My birthday thus far

Thanks everyone for all the birthday wishes in various formats :)

I'm having a lovely day so far. After a lie-in I wandered down to the shops (lovely, sunny, warm but not hot day) to spend my birthday money. Thanks Mum & Dad for buying me a new dress! Then I went down to Place Massena to check out the first day of the Christmas markets. There's a giant ferris wheel, various children's amusements, an outdoor ice rink, English, French, and Russian carols blaring on loudspeakers, a labyrinth of Christmas trees punctuated with displays of Russian stuff (the theme is a Russian Christmas, for some reason), and lots of market stalls selling handicrafts and food and so on. I succumbed to the general Nicois desire to pretend that it's proper cold even though it's not, and got a cup of mulled wine. Once it cooled down a bit, it was actually pretty good, although it made me sleepy! The last time I had one of those was in Chamonix, where it was much more seasonally-appropriate...

Also had a bag of churros - like fried doughnut sticks, presumably of Spanish origin? - with chocolate sauce. These are either popular carnival food or popular Christmas food, because there were about 5 different stalls selling them and I couldnay resist the wafting smell of hot fat :D They were okay, a bit hard though, I'll take delicious L'il Orbits mini donuts any day! The bag was hu-age as well (should have been too, for 5 euros!) so I am feeling slightly overly replete now, even though that's all I've eaten all day (not by design, just ended up too caught up in SHOPPING). Well, there's a couple of hours till dinner still, so hopefully I'll recover!

So that was all very pleasant. Tonight a friend of mine, Klara, and her boyfriend are coming over and we're having dinner with my flatmate Emily and her boyfriend who's visiting from America. I did invite a few more people, but left it a bit late and they had things planned already - including my other flatmate who's gone to Rome. Hopefully it will be fun anyway, although I'm the odd one out with two couples... Well, should be used to that, having been single for forevs! Will let you know how my evening went at a later date.