night was also the first time since friday that i had a chance to actually sleep.

i'm near Juliette's apartment and we're off to go to a couple of shops (my favorite bookstore here; Shakespeare & Co http://shakespeareco.org/ among them)

it's taking me exceedingly long to type this out as french keyboards are set up a bit differently than american ones.

Last night we were at Juliette's friend Olivier's house to watch the french presidential election results and aftermath. Nicholas Sarkozy won against Segolene Royal. Sarkozy is very anti-immigrant, very conservative; a fascist by my estimation who wants to dictate rather than take notes from the people, much like the american president.

Just a note, I can't send pictures from my phone as I was hoping to do, i'll have to upload them when i get back, sorry!

Tonight I have dinner with the rest of Juliette's friends, and tomorrow we go to the suburbs of Paris for lunch with some of her family.

Au revoir!

4 Mai 2007. Paris.

Day 3 in Paris. Yesterday was spent going through my apt pulling out everything from the closets and from the "cave" below ground. I have about 10 bags of clothing to donate along with some random bits of furniture and other odds and ends for the house. I spent the morning pulling and sorting and took a lovely lunch break at the  Point St. Eustache with Olivier where my 2 favorites waiters still work and happily recognized and greeted me with kisses. How lovely! Then, I dragged Olivier back to my apt to help me sort out piles and we spent the better part of the afternoon pulling the stuff out of the cave and trying on all my clothes to see what we should keep as well as finding stacks of photos to pour over laughing, pointing out to each other our past goofy hairstyles and outfits. We left it all behind around 6pm to go meet with Ol's boyfriend Vincent and friend Jouli for a drink rue des Francs Bourgeois. Afterwards, Vincent, Ol and I went to eat at Le Bistro Vivienne not far from the Place des Victoires. I ate the steak tartare that I had been dreaming of for the last 6 months... amazing!

Today, back to the apt for more sorting and cleaning. A lunch break with Virginie and Olivier near Bastille. And tonight, maybe dinner with Marie Amelie...

9h30 - Jeudi 3 Mai. Paris.

sitting in Olivier's living room of his tiny but cosy apt after having eaten breakfast (tea and bread and butter) my early morning practice of watching music videos on TV has not suffered thanks to the change in cultures and i'm busily catching up on the latest in really bad french music ( this includes: Vitaa, Celine Dion, Christophe Willem, Keren Rose, Emmanuel Moire...) and speaking of french TV, i was suprized to realize that most of french TV is up to date on the stupid ongoing american series that we refuse to watch in the states (House, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Lost, etc) and when the french haven't outright re-made the US reality TV shows such as American Idol, french version: La Nouvelle Star or dubbed the orignal versions like for Flavor of Love (i kid you not).

yesterday, my first day in, was spent in a bit of a daze with the lack of sleep. paris is as beautiful as ever particularly with the sun out and it never fails at this time of year to sit yourself down at a terrace for a drink and run into someone you know (yes, even after not having lived in Paris for more than 3 years...) i've arrived at a politically ripe time with the french presidential elections in the midddle of its first and second round. last night was spent watching the televised debate (it's starting to sound like all i've done so far is watch TV!) between Royal and Sarkozy while eating a light dinner with Olivier and Delphes of lettuce, tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, 3 other french cheeses, some fabulously dry and delicious saucisson sec and, of course, the french bread i've missed so much! we thought Royal had the upper hand in the debate but then again we are partitial to her so it's easy to pick out the good qualities of the candidate you wish to win...

today i shall go attack the first of the apt clean out. i have a scheduled break at 13h to go meet Olivier at the Pointe St Eustache for lunch and hopefully he'll be available after to come give me a hand with the rest of it. i'm dragging my feet a bit to get there but it is now 10h and i must be off...

Juliette Leaves

Dropped off Juliette at a quarter to 7 this morning. Unfortunately both of our flights worked out in such a way that we've got more than 6 hours of layover in Atlanta before our respective flights to France! I would've tried any other situation but as tickets are not cheap by any means right now, we had to take what we could get.
I've encouraged Juliette to write in the blog while she's over there, hopefully she will.

And now for me, the big wait. I have to work the rest of this week, which now that Ju's gone, all I can think about is being over there. Good luck getting much work out of me during, "The Final Countdown!"