Eek! I'm so excited! Last time Jen joined us for The Dailies, you fell in love with her [ok, I totally did, too!]. The style! The photography! The glamour! In case you're not familiar with Jen, she's the writer behind My Polaroid Blog, which has been getting manic press these days [yay, Jen!].

Naturally, that kind of awesomeness can certainly translate overseas. Don't believe me? Jen has agreed to let Design for Mankind readers tag along during her fabulous trip to Paris. Ahh, je l'aime juste.

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4:13 am - - - It’s hard to sleep in Paris. I’m just so excited. It’s our second day here and I still haven’t adjusted to the time change. I will say that I find insomnia totally bearable in France.



9:02 am - - - Ok, now this is more like it. 9am is a totally respectable time to wake up while on vacation. We are sharing an apartment for a week with our friends Jeff and Lisa. It’s wonderful.

10:30 am - - - Everyone is showered and out the door. It’s cold and raining, but it doesn’t matter. Andrew and I each have 2 cameras around our necks. I guess that is why no one is really speaking French to us. They can tell we are tourists. That’s fine with me. It can get quite scary when someone tries to speak French to you when you don’t speak French. It’s so fast. I just stare and stay as still as possible . . . maybe if I do this, they will just walk away.



10:42 am - - - Breakfast at a great café by our apartment. We forgot our handy traveling translator so we each order some sort of egg dish and hope for the best. It’s kind of fun ordering breakfast and not really knowing what you are going to get. It was delicious as were the café au laits.



11:55 am --- Off to the metro station. We love the metro. It’s so easy and affordable. We’ve also been walking a lot. We don’t walk at all in L.A. As a matter of fact I will circle the Target parking lot several times just to get a spot in front. I don’t walk. It’s different in Paris and I love it! Today we are headed to Montmartre (my mom has assured me I will live it, so I’m figuring it’s kind of bohemian).

12:30pm - - - We’re here and for some reason there are about 10 flights of stairs to get out of the metro station. I take back what I just said about walking.



1:15pm - - - We stop at this great little bar called le rendez vous des amis, mainly because we stood at the bottom of yet another enormous flight of stairs and thought that we just can’t tackle them without a drink. We ended up having a couple of drinks. The place was so great. The boys had beers, but lisa and I noticed that everyone in the place was drinking something with limes in little glasses so we said, “we’ll have what they’re having.” Ti punch. Yum. Strong, but yum.



4:15pm - - - Several hours, several flights of stairs and a couple of nutella crepes later and we are done with Montmartre. What an amazing place. Great cafes, great markets, great shops. And now we’re off to the Moulin Rouge.



6:00pm --- Ok, where is this place? We keep seeing windmills, but none of them look like the one in the Baz Luhrmann film. Isn’t it supposed to be huge? Where is Ewan McGregor?

6:28pm - - So it seems we were walking in the wrong direction. We worked it out. The boys were in charge of the maps. Maps can be challenging. I think that is exactly what I said to Andrew, but my tone might have been a bit questionable (I was very tired from walking and coming down from my ti punch). He informed me that he would not be speaking to me for the rest of the trip. I’m wondering if that’s a bad thing? For the record, the Moulin rouge wasn’t really worth the walk, but it had to be done. We’re heading back to the apartment to freshen up, drop off the day’s purchases and regroup.

8:30pm - - - So we’ve freshened, dropped and regrouped. Andrew was brave enough to try to call Hotel Du Nord to try and get us a reservation for tonight. Keep in mind none of us speak French. We actually called another restaurant first, but they spoke no English - - so it got tricky. Success! They speak English and can accommodate us. Hooray. Off to Hotel Du Nord.



9:30pm - - - Ahhh, Hotel Du Nord. So French, so very, very French. The service was a bit questionable, but we are afraid to say anything. We are just trying our best to be very pleasant, humble Americans (and one Australian). Today we learned how to order a carafe of water, so we’ve been ordering it wherever we go, since it is one of about 3 french phrases we know. Our first day we went to a café and when the waiter came to greet us I was trying so hard to be friendly so in my friendliest voice I said, “Au revoir! Au revoir!” He was so bewildered. And I was so confident in my delivery. It wasn’t until he ran away (literally ran) that we all realized that I was saying goodbye and not hello. We all got a good laugh.

11:52pm - - - Back to our neighborhood with bellies full of red wine and steak and French fries (hooray for French fries. They somehow feel sophisticated here)- - but we still had room for hot chocolate before bed. Fortunately all of the cafes in our neighborhood stay open really late. So we indulged. We’ve been doing a lot of that. I realized that earlier tonight when I started dipping my French fry into the pool of butter atop my steak. There is no turning back.



1:30am - - All brushed up and tucked into bed. Another wonderfully exhausting day, sore feet and all. Tomorrow we head to the Eiffel tower. Oh, and Andrew has lifted the ban on talking to me, I think he forgot about it. It’ll be our secret.
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OK, it's official. Je suis amoureux.