Reasons to be happy: in Paris

Off to Paris!

I don't often get all soppy and talk about happiness and such like, but today, at the end of my first week in Paris (or half week, if we're being precise) as I sit in my cute little roof top apartment catching up on last night's Strictly, a mental list of reasons to be happy popped in to my head...

Celebrations for one!

1. After a long, complicated and hellish process, that involved a cast of what felt like hundreds putting in thousands of man hours, my boss led our team to a great great victory. It made me so happy I cried when I heard the news. Admittedly I am a little delicate, which could have been the reason for the tears, but still, it made me happy that I was so happy about something work related.

The office! So pretty...

2. Also work related, I am so happy that whilst working here in Paris, that I can call an absolutely beautiful building "My Office" and I can say the words "Yes, that's right, I work in that building, one down from the Ritz".  I'm an office snob, yes, I know. But really, I've hit the jackpot and I want everyone to know!

View from my apartment window!

3. So, I'm here in Paris, in a teeny tiny studio apartment that's smaller than my spare room, on the top floor of a building with no lift (and very slippery wooden steps), no oven (but who are we kidding, I don't use the one at home, so how likely am I to use one here?) all alone... and I love it. My view in the morning is like a scene from Moulin Rouge (one of my favourite films, indeed), I have a cute little pizza restaurant underneath my apartment, a wine shop on the corner and my street is lined with beautiful shops with a hustly bustly feeling. There's a butcher, a baker (no candlestick makers though), a fish monger, cafes, bars, restaurants, green grocers, perfumeries, a champagne shop, sushi shops, a cheese shop or two, ice cream parlours, patisseries, a shop selling artisan coffee beans and teas (imagine the aromas in the morning!) a mini Sephora, a florist... It's like something out of a film. I want to dance along it singing like Belle in Beauty and the Beast! "Bonjour... bonjour... bonjour bonjour bonjour... There goes the baker with his tray..." ("...look there she goes that girl is so peculiar...")




"on the way home treats" from my street

to accompany the "on the way home" treats? Also on my street

4. After a supremely drunken apartment party last night, I woke up this afternoon realising I had no hangover-curing food in my fridge. Upon venturing out (unwashed, without make up) in to my hustly bustly street it was less like the scene from Belle et le Bete, and basically SHUT! I forgot that Continental Europe shuts on a Sunday. I was worried that I'd have to eat in a posh restaurant looking and smelling like a tramp, so I did a bit more hopeful wandering and lo! I found a Subway. God bless America and their 24/7 living. Normally I hate Subway, even the smell, but at that moment I could not have been happier to smell their plasticky cheese! One tuna melt, a bottle of full fat Coke and a bottle of Nestea later and I was back in my PJs thanking the fast food gods!

Got any ice for my G&T?

5. I am also offering up praise to the Internet, on demand TV and Apple devices gods, without whom I'd still be watching back to back episodes of True Blood in French (as there's not really much of a story line I found it the best thing to watch in French until I could access some British telly!) and documentaries about food wastage in India.

So there you have the reasons I'm thanking my lucky etoiles this week. I'm a lucky, lucky girl!

I also can't stop thinking about how proud Mme Holloway and Mme Baldock would be of me today... stumbling around on the streets of Paris, looking a state and ordering disgusting fast food in broken French. Hmmmmmm.

Looking for Devils in Prada