Capitan Crunch, the French Revolution and a wine festival

First off--I'm predicting the come-back of roller blading. Right now. Can any one be my witness? Its coming back. TRICK rollar blading, especially.You may ask me why I say this. Well, my friends, I will tell you. In Hyde park in London is where I saw it the first time. People practicing what looked like ice skating on blades, people doing tricks between cups they set up in the street, people speed skating. It was all there. In Paris. in the Notre Dame square, there were/are people who set up the same cups every evening and do tricks. THEN last night, around 12:30 when we were just starting to go to bed, we hear quite the ruckus--yelling, screaming, whistles, etc. Katie investigates. What do we find outside out window on the street below? HUNDREDS of roller bladers. Literally, I think there might have been close to a thousand people balding down the street. Some were covered in lights or crazy costumes and some were just "normal" people. The whole thing was followed up by a couple cop cars and an ambulance. It was crazy. It reminded me of the Tour de Fat that New Belgium does. We still haven't figured out what it was. Maybe it will remain a mystery. It was fun to watch, whatever it was!

Today I finally went on a run this morning. It was divine. Only 25 minutes but I went around the 2 islands in paris, the Isle de Cite and the Isle de san Louis. (I am in an apartment off the islands with Molly and Katie and the other 6 girls are in a more modern apartment on the small island, the Isle de San Louis). After a shower and some reading for class we went out exploring and ended up finding a small pop-up market. There I bought some veggies and Olives. Katie and I went on to try to find an actual super market for some olive oil and ended up finding a sweet street full of shops and restaurants about 2 blocks behind our apartment and also a store called the "holy planet" which had organic/gluten free/vegetarian friendly/etc stuff. Super cool find! 

After that, we met up with everyone else in front of the Notre Dame (its an easy meeting point for all of us) and headed off to the Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart) Chapel and the Food and Wine festival. It took us quite a while to find the chapel but its on top of a big hill so once we were up on top of it we could basically see all of Paris ( to the east at least!). There were booths there with all manner of wines and food. We passes a Canadian booth with Maple Snow (maple sugar frozen basically) and of course I had to get some. I got a taster glass of some good white wine after a small miscommunication with the lady who was giving out the samples, and found out that Nougut is safe to eat for me. 

Katie, Molly and I split off from the group to find a restaurant that we could eat at (they're both vegetarians) and ended up going into a small place which resembles the small "italian" places in the states. (Painted walls to look like stone and murals with soft lighting). We got there kind of early for the normal Parisian so we were the only people in the place. There was a nice waiter who spoke a little english who helped me when I told him I was allergice to wheat (my eventual plate of veggies and rice also had noodles but there was no sauce on it which I couldn't have). Then, when they started to fill up, a man came out to play guitar. Since we were still one of two parties there when he started he often would come over and sarenade us. He liked Molly and would often slip in "I love you" into his songs. It was hilarious as Molly was mortified and it just egged him on. His last song as we were leaving was Frank Sinatra's "I love Paris." It was fitting. Also, while we were there a man walked in wearing a full Colonel outfit. Hit hat was probably 2-3 feet wide. Molly looks at him and says "He looks familiar. Oh, cool guys Capitan Crunch jsut walked in." We dissolved in a fit of giggles, which brought the man with the guitar over and Molly blushed some more. 

After dinner was done, we met up with everyone else to go to the Moulin Rouge. It was not as exciting as I was hoping but we got some sweet pictures in front of it, it wasn't all in vain.

Back to the Boy's for wine. Then we came back to our apartment nice and .... well. Drunk. This is where we reenacted the French revolution and then bonded over Nutella, bread and tea (we consume 2 or 3 pots of tea a night). 

Tomorrow we're to have class/a picnic at Versailles. I'm really excited for this! I'll let you know how it goes!

Much love all. Hope your days are going well and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my lovely father, Wes!