Meredith in Paris

We've started the weekend trips off in style with a weekend to Paris for the long bank holiday (no Memorial day here, but the Brits were kind enough to have a bank holiday, not sure why though) this past weekend.

We loaded on the Eurostar train on Friday afternoon. We were very lucky to be able to stay in a flat owned by a friend of Erin's who was out of town for the weekend. Two times I've made it to Paris now and both times stayed in someone else's apartment while they were out of town. It's great because there is more money then to spend on wine and foie gras, which we certainly did enjoy.

Our plan was quite simple - eat, drink and shop...not necessarily in that order for Erin. She had the greenlight to do lots of shopping after winning some extra cash at work for all of her hard work getting us here.

A friend from Hitachi, Meredith, was also in Paris and we hung out all weekend. Lucky because not only was she fun, but she provided ample opportunities for us to laugh, if not at her, very near by. To start, on Friday night we had plans to go to a party with Erin's friend. We gave Meredith detailed instructions to our neighborhood from her hotel via the Metro. After waiting over drinks, we decided to eat dinner when she still didn't show up. Finally as our meal just arrived, so did Meredith. Apparently it was a long journey. Her order of duck confit arrived shortly after I finished mine. In true Corbett fashion, I was eyeing her plate and couldn't understand why she was eating so slowly. Then she stood up real fast and ran for the bathroom...She must have had too much fun on her recent trip to South Africa. Oh, and I enjoyed the second helping of duck.

On Saturday, Erin, Delphine and Meredith took off on a long day of shopping, while I walked all over Paris. Erin did indeed live up to reputation and brought in quite a haul. As for me, I wandered around Paris. In most places, I have a great internal compass, but apparently, like me, it doesn't speak French. I did enjoy a nice, meandering walk to find the Eiffel tower. Who would have thought you couldn't see it from everywhere.

Saturday night we all went to Delphine, Christophe and Viktor's (Erin's friend from living in Paris in high school) house for dinner. So great to eat dinner in a real french household. How can it be bad when you start off with Port and then move into a steak dish with a big piece of foie gras on top with a yummy sauce and wine. It was fantastic. It was also great to see Christophe's work, as he is a cartoonist who is soon to have his first book published in the US. (you can see some of his work here http://www.bulledair.com/blain/). Of course Meredith was tired from the night before, so she showed us how to fall asleep during dinner. And we thought Meredith was supposed to be fun.

On Sunday, Meredith, Erin and I went to the local market near our apartment (per our original plan Meredith was staying with us now too to save $ for shopping herself). After looking at all kinds of great food, we decided to shop for a picnic for later in the afternoon. We bought so much food that we wound up having about three picnics around town throughout the day. We had three kinds of pate, two cheeses, fruit, bread, olives, some fancy feta dip (I guess that's three cheeses), and of course, wine. We had our first picnic outside Notre Dame and our second, with champagne (Meredith's favorite) outside the Louvre. It was extremely decadent and a ton of fun. Always great to travel with someone who loves food as much as we do. Plus, she was so embarassed by her performances on Friday and Saturday that she had to prove how much fun she was. So we had a great Sunday night wine/foie gras crawl through Paris. It was indeed fun.

Meredith added one more bit of excitement on Monday morning when Erin went to see why she hadn't gotten up yet for her early flight to London. She found out that her alarm, which was our cell phone that I set...oops, was set for an hour later. She should have plenty of time, except that she realized when she woke up that she left her passport in the room safe of the hotel she was staying in on Friday night. After a chaotic race to get ready and catch a cab, she missed her flight...fortunately for her she was able to get on a later flight.

We returned to London on Monday along with Meredith as she was making one more stop here. We got to spend a couple of more nights with her, including one night at quiz night at the local pub. It was a great time...though we came in around 10th...out of 13. We need a brit on our team in the future. We had five people from Seattle. One of our new friends is a neighbor, Eddie, who is from Seattle and is the marketing director for Cranium (one of our favorite games). In a small world, he brought a friend who was visiting from Seattle, who works with our friend from Denver, Patrick Combs....or as she called him, Dr. P Diddy. We had a good team name though, "Seattle: Where the weather is better".

We'll get pictures posted soon.

Thanks for the fun Meredith.

Ted