Massive Nights

So, I'm a little behind on the blogging. I had two exams this week and went into study mode, barely even leaving my room for a few days. It paid off on the literature exam, but the art history one today was harsh - the material started in the 12th century and ended in the 19th, but the exam seemed a little heavy on a shorter time span and seemed to leave out some important paintings while including some unexpected ones. I usually strive for A's but am content to just settle for passing this (good thing my grades won't transfer-this is the only one for the semester!). Enough of that though, here's a blog to catch up on some fun nights out before I became a hermit.

One of my good friends from school is in Aix en Provence for the semester studying art (I'm a non-French major studying french, he's a non-art major studying art). He came to Paris right before I got here and recently came back with his class of 12, which I got to join for a visit to L'Orangerie, which houses Monet's water lilies and other works.


After the museum, Nick, his friend from high school (his roommate in Aix), and I walked to the Eiffel Tower for some photos. We sent this one of us to our music committee back at school.


Then, it started to rain. His friend left while the two of us walked from the Eiffel Tower to Chatelet, where we got some dinner and ate in front of the Centre Pompidou, then moved on to the Latin Quarter. That's quite a walk, but it was great catching up and luckily the rain didn't last long.

We went to St. Michel, shown here, which has a lot of bars, takeout places for crepes or kebabs, and a few junky tourist shops.

We found a piano bar and sat down just in time to order some beer before the happy hour ended. The background is a bit blurry, but behind Nick, there's a man playing the piano and a woman sitting on it singing. It was fitting of us to choose this place because we work concerts together at school (not so sure we would have booked the evening's performers, but it made for a fun atmosphere). We walked back towards his hotel and parted ways at a metro station - it was a short visit but I'm so glad we got to hang out while we're both over here.

And now for the next night out...Molly's birthday! I already told my parents about where we went and they haven't kicked me out of the house yet, so here we go. There's a bar in the St. Michel area called the Latin Corner. It has mostly female patrons. The servers are male. They wear underwear. Only underwear. Unless sneakers count, because they wear those too. Bras hang from the chandeliers. Leaving your bra = free champagne, but don't worry, we're not that wild!

We had to wait a few minutes before we could get in, then we were lead to the back, where fog and sporadic lighting made sitting down a challenge. Then come the menus, oh boy. Drinks were generally about 12 euro, but we dealt with it because when are we ever going to be in a place like this again? And when we finished, they let us stay a bit longer, rather than some bars that make you feel unwelcome as soon as you finish your drink.

Here's a group shot, minus Kate, who took the picture.

Some of the girls went to dance while others of us stayed with the purses. Here we are trying to embody Beyonce's "Single Ladies"...but then we realized we were all wearing rings. The songs were pretty good (even one from Grease!) and considering some of the creep-tastic male interactions we've had over here, it was fun to be in a mostly female atmosphere, of course with the exception of half naked men carrying drinks around.

And then I was creepy and took photos of my friends on the dance floor from the table.