Tea in Paris
Jumpsuit by PARKER, Shoes by ALEXANDER WANG, Jewelry by JUDITH RIPKA
Paris is definitely one of the most beautiful and certainly one of the most romantic cities in the world. Romance is in the air they say, and the large number of honeymooners strolling hand in hand on the streets of the city are a living testimony to this fact. I never believed that just being in Paris can make one feel so sensual and romantic until I got a chance to spend a few days there during my tour. Yes, I said tour, a world tour! A lot of you may not know this but when I lived in Miami I was lucky enough to land a gig back up singing and dancing for Julio Iglesias. It was one of the most memorable times of my life. I got to tour the world while dancing and singing alongside a legend.
We always had a list of the places that we were going to visit on each leg of the tour. You can imagine how excited I was when I saw Paris was one of our destinations. We always got to stay at the best hotels and Julio always took the whole team to a fancy dinner after every show. Julio always advised us to stay inside the hotel if we were not escorted by some of the other musicians on tour with us. He always thought we were going to get kidnapped for some reason. Either way, one of the other dancers, Everlyn, and I would sneak out in pretty much every city. Especially Paris, how could we sit inside our hotel room when we knew the romantic city was right outside our hotel doors!
When you are on tour you have something called a per-diem This is the amount of money that you are given to feed yourself with on a daily basis. Our Per diem was $50 per day, that was to buy us breakfast and lunch, since every dinner was always with Julio after the show. If you know Paris, you know that $50 will buy you half of a sandwich. Safe to say, we almost starved during the Paris leg of the tour. Luckily the owner of the hotel had a crush on me and would leave a big basket of cherries in my room every night. I was living on cherries and using my $50 to wander the streets of Paris. I figured cherries are a fruit, eating a whole basket I must be getting most of my daily nutrition. Oh how I've changed.
After relaxing the first morning after our show and getting freshened up, we decided to explore the city as we were interested in absorbing the culture of Paris from up close. Being a bright and sunny morning during summer season, I had put on a pastel pink embroidered lace Parker jumpsuit. It was a body hugging slightly off the shoulder V-neck one piece that fit my contours nicely. The slight belledbottom pant legs of the jumpsuit sat at the perfect length just enough to show off my metallic pink Alexander Wang heels. The shiny metallic luster of these bronze pink colored shoes complimented the color of my printed jumpsuit perfectly. To complete my Parisian look, I accessorized my outfit of the day with a beautiful Canary crystal ring made by Judith Ripka. In my ears, I had put on the matching Canary crystal earrings. Let's just say I looked fab. Knowing that all we had was $50 to spend we had to make our choices carefully. We had toured the Louvre' the day before to soak up as much history as possible. I could now put a big check on that part of my bucket list.
Today was more of a casual day, so we decided to grab lunch at a cute little café. As we sat down and read the menu, we realize we could not afford to eat lunch there. Looking at each other we scrambled out from the table before the waiter could come to take our order. As we started to walk down the street giggling at how penniless we were, we decided what we could afford was a cup of tea. Luckily, Paris has tons of places for a luxurious afternoon tea.
The best thing about traditional afternoon tea is that it usually comes with a decadent three-tiered silver tray filled with an assortment of finger sandwiches, pastries and desserts. We ended up at the Four Seasons Hotel George V. Luckily for us, the afternoon tea included more food than either of us could eat. We were also treated to a glass of champagne which is a great way to elevate any afternoon tea experience. The price for the full afternoon tea was exactly 50$. With no money left, we wandered back to our hotel with a small box of leftover sweets that we savored that evening and a Parisian experience that we will remember forever.
