Vincent - CS #24

Oh man this morning was weird. We had to leave Noemie's flat because she's gone for the weekend. We headed to Vincent's place. When we got there, there were 3 other CouchSurfers there; two of them were heading out for the day though. With the three of us that were left, even though we were tired and hungry and it was nice out and we wanted to go play in Paris, he started showing us 10 minutes of 3 different videos and giving us little mini lectures in between. It was the strangest thing! This was after he showed us some of his aikido (sp??) skills and gave me a lecture on how much sugar is in hamburgers (he is a dentist, FYI).

So, we watched some of a shark movie, and then some of a Fast and the Furious movie, and then some of a Katherine Heigl movie, and finally it was like 11, and we were STARVING and we were like - Hey man, we want to go outside and stop watching 10 minutes of all these random movies and eat some food and figure out our plans! So he let us use his internet (which was not wifi, because he 'heard' somewhere that wifi was bad for you) and we coordinated with three different people for today and tomorrow and finally left around noon.

It was a crazy morning. Once we got out of the house though we went to the Opera area and found pastries and some cheese and bread sticks. Then we walked back down to Rue de Rivoli and around Place de la Concorde and the Jardin de Tuilieres. We sat at the garden for a while looking out over the Place de la Concorde. Finally we left and looked at trinkety souvenir shops making our way to the Comedie Francaise. You can get really cheap tickets, but we wanted to know if there were any English shows (there aren't). Then we went to Gallerie Lafayette and looked at a lot of expensive things that we can't actually afford.

After that, we went to an Aussie bar called Cafe Oz to meet up with another CouchSurfer who is living in Paris this summer with her German boyfriend. There was also a 5th surfer who met up with us. The five of us watched the US/Slovenia game which was great fun. It was a really nice spontaneous CouchSurfing group. Everybody was willing to converse and laugh and we all got along quite well. The game was really exciting too - our comeback was sweet and we 100% got robbed of our winning goal. I don't usually get upset with ref calls, but this was just....tragic. Really, an awful, awful, literally game changing call. Major bummer.

After the game ended Laura and I found another place to have a nice dinner close to the Grands Boulevards. We split a pizza and I got red wine (she got chardonnay). Then...after looking at so many menus and going "that would be good" I finally ordered a cheese plate. However, Laura didn't really want any, so Yes, I did eat the entire cheese plate. And I loved it. Don't judge me for eating like a cow. I'm in Paris. I got brie, camembert, and chevre, and they were all delicious. Also, for a plate of all three and a ton of fresh baguette bread it was only 7 euros which I'm pretty sure is way cheaper than you could get all that cheese in the states!

So after a delicious meal that I still cannot believe I ate all of (!!!!) we went to the Bastille to meet up with Estelle!!! Estelle was one of our hosts in Brussels, Belgium and she is here in Paris visiting her friend. We went out to dinner with her, Julia, and Julia's boyfriend Guillaume (I didn't / couldn't eat anything) and it was so much fun to see her again and to hang out and chat!!!

Then we went back to Vincent's place and were happy to know that we got an air mattress instead of just a floor. That was good news...