Tag: travel

The Palace of Versailles

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“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!”

(Translation: let them eat cake)

–Marie Antoinette, but probably not really

Towards the end of my trip, I ventured outside of Paris to check out the Palace of Versailles. 

These dudes

Claire told me that it was something I absolutely had to see when visiting France for the first time, so I took the train and made my way to the palace.

The Palace of Versailles, once the home of two of the world’s most infamous monarchs that sparked one of the greatest revolutions in world history, is now casually situated along a busy French street that is teeming with Ubers. 

The palace lived up to its reputation, with its Rococo style and its countless paintings along the walls, including this one of Marie Antoinette. I took a picture with my fellow tragic queen and moved along. 

I had a picnic at the Gardens of Versailles, (a moveable feast, if you will) eating an apple, cookies, and a croque de monsieur, while drinking rosé and reading my book. It was a meal fit for a queen. 

I see now why they cut off the royals’ heads. After roaming the manicured gardens and the wholly unnecessary, but very cool, hall of mirrors, it was easy to see that they were in fact living in unspeakable grandeur. 

A room built for a mirror selfie

I walked around outside, amazed at how the palace kept expanding into the horizon. I walked past the ponds and rolling lawns until my feet hurt, solidifying for me just how grand the Palace of Versailles really is. I called it a day once I could barely feel my feet.

After I got back from Versailles, I had dinner with some friends of mine and Claire’s, at a restaurant called Le Compères, where I ate bone marrow for the first time and decided that bone marrow tasted incredible. 

Over dinner, I got to hear about my friends at law school. They got to hear about the novel that I am working on and the clumsy description that I always give of the plot.  

Everyone who told me that I needed to check out the Palace of Versailles was right. I’d had a fun day navigating the churn of tour groups throughout the palace, before enjoying the mild spring weather and a good book in the gardens. I took my time; it’s not everyday that you get to see a decadent palace where every wall is gilded in gold. 

At this point, I was nearing the end of my trip and only had two more days to leave my mark on the city. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my previous blog post about my visit to the Louvre

Nice View

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I woke up the next day and went straight to the Louvre in order to see, at long last, the greatest art museum in the world. I had been dreaming about going there since childhood, ready to see some of the world’s best artwork all in one place.

Even the name of the museum seemed to roll off my tongue when I was a kid. 

For breakfast that morning, I went to Cafe Marly, the cafe at the Louvre, having champagne and tea for breakfast, because I’m the pinnacle of good health. Sitting there, I had a perfect view of the museum. 

For those who have never been, the Louvre is probably bigger than any of you are imagining. In order to do it properly, a person should probably spend at least two days walking through it. 

I saw countless beautiful paintings, many of which I’d seen before as refrigerator magnets and postcards, but could now stand in front of, as a real painting with brushstrokes and texture. 

After looking at hundreds of paintings, I saw the main attraction. 

A massive crowd surrounds the Mona Lisa at all times, with tourists body-checking each other in order to get a photo. People rushed up to take their selfies with the Mona Lisa, not even looking at it. When it was my turn to get up there, I tried to stare and study the painting, before taking a photo of the most photographed painting in the world. 

People were churned in and out, standing behind a velvet rope. Everyone crowds around the painting, while quietly ignoring the Wedding of Cana painting taking up the entire wall across from it.  

After I was done in the Louvre, I walked through the tuileries, getting a sandwich from a food truck and then tossing pieces of bread at the ducks in the pond, which I was almost certainly not allowed to do.

I admired the sculptures in the garden and the violin playing of a guy who was chased off by a security guard shortly thereafter. 

From there, I walked down the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe, the monument to Napoleon’s military victories many moons ago and the French Revolution. The Arc de Triomphe is accessed through an underground tunnel, not by running across several lanes of traffic like in a game of frogger. 

While walking underground, I passed several people in marching band uniforms who were carrying musical instruments. Then I passed several people in military uniforms who were carrying assault rifles. A military display had just wrapped up, ending with the French flag waving over my head as I stood underneath the Arc de Triomphe.

Standing at the top of the arc, I got an incredible view of the city. By now, it was night time and after glimpsing the Tuileries Garden as the sun was setting, I was able to see the City of Lights while it was all lit up. From the top of the Arc de Triomphe, I could see the Eiffel Tower and its beam cutting across the sky.

Between the cafe at the Louvre, the Mona Lisa, my stroll through the Tuileries, and standing at the top of the Arc de Triomphe, it was a day of sweet views. I saw the sights from all angles, enjoying beautiful art, sculpture gardens, and the city at night from one of its most famous landmarks.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out how I spent the previous day in France

A Moveable Feast

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“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.”

–Hemingway, “A Moveable Feast”

After my couple of days of art museums, opera, and a cemetery, I decided to focus on purchasing two of the main things that I love: books and paintings.

Together, my aunt and I went in search of art. I’d seen enough movies and tv shows that romanticized the Parisian art scene to make me believe that there would be a starving artist on every street corner, hawking their wares to only the truest of art lovers (I’ve seen Titanic). That is a pretty old brochure for the city of love, as I learned when I walked the streets not seeing any intrepid young painters with easels sketching in the streets.

Undeterred, we ventured up Montmartre, one of the most picturesque parts of Paris, in order to get a view of the city from the basilica on top of the hill. We didn’t find any art there, but continued on throughout the city. 

No trip to Paris would be complete for an aspiring writer without making a pit stop at Cafe De Flore, an old stomping ground of Hemingway, Simone De Beauvoir, and Sartre, among others. 

Despite what other people will tell you about how the cafe is stodgy, overrun with tourists, and Instagram-famous (the biggest cardinal sin) I am willing to defend it. 

It is still a cute, charming French cafe with a lot of history. And, most importantly, it remains a good place to get a glass of wine.

After lunch, we walked down the street to Shakespeare & Co., an English-language bookstore that supported the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Joyce back in the day. It sold Hemingway’s first novel and still maintains a line out the door most days. It sits across the street from Notre Dame Cathedral right along the Seine. 

Walking down the street in the late afternoon, my aunt and I found an art gallery, which is how I wound up buying a nude painting of a woman. It is an incredibly beautiful piece of art that I want to hold onto forever and pass on to my family members once I die.

It was a good day of shopping, drinking, and art purchasing. My new books are on my shelf. My painting will soon be on display in my apartment. The day left its mark. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: For more ideas about what you can do in Paris, check out my previous blog post about my trip to the Musée d’Orsay and Opéra Bastille. 

Art & Opera: A Day in Paris

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When I booked my ticket for Paris, there was one thing I knew that I wanted to do for sure: spend a day in the Musée d’Orsay and have lunch at the cafe inside. The Musée d’Orsay is one of the greatest art museums in the world, carved out of a hollowed-out train station that now houses some of the most famous art in the world. I have wanted to visit it since I knew it existed. Walking through it takes an entire day, so I planned on doing just about nothing else, wanting to feel like I had all of the time in the world.

My aunt and I met up and we walked the entirety of the museum. My father is the type of person who walks up to a painting, stares at it for twenty minutes, then backs away from it, and stares at it for another twenty minutes, studying every brushstroke and paint fleck. My aunt is not such a person. She could walk into a gallery, do a 360 turn, and then walk off, satisfied that she had gotten everything she needed from the paintings.

Like most people, I’m somewhere in the middle. 

We made it through the museum in record time in comparison to how my father would have done it, but I still felt like I savored all of the artwork. I saw all of the paintings that I wanted to see, starting with the “Birth of Venus” by Cabanel, which my parents have a print of hanging in their house. Seeing it in person is an entirely different experience, one that also makes you want to lay naked in the middle of the ocean with knee length hair while a bunch of cherubs careen over you. 

We checked out the Van Goghs, the Picassos, crossing off everything on my list except for Monet’s waterlilies (which weren’t on display and which I’d already seen). It was nothing but stunning paintings as far as the eye could see. 

We stopped to have lunch in a cafe that was behind a clock face that overlooked the Seine, sipping wine and chatting about the art that we had seen so far. 

After the Musée d’Orsay, I got ready to see the opera with Claire, one of my favorite people to go to the opera with. We saw Pelléas et Mélisande by Debussy, a French opera about…well, we weren’t quite sure what it was about. The show started and Claire and I promptly dozed off, taking high-priced naps at the Opéra Bastille. For me, it was jet-lag. For her, it was the rigors of being a full time law student. Either way, we were tired.

From what we did see of the performance, it was beautiful. There were loud, perfect voices ringing out towards the ceiling and actual children who could sing better than me. Nothing humbles me quite like going to the opera or ballet and seeing the talent of the stars on display, being made to look effortless.

After that, we called it a night.

Between the art museum and the opera I had the kind of day that most people expect to have when visiting Paris, one in which there is no shortage of art and culture. It was a blissful day of admiring some of the greatest artwork in the world, followed by the soothing tones of opera music.

Who can ask for a better day in Paris?

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out how I spent my previous day in Paris

Père Lachaise

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“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow.” 

–Oscar Wilde

When planning a trip to Paris, lots of ideas spring to mind for what you should do: shopping, going to cafes, visiting museums, and walking (or taking the elevator) to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Visiting a cemetery is not usually one of them.

Yet, on my second day in Paris, Claire and I ventured across the Seine to Père Lachaise, one of the world’s most famous cemeteries so that we could see the graves of some of the greatest icons to ever live. It is home to an estimated one million late citizens of the world, many of whom changed it during their time.

Père Lachaise was eerier than most cemeteries (which is saying something) with crows pecking at the moss-eaten tombstones that lined the cobblestone paths. The only thing that was missing was the thin sheet of fog descending on what was already a cool, overcast day. We made our way through the cemetery like we were window shopping, asking each other which tombstone we could see for ourselves. (“I like the headstone on that grave” “I think I would prefer one of the standing ones like that one.”)

We visited the graves of Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Proust, and Balzac, all of which were littered with flowers, love letters, candles, and other esoteric objects that signified people’s enduring love for them. I stood back and admired the various legends who were buried six feet below my feet, whispering to Oscar Wilde and Balzac that I had read their works for class.

Towards the end, we found Oscar Wilde’s tombstone. It was only a tiny bit obvious which one was his, since it featured a bust of him as a sphinx (no one can say that he didn’t have style). Claire later told me that a tour guide standing nearby said that the sphinx once had a penis attached to it, but that someone stole it in the 1960s. Now his grave is encased in glass, which people have kissed while wearing lipstick. 

Spending time in an iconic cemetery brings up many strange questions, like what is worth putting on your tombstone, what kinds of people would ever visit it, and what a person would have to do in order to be remembered for something centuries after their death.

These are thoughts that, much like the one million or so bodies in Père Lachaise, will fester.

From there, Claire and I went for a stroll in a park. It made for a nice relaxing end to our day, as we admired the waterfalls and flowers. It was a beautiful spring day in Paris.

Later that evening, I met up with my aunt and uncle and my uncle’s nephew (they all also ended up being in Paris at the same time as me). Together, the four of us went to see the Eiffel Tower and grab dinner at a nearby cafe. 

The Eiffel Tower is one of the few landmarks in world history that is just a little bit bigger than you think it’s going to be in real life. After years of imagining what it would look like up close, it did not disappoint. It shimmers on the hour every hour for five minutes and I was able to see the glittering tower just as it changed. Child Raquel was squealing on the inside.

We didn’t go up it. We just admired it from afar.

After checking out the Eiffel Tower, we had dinner together and then we called it a night.

I scratched off several things from my Paris itinerary in a single day: the graves of beloved icons and the Eiffel Tower. I was ready to see what my next day in Paris had in store for me.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

An American in Paris

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“I love Paris in the Springtime”
–Cole Porter

Like so many little girls growing up in the US, I always dreamt of going to Paris. It consumed my personality: I had an Eiffel Tower lamp, an Eiffel Tower statue, and a calendar of famous Parisian landmarks. I even made a painting of the Eiffel Tower once. 

Anytime I saw a movie or tv show set in Paris, it seized my imagination, and I could suddenly picture myself strutting down cobblestone roads and seeing the Seine lit up with street lights late at night. 

Many great American writers lived in Paris for a time, like Hemingway, Baldwin, and Stein. It made me hope that one day I would do a stint in Paris as well, reading and writing in an epicenter of art and culture.

Despite all of my dreams of visiting, I didn’t always think it was going to happen. Paris always seemed nebulously far away, more of a romantic ideal than a potential reality, but when my friend Claire returned to Paris to finish her studies at the Sorbonne, I asked if I could spend Spring Break sleeping on her couch. I was thrilled when she said yes. 

Mon ami

While she went to work, I tooled around town, doing all of the touristy things that locals would never dream of doing. I waited in long lines, seeing the sights, and mumbled my way through the few French phrases that I knew (“Je suis désolé, est-ce que vous parlez anglais?” was the most popular and I left out half the words.)

The day that I arrived, we started by getting brunch at a restaurant called Jozi. We ate avocado toast and mimosas, while I fought my jet lag and lost. It was my first Parisian meal, not including the tiny bread roll that I was given on the plane, and it more than lived up to my expectations. 

After that, we walked along the Seine and waited in line for the Notre Dame Cathedral. The line was so long that it zig-zagged across the plaza.

It was one of the first times in years that Notre Dame Cathedral was open to the public since the fire in 2019. The bricks of the cathedral are now a lighter color than they used to be, but you otherwise cannot tell that the church is any different. The line moved shockingly fast and before we knew it we were being ushered through the church. 

We took our time milling through the cathedral, looking at the paintings, listening to the church organs, lighting candles, and buying rosaries for devout Catholic grandmothers.

The cathedral is just as beautiful as I imagined, with sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows, dimly lit by candles, and smelling vaguely of incense.  It has been perfectly restored since the fire. 

Parts of it were a surprise to me, like the statues of saints that lined the front of the cathedral and how they stared down at you, almost as though they were doing it from heaven. 

It’s hard to find an original thing to say about Notre Dame Cathedral, the beautiful gothic church that has captured the minds of writers, artists, and Disney execs around the world. All I can say is that it’s worth seeing if you ever find yourself in Paris (and Paris is not a bad place to find yourself). 

After that, I dragged my tired ass home. I could barely keep my eyes open or feel my feet, but I had gotten my first taste of the city. I was ready to spend the next day conquering the city, dominating the public transportation system, and getting to know Paris.

I’ll keep you posted!

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my previous blog post about the feminist birthday party I attended a few weeks ago that raised money for nonprofits aimed at upholding women’s rights around the world.

Vibe Fine Arts Grand Opening

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There are many ways to observe that period where summer ends and your new semester begins.

One of the ways is to spend an evening at Le Bain, a nightclub that more than lives up to its name “the bath” by having a hot tub carved into the dancefloor, where fully-clothed patrons go for a dip and (possibly) contract HPV. Not really folks, calm down.

Another way is to enjoy a night of Bossa Nova and flamenco dancing, the kind that’ll maybe make you question your sexuality, at a tapas bar for your cousin’s 21st birthday.  

A final way is to go to a rooftop party with your friends from Columbia to listen to a mutual friend DJ to a crowd of interesting people.

This is what I was getting up to when I met Zac Presley, one of the curators of Vibe Fine Arts. Vibe Fine Arts is a dreamy new SoHo art gallery that would be making its debut a month later.

I hadn’t been to an event like this since I went to see Mahmoud Hamadani’s work in undergrad, so I was thrilled when I made the list for the grand opening. 

@vibefineartsnyc

I was excited to see the artwork of Jule Waibel, a German artist who I also met at the aforementioned rooftop party, and whose work would be on display like a jewel in the crown of the art gallery (pun very much intended). When I met Jule at the party, she had her infant son strapped to her chest. When I saw her again at the opening, I found her, sans baby, standing in front of her artwork. 

She explained her pieces to me, how she made one of the paintings after her mother died and processed the grief through her art. The painting, which is of two women crying in their underwear, shows their grief and vulnerability. Stomach rolls are visible as one woman lays on the other woman’s lap and she tenderly places a hand on her friend’s back, the tears gently filling up her eyes. 

@jule_waibel

Another painting of Jule’s captures her life in Brooklyn, with a vibrant scene that brings vitality to the simple domestic task of a mother and daughter getting groceries.

Her work is beautiful and fortunately there are four pieces currently on display at the gallery that proves this. 

The gallery more than lived up to its name. There was finger food, champagne that kept flowing, and men respectfully hitting on you. I wanted to take home several of the paintings, but knew that that would mean having paintings to hang in an apartment I could no longer afford. 

The paintings weren’t the only type of art on display, as people milled around the gallery with coach bags, black sequined party dresses, and the SS22 Oscar De La Renta dress that Taylor Swift wore at the Grammys (or a really good knockoff of it). It was like walking through the style section of the Sunday New York Times.

By the end of the evening, I’d gotten a full dose of art and fashion and was ready to call it a night (by which I mean making a quick pit stop at the Marriott Marquis bar and then going to bed). 

It had been a long night and an even longer summer of me being a woman about town, acting bougie at art galleries that I had no business going to. I’d finally experienced the SoHo art scene, a thing of legend in Manhattan that I had yet to explore. Now the only things left on my New York City bucket list are the Met Gala and an Eyes Wide Shut party. (I kid).

I’ll continue spending my time exploring the SoHo art scene and going to places with “vibe” in the name, two things that have yet to fail me when searching for a good time.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

The One Where I Got A Job– Look Out Corporate America

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After much deliberation, I have decided that I am not meant to work for a living. 

I respect the lifestyle, but it’s just not for me. 

A glamorous headshot of me, taken at work

School’s back in session, so I can finally tell you all about the joys of my New York City job, how I was every inch the slick professional in chic pumps, ready to “shake up the game” or something like that. 

A few weeks ago, I completed my summer gig of working as a receptionist at a zillenial fin-tech place, having found the job through a temp agency.

Photographic evidence of me working for a living

My parents told me to apply at a temp agency, something that I believed to be a thing from their New York City days that no longer existed, like subway tokens and paying a buck 85 for your coffee. As it turns out, temp agencies are still alive and well, unlike the other facets of their New York City days, when they could afford a walk-up on practically no budget with a job that they got by checking the want-ads one afternoon.

My mother requested pics of my work clothes everyday. Here they are

Through Taylor Hodson, I got a job as a receptionist at a company that, like most people, doesn’t even have a landline. My job was primarily to greet people and to shred meaningless documents, something that they trusted a 23 year old to do perfectly. 

This was one of my first ever big girl jobs, not a part time internship that paid me minimum wage, gave me one day off a week, and let me roll in at 10 AM. Working a full forty hour work week for above minimum wage felt like graduating past that point in your school career where you get to have naptime.

A hardworking professional, as you can see

Unlike my previous part-time employment, I actually got off work feeling like I’d earned the right to a Friday afternoon happy hour drink as well as the right to yell at tourists walking three abreast on the sidewalk while I hurtled my body into my subway stop in the morning. 

I filled out an I-9, a W-2, and an NDA, before completing a sexual harassment lecture and quiz that asked real head scratchers like, “is commenting on your coworkers breasts while she’s lactating sexual harassment?”

I practiced my route to work the day before in order to ensure that I could get there in a New York Minute. Then, I did some of new-job-pregaming-rituals the night before, like watching Anne Hathaway play a plucky career woman in one of her films (The Devil Wears Prada, The Intern, etc.). She is every woman… but she is a little bit more me than the rest of you. I’m sorry, it’s the big brown eyes and the long brown hair.

I’d wake up every morning and listen to Megan Thee Stallion rap about “holding a glock in her birkin,” two things that I don’t own, before manning a desk for eight hours. 

I’d gotten a taste of rush hour traffic at my old job, but would now get to enjoy a long commute during rush hour in the middle of a heat wave. Every subway car was sardined with people, except for the one half-full car that has no air conditioning, making New Yorkers choose between personal space and heat stroke. We’re all hot and angry, trauma bonded from being jostled into each other’s half-naked bodies while sweat drips down our ass cracks. Nothing quite beats inhaling a wide range of body odors while trying to get to work on time.

This is being presided over by a conductor who was usually just as mad about it as we were and made that apparent by shouting at us to not only “STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS” but to “USE MORE THAN ONE OF THE DOORS” and “WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT TRAIN IF YOU DON’T FIT,” with the same energy as a TSA agent at LaGuardia who will yell at you to stand back if you approach them to ask a question that has already been answered.

I’m not sure whose fault this is, but I’m just going to blame Eric Adams. You can always blame the mayor of New York and then a decade after they’re out of office, they’ll get a couple of buildings named after them. 

Commuting home at the end of the day, unreasonably exhausted from not doing much of anything, and then being responsible for making my own dinner seems cruel and unusual.

I now have a new respect for the people who work all day, come home to kids to raise, make dinner, and then sleep poorly, only to make a paltry sum of money the next day at work. 

Like I said, I have decided that I am not meant to work for a living. 

I’ve just started another year of school, so I won’t have to rejoin the workforce for another year. Corporate America will have to wait with bated breath for my return. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

Farewell San Fran

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“…Off to see the world

There’s such a lot of world to see.”

–Moon River, from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s

In the heart of Golden Gate Park, there’s a serene garden called the Japanese Tea Garden. It has gently combed gravel designed for meditation, statues of Buddha, koi fish in reflecting ponds, bridges you can climb over, and a tea house to eat in. 

It’s free to the public on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays before 10 AM, so on my final day in San Francisco, I went there for breakfast.

I had green tea and what was basically well-seasoned chicken nuggets for breakfast, but with a lovely view of bonsai trees.

After that, I stayed in Golden Gate Park to go to the California Academy of Science, where I watched butterflies land on students’ backpacks in an indoor rainforest, and penguins dive into the water of an aquarium, before falling asleep in a warm, dark planetarium.

I took a ride on a cable car as a last hurrah and got some of my best views of the city by far. I couldn’t have envisioned a better final day in San Francisco. 

My initial impression was that San Francisco was a charmingly-messy, mild-mannered city.  

My new, better-informed impression is that San Francisco is a moody town that’s constantly reinventing itself. It’s in a troubled time, crippled by a homelessness epidemic that is distressing to think about, much less look at head-on, and a gentrified, monocultural tailspin with no end in sight. 

But I believe that it will prevail. 

So much of what I saw fit the reputation of classic San Francisco. 

I saw two men having sex on a nude beach and had them look back at me with a “you lost, girl?” look. Likewise, I was offered magic mushrooms by a guy on the street, which I politely declined. A building had Jimmy Hendrix painted on the side of it, because he’d once lived there, but it had since been converted to a pet shop– the undercurrent of rock n’ roll being never far behind.

I managed to beat the heat for about five days at the start of summer by being in foggy San Francisco, famous for its mild weather year round. 

Another beautiful San Fran attraction that you should visit in Golden Gate Park. Please ignore the little boy picking at his underwear.

This trip marks one of the first times I’ve voluntarily ventured out into the world. As a person who likes her solitude, I often have to force myself to leave my house, but I wanted to experience the world, since there’s such a lot of world to see.

While in San Francisco, I stumbled upon a nude beach, walked across The Golden Gate Bridge, tried to get the attention of some sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf on Pier 39, visited a Japanese Tea Garden, did some thrifting, and rode in a few self-driving cars and cable cars. There are still many more things I’d like to do in San Francisco: taking a trip to Alcatraz and properly seeing Lombard Street both come to mind. But for now, I’ve gotten my fill of the city and will be thinking about it for a while to come.

Thank you again Raj for letting me stay with you and helping me learn enough for my novel. I will never forget it. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

The Haight

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San Francisco, being my kind of town, has incredible thrift shops. The best thrifting in San Francisco is in Haight Ashbury and the best shopping in Haight Ashbury is on Haight Street, which is completely lined with thrift shops.

My motto, as you know

I journeyed down to Haight Street, known to the locals as The Haight, to judge for myself whether or not the thrifting was better in New York City or in San Francisco. 

After taking me to Gus’s (the best sandwich shop in the city apparently), Raj gave me his own personal thrift tour, showing me the best spots. 

At the many stores we hit, I found, and fell in love with, a red, wine-colored cocktail dress and a lavender jacket. Anyone who thrifts knows that one or two great pieces is quite the haul. I bought a San Francisco 49-ers shirt as a souvenir and am now prepared for men to ask me if I’m a fan as a way to make small talk, should I ever wear it out in public. My flirting skills, knowing no bounds, will probably have me saying, “no I just own the shirt.”

I came close a few times to buying a vinyl jacket that I absolutely did not need. “Absolutely did not need” would describe all of the shopping that I did while in Haight Ashbury. 

I mainly wanted the statues of the naked golden ladies that were over the dressing rooms of one of the places I went to. I thought that they would make a nice addition to my Columbia apartment. 

It would really give my apartment more of a Greek-sculpture-garden vibe rather than the soggy-cardboard-box vibe it has now and you just can’t get that from William Sonoma. 

They were, alas, not for sale and so my apartment will have to make do with the aesthetically-pleasing pieces of furniture that I find on the street. 

Following that, we had a night out on the town, me with my new jacket and Raj with his equally nice clothes. I was able to take a ride in one of those utterly terrifying self-driving cars that make you fear that you’ll be careening towards a sudden death in a matter of seconds. They also make you question how far automation will put us out of work in the future, but I forced myself to think happy thoughts, like about the amazing thrifting that can be done in San Francisco.

And if you ever find yourself in San Francisco, do yourself a favor and shop at The Haight. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Read all about my Escape to the Golden Gate that took place the day before I went thrifting.