Post-Paris
Wooooo I made it back from Paris alive! The French didn't manage to grab me and bake me into a baguette, happy! Saying that, everyone was a hell of a lot nicer then feared and remembered. Nia and I even had a French girl apologising to us for her bad English. It was 10x better then our non-existent French!
Wellll, where to start? Guess a day-by-day blow is the easiest, so you have been warned! LONG, INCOMPREHENSIBLE POST AHOY!
Thursday:
Met Nia [takuropop] after work Wednesday. Luckily found out that the Alexandra store (sells uniforms) in London had closed 6 weeks previously, so we skipped our original HalCali boiler-suit (for concert on Sunday) buying plans and headed back to mine.
Once there, there was much packing and last minute cosplay finishing (mostly on my part, Nia helped me out soo much! <3) and we managed to get to bed around 1am.
Up at 7am, leaving 8, to get our 10.40am Eurostar train from Waterloo. Journey went smoothly and very relaxed. However, once in Paris then did things start to go pear-shaped!
Buying wrong metro/RER ticket and getting fined 25 Euros each!
Not being able to find our La Defense Renaissance hotel! (did finally after a lovely old lady helped us look and ask).
Panicking over hotel rate! (later remembered my cheques were in pounds, not
euros, panic over!).
Quick! More cosplay last-minute!
Gravely under-estimating the distance and danger in walking to the restaurant along the river, in the rain, for over an hour!!
But that seemed to be all our bad karma used up for the trip (mostly) and they weren't all that terrible - like say, losing our passports! The hotel was amazing. Very businessy right next to the Grande Arch le Defense, with a complimentary sauna/fitness center, huuuge breakfast buffet with EVERYTHING and then some, v.helpful staff, and just much posh indeed. The restaurant (once we got there) was "fun and trendy" as promised! It was a boat on the Seine, and was very chic and hip in decor, food and staff. Name was simply "O". Waiter was lovely chap as well!
I need to get pics off Nia, as we tried to photograph everything we ate at the weekend. We skipped starters and aperitif (much to his shock - no wine?!). Nia had a wonderfully light and delicate seabass with tomato 'salsa' and a courgette flan which she fell in love with, and I played safe with a absolutely gorgeous bit of veal and potato puree. For desert, Nia had a trio of sorbets (citron, peach and OMG lovely pear!), whilst I again went rich with a chocolate melty-inside pud with custard (lighter then I was expecting). All beautiful! Back to the hotel (after a bit of kerfuffle with paying the bill to the wrong person, and taxi gets) and rest.
Friday
Woke up at fairly early time (7am?), ravenous, and was over the moon at the fantastic breakfast buffet! We had a busy morning before even getting to the convention itself... searching for Alexandra's Paris store (surprise, surprise, also closed a week back - but they hadn't updated the sodding site!), and then consoling ourselves at one of Pierre Herme's amazing patesseries. Nia told me he is like the Picasso of the pastry world, and the selections were indeed AMAZING! Got many macaroons to try, and a glass of 'Sensation' each (see Nia's flickr link at bottom). THEN back to the hotel, grab bags, and off to the convention - at last!
Navigate our way successfully to the exhibiton centre for 2pmish. This has been my first non-UK con and by god it was MASSIVE. The section they had was basically a giant rectangle with a smaller rectangle inside which was a garden with a stream. We got dressed into our super-cute Shining Force EXA costumes (Firklin & Amatalilly), and ended up being dragged into the garden area for photos by Celeste (aka as Blitz on cosplay.com) that Nia knew. Bumped into the UK cosplay lot then (Mark, Kat, Sonya, Angela, Emma, Ellie) and it was all very fun, hectic and sociable! Also got speaking to a lovely French cosplayer called Sandrine (aka Rinny_chan on cosplay.com), and she introduced me to a couple of photographers there too. So hoping for some cool pics! Sandrine and Celeste both coming to London cons I think, so really must contact them! Looking at their pages now, their costumes are soo good~
Big rush to get dressed and back to the hotel, to meet UK guys for a meal in Gare De Nord. Ok, restaurant, awesome meal ^^ Except that I got seated next to Mark, urgh, FACE! He drank some alcohol though, so the entertainment made up for it!
Saturday
Luckily, our KoF costumes didn't need much work, so we could just go to bed the previous night. Got up early again, big breakfast, and - yes, you've guessed it - ANOTHER PATESSERIE :D Arnaud Lahrer this time. MORE macaroons and cakey noms to behold! A pair of American girls were in there too taking pictures, and like us had read up online and come to Paris on a mission. We looked like such fat bastards to them though, as we came out with a HUGE box. To be fair, the large box of macaroons was for little Emily (her bithday that day), we bought a few more for ourselves, got a cake each (see flickr) and an ice-cream each. Mojito for Nia (alcy!) and pear for mee~
A man correctly stared at us in a nearby park, as we methodically opened, photographed, and ate the cakes. Oh dear...
Onto the convention! Again, turned up late around 1-2pm. We looked round the actual convention a bit more this time, and bought some fans (hot sunny day), and dressed up in our KoF costumes. Myself as Yuri and Nia as ChaeLim. Yuri is very iconic and popular, so I felt like one of the Disneyworld characters that get chased by children for photos and shouting in my FACE! (I'm looking at you, Mark and hareem!). That day was very fun, we did lots of photo-taking with the UK lot outside, and got to explore the stalls a bit more. Yet didn't buy anything, hrrm! Found the TokyoToys store and surprised the hell out of Hideki (store owner). He was wearing an apron (apparently the girls on the stall were complaining about exploitation!), and skipped out of his stall in order to twirl me round and balldance?! Fun guy xD French even more sure we're mad though. Possibly because I also spacked like anything when we encountered Pyramid-head... (I fed him chocolate~!).
That evening went a bit wrong. We were all going out for Emily's birthday, but we left late, and she got a bit worked up because there was a large number of people invited (UK lot cancelled, hope Emma's feeling better! Tokyotoys no idea), but we got there an hour late, had nowhere near enough seats, so Nia, KevPack and I went to.. McDonalds! xD Was lovely to actually speak to Kevpack properly, and it wasn't too bad. Another rush for the last Metro home...
Sunday
Aha, NO pastry shops today! Still got up earlyish though, as we had a mission... a HALCALI MISSION! :D We went straight to the con, lined up forever outside (the French CANNOT queue!) and finally got in. And today, without cosplay plans! So we had a good look round that day, found Junko Mizuno to sign Nia's model, and run around really. Sandrine and Celeste were in a Pop'a'Music group for the group madquerade. Group show was pretty bad overall, but the setup was AWESOME - large stage and thrust/catwalk, good presenters, and tech had 3 large screens for us at the back to see everything.
Many Naruto/rubbish groups, that thought doing a shitty macarena/simple dance routine qualified as an entertaining skit, and cartwheels got applause. But there were some that stood out, such as Pop'a'music, cute girl Pokemon dancing group, Mysterious Cities of Gold, Seint Seiya with Pokemon parody, and the most AMAZING sentai performance!!! Best skit I've EVER seen!
SEE THIS! http://youtube.com/watch?v=kTf4cxlpotI
And of course, after that we had... HACALIIIIIIIIIIIII. I got to highfive HACALIIIIIIII! Was great! They were only on for 40mins, did about 5 songs, but after us chanting and making uproar for an encore, they came back on. Obviously weren't expecting such a reaction, so did an unplanned song, with the guitarist as backing music. ^_^ So happy! I could see Nia was about to explode!
Exhausted from all our activity, we skip the World Cosplay Summit and head back to the hotel. The last supper was at Kong, another "fun and trendy" restaurant we found, with a domed glass roof near the river, decor by the famous Philip Stark. Much Japanese influence. A lovely American couple ended up sat next to us, and we chatted to them. Food wise... well, we couldn't take pictures, but we have something else that I need to scan in xD Curse you cocktails! It was over-priced, but good.
And the Monday, rather deflated, we make our way back... missing the breakfast buffet, we hit a McDonalds instead! What a last meal!
Nia's flickr with noms:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/crayonpanda
What a bloody long post... will spell check later!
Rachel x
Wellll, where to start? Guess a day-by-day blow is the easiest, so you have been warned! LONG, INCOMPREHENSIBLE POST AHOY!
Thursday:
Met Nia [takuropop] after work Wednesday. Luckily found out that the Alexandra store (sells uniforms) in London had closed 6 weeks previously, so we skipped our original HalCali boiler-suit (for concert on Sunday) buying plans and headed back to mine.
Once there, there was much packing and last minute cosplay finishing (mostly on my part, Nia helped me out soo much! <3) and we managed to get to bed around 1am.
Up at 7am, leaving 8, to get our 10.40am Eurostar train from Waterloo. Journey went smoothly and very relaxed. However, once in Paris then did things start to go pear-shaped!
Buying wrong metro/RER ticket and getting fined 25 Euros each!
Not being able to find our La Defense Renaissance hotel! (did finally after a lovely old lady helped us look and ask).
Panicking over hotel rate! (later remembered my cheques were in pounds, not
euros, panic over!).
Quick! More cosplay last-minute!
Gravely under-estimating the distance and danger in walking to the restaurant along the river, in the rain, for over an hour!!
But that seemed to be all our bad karma used up for the trip (mostly) and they weren't all that terrible - like say, losing our passports! The hotel was amazing. Very businessy right next to the Grande Arch le Defense, with a complimentary sauna/fitness center, huuuge breakfast buffet with EVERYTHING and then some, v.helpful staff, and just much posh indeed. The restaurant (once we got there) was "fun and trendy" as promised! It was a boat on the Seine, and was very chic and hip in decor, food and staff. Name was simply "O". Waiter was lovely chap as well!
I need to get pics off Nia, as we tried to photograph everything we ate at the weekend. We skipped starters and aperitif (much to his shock - no wine?!). Nia had a wonderfully light and delicate seabass with tomato 'salsa' and a courgette flan which she fell in love with, and I played safe with a absolutely gorgeous bit of veal and potato puree. For desert, Nia had a trio of sorbets (citron, peach and OMG lovely pear!), whilst I again went rich with a chocolate melty-inside pud with custard (lighter then I was expecting). All beautiful! Back to the hotel (after a bit of kerfuffle with paying the bill to the wrong person, and taxi gets) and rest.
Friday
Woke up at fairly early time (7am?), ravenous, and was over the moon at the fantastic breakfast buffet! We had a busy morning before even getting to the convention itself... searching for Alexandra's Paris store (surprise, surprise, also closed a week back - but they hadn't updated the sodding site!), and then consoling ourselves at one of Pierre Herme's amazing patesseries. Nia told me he is like the Picasso of the pastry world, and the selections were indeed AMAZING! Got many macaroons to try, and a glass of 'Sensation' each (see Nia's flickr link at bottom). THEN back to the hotel, grab bags, and off to the convention - at last!
Navigate our way successfully to the exhibiton centre for 2pmish. This has been my first non-UK con and by god it was MASSIVE. The section they had was basically a giant rectangle with a smaller rectangle inside which was a garden with a stream. We got dressed into our super-cute Shining Force EXA costumes (Firklin & Amatalilly), and ended up being dragged into the garden area for photos by Celeste (aka as Blitz on cosplay.com) that Nia knew. Bumped into the UK cosplay lot then (Mark, Kat, Sonya, Angela, Emma, Ellie) and it was all very fun, hectic and sociable! Also got speaking to a lovely French cosplayer called Sandrine (aka Rinny_chan on cosplay.com), and she introduced me to a couple of photographers there too. So hoping for some cool pics! Sandrine and Celeste both coming to London cons I think, so really must contact them! Looking at their pages now, their costumes are soo good~
Big rush to get dressed and back to the hotel, to meet UK guys for a meal in Gare De Nord. Ok, restaurant, awesome meal ^^ Except that I got seated next to Mark, urgh, FACE! He drank some alcohol though, so the entertainment made up for it!
Saturday
Luckily, our KoF costumes didn't need much work, so we could just go to bed the previous night. Got up early again, big breakfast, and - yes, you've guessed it - ANOTHER PATESSERIE :D Arnaud Lahrer this time. MORE macaroons and cakey noms to behold! A pair of American girls were in there too taking pictures, and like us had read up online and come to Paris on a mission. We looked like such fat bastards to them though, as we came out with a HUGE box. To be fair, the large box of macaroons was for little Emily (her bithday that day), we bought a few more for ourselves, got a cake each (see flickr) and an ice-cream each. Mojito for Nia (alcy!) and pear for mee~
A man correctly stared at us in a nearby park, as we methodically opened, photographed, and ate the cakes. Oh dear...
Onto the convention! Again, turned up late around 1-2pm. We looked round the actual convention a bit more this time, and bought some fans (hot sunny day), and dressed up in our KoF costumes. Myself as Yuri and Nia as ChaeLim. Yuri is very iconic and popular, so I felt like one of the Disneyworld characters that get chased by children for photos and shouting in my FACE! (I'm looking at you, Mark and hareem!). That day was very fun, we did lots of photo-taking with the UK lot outside, and got to explore the stalls a bit more. Yet didn't buy anything, hrrm! Found the TokyoToys store and surprised the hell out of Hideki (store owner). He was wearing an apron (apparently the girls on the stall were complaining about exploitation!), and skipped out of his stall in order to twirl me round and balldance?! Fun guy xD French even more sure we're mad though. Possibly because I also spacked like anything when we encountered Pyramid-head... (I fed him chocolate~!).
That evening went a bit wrong. We were all going out for Emily's birthday, but we left late, and she got a bit worked up because there was a large number of people invited (UK lot cancelled, hope Emma's feeling better! Tokyotoys no idea), but we got there an hour late, had nowhere near enough seats, so Nia, KevPack and I went to.. McDonalds! xD Was lovely to actually speak to Kevpack properly, and it wasn't too bad. Another rush for the last Metro home...
Sunday
Aha, NO pastry shops today! Still got up earlyish though, as we had a mission... a HALCALI MISSION! :D We went straight to the con, lined up forever outside (the French CANNOT queue!) and finally got in. And today, without cosplay plans! So we had a good look round that day, found Junko Mizuno to sign Nia's model, and run around really. Sandrine and Celeste were in a Pop'a'Music group for the group madquerade. Group show was pretty bad overall, but the setup was AWESOME - large stage and thrust/catwalk, good presenters, and tech had 3 large screens for us at the back to see everything.
Many Naruto/rubbish groups, that thought doing a shitty macarena/simple dance routine qualified as an entertaining skit, and cartwheels got applause. But there were some that stood out, such as Pop'a'music, cute girl Pokemon dancing group, Mysterious Cities of Gold, Seint Seiya with Pokemon parody, and the most AMAZING sentai performance!!! Best skit I've EVER seen!
SEE THIS! http://youtube.com/watch?v=kTf4cxlpotI
And of course, after that we had... HACALIIIIIIIIIIIII. I got to highfive HACALIIIIIIII! Was great! They were only on for 40mins, did about 5 songs, but after us chanting and making uproar for an encore, they came back on. Obviously weren't expecting such a reaction, so did an unplanned song, with the guitarist as backing music. ^_^ So happy! I could see Nia was about to explode!
Exhausted from all our activity, we skip the World Cosplay Summit and head back to the hotel. The last supper was at Kong, another "fun and trendy" restaurant we found, with a domed glass roof near the river, decor by the famous Philip Stark. Much Japanese influence. A lovely American couple ended up sat next to us, and we chatted to them. Food wise... well, we couldn't take pictures, but we have something else that I need to scan in xD Curse you cocktails! It was over-priced, but good.
And the Monday, rather deflated, we make our way back... missing the breakfast buffet, we hit a McDonalds instead! What a last meal!
Nia's flickr with noms:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/crayonpanda
What a bloody long post... will spell check later!
Rachel x