Sipping champagne and eating macaroons at Hotel Fouquet’s off of the Champs-Élysées was followed by dancing at the grungy-but-cool art-and-film-world boîte, Le Baron. The second storey terrace of Fouquet’s was dolled up for Christmas and had a revolving light installation reminiscent of Las Vegas. Parisian Christmas decorations are surprisingly tacky and American. There is an excessive volume of blinking twinkle lights that drip from every window of the Crillon Hotel in the middle of Place de la Concorde. At the entrance to The Ritz there are life-sized reindeer with creepily robotic bobbing heads.

After a big night out, I woke up to my French Goddess home from morning shopping, her hands full with fresh goodies for a crazy French breakfast: a loaf of beautiful seeded bio (organic) bread, perfectly prepared eggs, slices of ripe avocado, plump dried figs that were juicier than I thought possible, clementines and fisalis (small tart fruits inside delicate brown leaves that look like round orange hearts enclosed in birds’ wings), and, last but not least, two sea urchins (uni: a Japanese delicacy I had never tasted before).

My friend bought the sea urchins (pictured above) from her corner fish monger. He has a crush on her and told her excitedly that the sea urchins came to him fresh from the shores of Brittany. Their taste was far too strong for me, especially before having my morning coffee, but I enjoyed them immensely as decorative accents to our colorful breakfast table. In The States I usually have a bowl of cereal.

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