Here it is folks...after much anticipation, another long-delayed post about Paris! My goal is to wrap up spring break over the weekend because next week we are all headed to Rome (and in my case, Venice as well) for Easter! I can't believe it's that time already. I can't believe how fast this semester is going by. It's crazy!
As I mentioned in the post on Versailles here, after our day-trip out of Paris we met up with my flatmate Nicolle and her travel companions Siobhan and Julie for drinks. As we were in Paris, after all, we decided we needed to be adventurous and bad-ass and all those other good things, so we looked up absinthe bars in the district we were both staying in. There was one that seemed about equidistant between their hostel on République and our home in the 10e, so we Google-mapped walking directions and headed there. We assumed it would be an easy walk as it only required two turns, but we managed to do both of those two turns wrong and walked almost all the way to République instead of getting to the place in the middle like we should have. Lots of wandering around Parisian streets at night, but thankfully it was a decently nice area so there was no apprehension like there would have been, say if we were walking around Montpellier at night ;)
At any rate, we all finally got to this bar around the same time (the others had gotten really turned around too), and it turns out it either is, or claims to be, the oldest absinthe bar in Paris, Cantada II. (Look at that link, and then you will be able to scoff at me for the rest of this story about what an idiot I am for taking us there in the first place :P )
Turns out Cantada II was a goth-Satanist-Spanish fusion bar...yeah. Wrap your head around that one. Goth-Satanist-Spanish fusion. It was as weird as it sounds...fake skulls on the wall, lots of pornographic-ish manga-style art that I could see people having tattooed on them in some countercultural effort to rebel. I was a little weirded out, rocking my J.Crew sweater set and dragging four non-French speakers (Nicolle speaks a decent amount) in with me. Everybody's reaction was a little skeptical as we grabbed a table, but it was handled with good grace and, in hindsight, it was a just-plain-hilarious situation. I mean, it sounds like the opener to a bad joke: "Six Notre Dame students walk into a goth-Satanist-Spanish fusion absinthe bar in Paris..."
As the best French speaker of the crew, I headed bravely to the bar while the rest held down the fort...Charlie followed me thank goodness, which later was very fortunate. I ordered six "mitres" of absinthe (a play on words based on the Satanist nature of the bar and the shape of the glasses...a mitre is a hat used by religious officiants) and settled in to wait...it takes about ten minutes to prepare absinthe correctly, because the actual alcohol has to be poured from the bottle over a sieve containing sugar cubes, dissolving the sugar completely and filtering down into the mitre before it is drinkable...it forms kind of a slurry-like texture.
While we waited, two big tattooed vest-wearing biker-looking French men at the bar started a conversation with me, with the by now all-too-predictable opening line: "Your French is very good, where did you learn?" Naive as I was, I explained that I was in university and had learned "au lycée" (high school) and at college. They took this to mean effectively that I was young (yes) and wild (no), as is the French pre-conception of American college students. They were hitting on me pretty hard, but in a very good-natured way, and if they wouldn't have looked like they were Hell's Angels lost in France, I wouldn't have made Charlie be my fake boyfriend while the absinthe filtered. As it was, he stood with me and was a very good bodyguard/pretend BF for the next ten minutes. My biker friends, whose names I have forgotten, were very assiduous in inviting me to return to La Cantada the next night, Friday, for the weekly orgy concerts. That's right. Orgy concerts. I thought I had misheard them and thus told them that I had misunderstood. They then explained, very explicitly, that every Friday night there were raging concerts in the basement that then turned into "lots of sex." I politely said that we would consider checking it out, and our absinthe was fortunately done filtering so we took everyone's drinks to the table.
Later, my nouveaux amis came over and one of them showed me his sketchbook, which was actually remarkably beautiful pen-and-ink drawings of Paris landmarks, Métro stops, and architecture...with naked women interspersed throughout. Still, we had a wonderful look-through them as we sipped our absinthe, which tasted JUST like black licorice. Overall, a very successful absinthe experience, free of hallucinogens (we went to a "safe" absinthe bar, apparently) and green fairies :) After we all finished, we bid adieu to lovely Nicolle, Siobhan and Julie, and headed home, only to get lost again. Thanks to Charlie on that one as well for good navigation...he finally figured out where we were and got us home!
Long story short: if you are going to drink absinthe, check your bar out first so that you don't get propositioned at the bar by French bikers. And when six Notre Dame students walk into a goth-Satanist-Spanish fusion bar, hilarity is sure to ensue :)
my absinthe: it glowed in the dark when I took a photo!
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