Paris is the opposite of Yoga

This blog entry was written from the Airplane flying home from Paris Dec.3 at 9am... These are photos of me and Amanda at a late-night Dutch club in Amsterdam (the locals proved themselves to be incredibly bizarre) and me on my steel horse in Vondel Park. Oh Yea. One caveat to the obsession with food, is that coming off my liquid fast and into the glowing food arms of Paris, well, created a sort of food-porn response.

Paris food/vice diary:

I'm completely wrecked. My lungs are constricted, my skin is like paper, my hair a ratted ash tray, my body achey and full of bread and cheese, dehydrated, smudged, bloated, exhausted, in other words: recovering from two and one half days in Paris. I'm smuggling cheese on the plane – the smelliest I could find, and hoping the two bottles of wine I bought have not exploded in my suitcase all over my crumpled undies and stinky sweaters. How did I fall so far, so soon?

Last night I slept for 90 minutes hitting snooze on Toto's cell phone alarm and trying desperately to talk myself into getting off the couch to get the fuck out to make my plane. I made it into a vertical position, nearly wept from the effort and then dragged myself to a $100 taxi to the end of the earth to Charles De Gualle. There, we encountered the "French system" which is "we work when we want to (yawn) and if only one of us is working at the desk, the ticket counter, the security line, you will wait, because we will not work that much, so fuck off (yawn)." I then mounted a bus for 20 minutes to drive to the segment of Charles de Gaulle that seems to be located in Madrid to end up right here. Delta flight 82 en route to JFK.

I left Thomas and Nico sound asleep in bed around 5:30 am, after putting Amanda into a cab and saying good bye to the Parisian friends. Before I go into activities I will go into Gastronomie….
Thursday night –
Dinner with Nico, Thomas, Anne (who is 5 months pregnant!), David and Amanda. A typical French restaurant. After drinking a bottle of white and champagne at Toto and Nico's place we arrived at the restaurant – busy, crowded, cute – in the Marais.
Premier plats: fresh anchovies with garlic sauce
Entrée: Mini- ravioli with puree de courgettes et aubergines in a tomato sauce. Olive oil and red peppers too.
Desert: an enormous bowl of chocoalate mousse that you serve yourself and that will bring you to multiple orgasm. I am not the only one.

Friday –
Lunch: Sandwich Crudite which was a fresh baguette, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato and a hard boiled egg, and was simply exquisite – why? How? The bread, the mayo, the scenery? Perhaps being on my way to The Louvre gave it an extra taste.
Snack: one half of a fresh crepe with elemental cheese, salt and pepper – a bite of nutella and banana crepe
Dinner: side note – I have a hunch that this restaurant was chosen for its beautiful décor and even more beautiful waiter – an enormous dark skinned, light eyed deep voiced character – the request had been for Senegalese… and although good, not amazing.
Premier plats: fish croquettes and spicy tomato/pepper dipping sauce
Entrée: Chicken Mouffe – which I have dreamt of – a typical spicy peanut sauce on chicken, yams, potatoes... but have had better.

Saturday –
An "easy" lunch
Chinese noodles, fresh vegetables sautéed in curry sauce – both healthy and greasy – and $14 dollars!
Dinner:
Chez Marianne – in le Marais – a Jewish/Israeli/Moroccan restaurant
Plate of: hummous, tarama, feta (amazing), aubergine with cumin, taboule, tzadiki and pita –
This meal nearly made me weep.

Now the nighttime and daytime activities were incredible and surely worthy of explanation in great detail, but we are about to take off and I need to make sure that I have a blanket, a cheap newspaper and room to stretch my feet…

And coming back now to reality - I have landed, I am back into the world that is u-s-a, and everything else seems so far away.