BON ANNEE!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
We welcome the new year in Paris, speeding up from Burgundy in First Class (our grandparents generous New Years gift to us) on the TGV and screech into Gare de Lyon early on New Years Eve Day.

We spend the day wandering an overcast but cheerful Paris, drinking espresso and wandering around the Louvre and the Tuileries. We meet Whitney and make dinner, a stir fry of vegetables eaten again in the luxurious perch of the table right in front of the window looking out on the city. Paris is quiet in anticipation of the big night! I whip up some mulled wine, cloves and cinnamon and oranges, and we lounge for a couple hours before hitting the town.

We leap onto the metro and speed across the city, meeting Whitney's best friend Katherine, (the same one who we stayed with at Oxford) and speeding on the overground train past the sparkling Eiffel Tower. We look out of the train and peer into the windows of the various new years parties that are just getting started. Some look better than others.

We arrive at the party (hosted by a friend of Whitney and Katherines) and enjoy the New Years fesitivities with an eclectic group of American-Parisiens and French-Parisiens who have the good fortune to be both worldly and English speaking, a perfect combination. They are great people and we spend a fun evening, finding our way back on a Late night metro to the 6th Arrondisment thanks to Whitney's excellent guidance.

We sleep gratefully and happily and wake when the sun is already streaming through the windows.
We welcome the new dawn of the new day cheerily. We wait for Savannah Turley, Whitney's sister, to arrive (having flown across the Atlantic on New Years eve in order to spent some quality time with her sister, rudely interrupted by us). And the three of us go out and wander around for a few hours, buying supplies for an incredible dinner of Homemade Pasta (Savannah is a world-class cook) and not to forget Percy's amazing vinagrette. It was a FEAST eaten, in the French style at 11 oclock at night. Not because we were trying to be cosmopolitan, but rather because we had to painstakingly unroll each individual noodle. It was worth it. Definitely. After the meal we all fell into a coma and did not awake until late the next morning.

We jetted across the city to the Pere Laichez (incorrectly spelled, of course) cemetary and wandered the hauntingly beautiful avenues of sculptured memorials and graves. Angels and owls and elegant features gazed forlornly down at us, and lichen and ivy crawled over graves that had been there for hundreds of years. A three legged black cat gazed obliquely at us and we gazed into the abyss of graves that had been cracked wide open by prying tree roots. We visited the graves of Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, and Oscar Wilde (Wilde's is adorned with a million lipstick prints). It was a bizarre and gorgeous monument to the dead. Haunting and lovely.

We then wandered back to Whitney's apartment and made a feast of omelettes packed full of vegetables. As we ate the sky over Paris cleared and when Casey and I departed and walked briskly back to Gare de Lyon, the sky was cold and clear over the magnificent city. We sped back on the train, and just before we arrived the conductor asked to see our tickets. They were, predictably, inadequate for some silly reason, but before he could demand more money from us, we slipped off the train at Montbard and rejoined our Grandmere and Grandpere. For further adventures.