So over the next few days I will be publishing lots of posts about what has been going on this past month.
22. - 25. May
If you have been reading my posts, you know that for my 21st birthday Martin gave me plane tickets to Paris. So we had a lovely trip in France, my fourth time in Paris actually! We hit some of the must sees, because this was his first time in Paris, such as Notre Dame, Scare Coeur, Louvre, Les Invalides, Eiffel Tower, le Marais etc.
Even though we are both poor students, I managed to find us a nice little hotel near Place de Clichy (XVIIe arrondissement). Although we felt like giants in the small little room with a ceiling that barely accommodated us, it was cozy nonetheless. Plus it is nice to get a break from the hostel life of sleeping with 10 or more people.
On Monday, Martin finally got his 24th birthday present from me, a wine tasting lunch & a champagne cruise on the Seine. It was through this great company called Ô Chateau (they have student discounts!). We started out with a wine & cheese lunch in the cellar of their new wine bar near the Louvre. On the menu was one champagne, two whites, and two reds - accompanied with an assortment of cheeses from all over France (Comté, Camembert de Normandie, Daint Félicien etc.), tapas, and delicious bread. I can honestly say that I feel more knowledgeable about wine, we learned how to properly taste it and the intricacies of how it is manufactured. Champagne is surprisingly laborious in its production, that surprised me! My favorite white was the 2009 Cote Chalonnaise from Burgundy, and my favorite red was the 2006 Fronton from South West France.
There was a good selection of people at the tasting. Americans, Australians and Canadians... and a Dane;) Some had been to tastings before and clearly knew what they preferred, and others had no clue about anything. But what I liked best about it was the fact that it was not pretentious; although we had a very strongly accented sommelier, he was fun and emphasized the fact that not everyone smells "fresh cut grass, and lemon peel when they smell wine."
The second part of the day was the Champagne cruise down the Seine, which featured three different champagnes, two white and one rosé. This was a pleasant trip and much more generous than the earlier wine tasting, we easily drank up to seven glasses of bubbly. It was not really a sightseeing trip like other cruises you can take, the sommelier would only stop occasionally to point out highlights - this I did not mind because it was far more relaxing. However, and I think Martin will agree with me, the most entertaining part of the cruise was the family of three from Texas sitting behind us. A daughter and her parents with a very strong Southern accents, they must have originally been from Tennessee or something, were something else. The best quote of the night was when the father said "You're supposed to sip it!" referring to the first glass of champagne in his daughter's hand which was already empty, then she responded "I am sippin' it! My sips just drank it all up." This girl was clearly ready to rock the boat, and did get rather tipsy by the end of the tour. When the rosé came out she just loved how fancy it was, because "they sing about it all this time in rap songs... rosé rosé rosé."
It was truly an enjoyable trip, and a wonderful birthday present. Tak min kærlighed. Vi ses!
