Back in the Mode…discovering Paris in a whole new way

I was sitting scrolling through instagram last week and suddenly I had a revelation, I have just three free weekends left in Paris. When you live in a city it’s easy to forget to do all the touristy things, so I was determined to make these last weekends count. I thought about all the things I wanted to see, the Eiffel tower, Notre Dame and the Sacre Coeur sure but more importantly I was determined to find out what exactly made Paris the hub for fashion.

One thing we must remember is that Paris is not perfect, there are areas that smell like pee, cost way too much to eat and are full of tourists. But every so often you find that little gem reminding you that you are right in the city where you need to be. I have always been into fashion, more so in a daily life way than haute-couture but I really wanted to see what it was that allows these fashion houses to charge so much for their designs.

I had been googling ‘Paris Fashion Lovers’ to help me find the Paris must-sees and to be honest, I just kept coming across the same stuff – visit the Chanel store, go into the galeries lafayette, Rue de Fauborg Saint Honoré. These are all great but unless you have the money it really is just a bit of glorified window shopping. I wanted to do more than this so decided to start searching for exhibitions.

Since fashion week has only just finished here in Paris, there are still plenty of things on offer to go and enjoy.

On Wednesday night I sat down and made a list of all the things I wanted to do in Paris before I go and tried to make some kind of agenda so that I could avoid the inevitable reluctance at the weekend when the bed just feels too comfy to leave.

LIST OF THINGS I MUST SEE IN PARIS BEFORE THE END OF MY YEAR ABROAD

1. Christian Dior Couturier Du Rêve ✓
2. La Maison Chloé ✓
3. Studio 7L – the Karl Lagerfeld book store
4. Palace of Versailles
5. Bateaux Mouches ✓
6. Balenciaga, l’oeuvre au noir
7. Marché aux puces fleamarket
8. Fondation Louis Vuitton
9. Musée de la Mode et du Textile
10. The Sacre coeur
11. The Eiffel Tower
12. Notre Dame
13. The Louvre
14. Palais de Tokyo
15. Musée d’Orsay
16. Sandemans tour of Montmartre
17. Galignani book store
18. The original Chanel Boutique on Rue au Cambon

 

The list is a mix of Paris hot-spots and some more obscure choices. There is no way that all of these will be done on the weekend because there is just not enough time for that. I already managed to check three off yesterday so at least we are making progress!

For the first time in Paris I was the one who had my camera out at every opportunity perusing the exhibitions yesterday, standing in people’s way to get the perfect angle and crooning for just one look at the iconic Theron dress. To be honest, I’m not ashamed of it, as my mum always says “you are never going to see these people again so why do you care what they think”.

When I’m back in St Andrews, I will regret having not seen the things on this list and whilst I have no academic obligations, there is no need for me to spend all day moping in my flat so I need to head out and get going on a few more today. Maybe Orsay… or Marks and Spencers, depends on whether my stomach or brain dictates the schedule for today…

 

Guilty Pleasures

I’ve always wondered what counts as a guilty pleasure. Some people use it as something that they don’t want other people to know they enjoy, like watching the latest episode of The Only Way is Essex. Others see it as something that they know they shouldn’t have but crave like an entire packet of biscuits on a night in. My guilty pleasure isn’t really a guilty pleasure but more a “seriously?” pleasure and to be honest I’m not really ashamed of that.

Yesterday, I had a write-off day, the day when you spend all day inside moping, eating and watching Netflix. There are several problems with this kind of of day: It’s not productive, you don’t feel better after, potentially you are consuming more calories than is perhaps necessary and most importantly there is not really a way out of it.

It got to 10pm yesterday and I needed to do something. I could not physically watch one more episode of Modern Family and I had run out of junk food to binge on. I tried reading a book and ended up napping, made myself a hot chocolate and turned to my “seriously?” pleasure. No, it wasn’t a reality show or food, it was watching the WWDC.

Yes I know it’s weird. I love fashion, food and makeup but there is something about the 2hr long broadcast of Apple’s latest updates that I literally cannot tear my eyes away from. I am by no means a technology buff, I don’t know how to code and always follow the advice of turning something on and off but yet when it comes to Apple products I could talk for hours about the 12mp camera on the iPhone 7 or the integration of uber into maps on ios10. My mum tells me that for her it is like watching paint dry but it is just the kind of thing I need to get out of my funk.

I don’t think I will ever be a person documenting the conference or developing my own apps but there have been times where I have set alarms to ensure that I can watch these conferences live.

Don’t judge me.

 

France…September

I was saying to my friend Laurie the other day about how writing this is great for procrastination but when you have nothing to procrastinate, the motivation disappears. Before going to France I had decided that I was going to spend a lot more time writing posts to update family and friends about my progress there. But lo and behold, I have produced a total of 2 posts in 5 months so a big pat on the back for me…

I am going to attempt to get up to date in 5 posts and then hopefully, in 2017, I can set up some sort of a routine and produce some more interesting updates in the future.

So let’s go back to September and work my way forward. September marked the beginning of the university year so people started arriving at the residence for the start of term. There were 11 of us altogether and we had  come from various places all over the world : England, France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, South Korea, Colombia and Brazil.

My parents and  my brother came to visit in the first week of September on their way back from Spain. We had some galettes for dinner and had a walk by the castle. They were only around for an evening but it was an evening well spent and now at least when I talk about various places I visited when I phone home, they can sort of gauge what I am talking about.

I have been on quite a few walks around the city but on the first weekend of September I was taken on a “guided” tour by one of the French girls who I lived with. It was my first real opportunity to speak proper French. It was hard work but so rewarding. If I made mistakes, she would help me, and at times we would switch to English but I loved every second of it. We did a bit of shopping and had a walk through the “passages pommeraye” and I started to get my bearings a bit more.

We went for out first meal as a residence to a burger restaurant called Dubrown (a very typical French dish). Some people had only just arrived so it was a really good opportunity to get to know everyone. The common language in the residence was English which made conversations very easy for me and I was also the first port of call if people wanted english translation. The burgers were sooo good, which reminds me I need to head back there at some point…

To round off September I went for my first trip to the Nid with my English friends. It was freezing cold at the top but the view made it worth it. Since it was still light outside we decided to head to the city funfair. I ate some churros while the others went on one of the spinny spinny rides that makes my stomach turn. Walking around the site, we stopped at a couple of the games stands and won quite a lot of tokens and then headed for the biggest ride. It was some sort of a pendulum sort of thing, where you get swung all the way around at over 60 miles an hour. It was by far one of the most terrifying things I have done but I am so glad I did it.

Looking back through my photos reminded me of all the great experiences I have had. Overall September was a great first full month in Nantes. So many great memories and photos and it only got better from there.

What’s one special memory you have from September?

À bientôt x

 

The year abroad files : The Job

Before going on a year abroad (as a language student)  there are a few decisions you have to make : what country do you want to go to? where do you want to live? and probably most importantly what do you want to do?

Looking to the future

I vowed when I started up this blog that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes I did last time. One of the the things i am very good at is picking up hobbies and dropping them less than two weeks after. The two blogs I have had before just fizzled out and I stopped putting time and care into them. I didn’t want that to happen with this one but seemingly it has.

Outfit of the Week

Last week was a rather uneventful week – working, eating, sleeping. So by the time Saturday came around I tried to jam as much as I could into 24 hours. I started with the hairdressers (but we have already spoken about that) and then shopped around for several hours, buying nothing. (that is pretty much a weekly occurrence for me)

How to be a grown up at a hair salon

“My hair is something I can never get right” were the words that flew out of my mouth on Saturday morning sitting in the hairdresser’s chair. And these words were true. I have never been happy with my hair, or at least what I do with it anyways.

A day out in London… going it alone

One of the things I hate the most is having to be out alone. Where do you look when you are sitting on the tube, who do you talk to walking along the road and what happens if you trip and there is no one to laugh with you?

Whenever you walk around London you are surround by groups, whether that be tourists,  couples, friends or family and the people who are on their own tend to be business people charging along the street brief case in hand, coffee in the other. Very seldom do you see people in the city meandering alone.

I was in desperate need of a haircut, there is another place I hate to be alone, but no one seemed to be available to accompany me. Normally I would just put the appointment off until someone else could come but, since this is the summer of change, I decided to be a grown up and go it alone.

My appointment was at 12 so I planned ahead and gave myself plenty of time to get there (I am useless at directions so I knew I needed to give it another 1/2 hour for getting lost and going in circles. When you are in a group it is easy to look lost, you can laugh about it and it’s all good. When you are alone there is always that fear that someone is going to approach you and ask if you need help and that was something I wasn’t willing to succumb to. I opened up google maps and typed in the address of the hairdressers and followed it like it was a pedestrian sat nav (obviously with the sound down so that no one knew that a Londoner did not know her way around London).

The hairdressers actually turned out to be a really pleasant experience. I didn’t have to worry about taking too long because there was no one waiting for me and I actually chatted to the hairdresser for once (more on the hairdressers in another post).

Once I had finished, and didn’t experience the tut tut from a companion over how much I had spent at said hairdressers, I decided to have a mooch. Now anyone that knows me is aware that I am an erratic shopper. I don’t visit all the shops in order, sometime I pass them and zig zag my way around. I didn’t buy anything but spent time looking at all the things I might want to buy in the future. I know that if I was with someone,there would be huffing and puffing and “pick something” but I didn’t want to pick something, I was just looking.

If you want to go shopping alone and not spend money, I highly recommend Commercial Street and the area surrounding it, the shops are beautifully laid out and there is a mix of things eg. Mac, Jo Malone, All Saints and Cos to name a few.

I am working on a Capsule Wardrobe at the moment (more on that in another post) so a bit of inspiration did not go amiss. May I say that Cos is full of just the kind of clothes I am looking for but I really did not fancy shelling out more after just having an expensive visit to the hairdressers.

I got lost. Of course I did. I attempted to work backwards to find my way back to the station but when I realised I had walked past the same building 5 times, I resorted to Google Maps, turns out I wasn’t actually that far from the station in the first place.

If I had been with someone else I would have been so engrossed in conversation that I don’t think I would have noticed the amazing architecture that was surrounding me, it may have been easier to take a photo of it, but I probably wouldn’t have seen it to begin with.

In conclusion, although daunting, going it alone in the city is nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be and in fact, sometimes it is nice to just take a little time to yourself, read a book on the tube and have a bit of a pamper!