Blinded by the Light!

Erik has been a busy little bee these past couple of days.


First up is the bedroom. I won't tell you how long it took to put that lampshade together. But there is overhead light! In the bedroom! That you can turn on with a light switch! The installation of this light, and all the outlets in the room means that we no longer have an extension cord running across our main hallway. It had been there so long that neither of us even noticed it anymore, but I certainly notice that it's gone! The downside of the overhead light is that now I can't pretend that the bedroom walls don't need another coat of paint.


This was my surprise when I got home from the gym on Sunday. The kitchen is now absolutely glowing. We've gone from one flourescent bulb that took a good five minutes to fully warm up to five super bright halogens that turn on right away. Oh, and in case that's not enough, Erik also installed three under cabinet lights. All that light makes the kitchen seem HUGE!


And the piece de resistance...another surprise when I got home from the gym tonight...we finally have lights on the other wall of the main that aren't bare bulbs! We went to Leroy Merlin today and returned 160 euros worth of stuff, including the sconces we had originally chosen. It was just getting too complicated to figure out how to install them. Anyway, we figured out a solution, that you can kind of see if you look closely--the white plastic circles at the base of the lights are covering up the boxes that the cables have to come out of. I have no idea why stores can even sell fixtures that don't fit properly over these boxes, but I'm glad we were able to figure something out. Now we have to paint the white parts, and fix the plaster on the channels above. These new lights are much less forgiving than the old bare bulb.

And I haven't been spending all my time at the gym! Today I was back in the bathroom, priming all the walls with moisture resistant paint, and painting the radiator. Fun! Hopefully by tomorrow afternoon it will be all white.

Merry Christmas!!

O Christmas Tree

Now that school is done, the holidays can officially begin. We bought our Christmas tree today, from the Christmas market at Nation (and got ripped off, I later noticed at the grocery store. Oh well!), and spent the afternoon drinking Baileys and trimming the tree.

Also, it snowed on Thursday! And again on Friday! And it's supposed to snow again on Sunday! And it's freezing cold!! Winter is truly here, and the snow is actually sticking around, the first time I've seen that since we've been here, and even I have to admit that it's quite pretty. No picture, I keep forgetting to take one until it's too dark outside (not only is it really cold, it's that fun time of year where the sun disappears at 4pm and doesn't make another appearance until late the next morning when you're already inside working).

And lastly, and maybe most importantly, can anyone guess what our lovely tree is standing in?

Alex and Antonio's Visit

Last weekend Alex and Antonio came to visit us. It was fun having them around. Aside from the icy cold, Canadian style temperatures, we had fun exploring Paris together.

We discovered the parc de la butte de Chaumont, a great park not too far from where we are now. We climbed all the way to the top of the butte and enjoyed the views before heading down to check out the Canada Geese.



We drank lots of hot chocolate.


And of course no visit to Paris is complete without a visit to the Eiffel Tower, at night. It was pretty cold, however, and our visit lasted about five minutes, the duration of the sparkling lights, before we high-tailed it to the nearest cafe for hot chocolate. It's not like we haven't seen Eiffey before!


Other highlights of the visit included the Chanson du Dimanche concert at the Elysee de Montmartre, followed by a fantastic dinner at the Cloche d'Or. So much food, but so so so good! We also managed to squeeze in a visit to Laduree for hot chocolate, and ate macarons from Pierre Herme. It was a very delicious, and fun weekend.

Perhaps a case can be made for having left the wallpaper up?


Is this not the most grim, depressing bathroom you've ever seen? Hopefully a nice coat of white paint will help.

In other news, can you believe that it's already December??? Two more weeks till the holidays!

Also, we have been seriously invaded by fruit flies. We can't figure out where they're coming from. We have refrigerated all the food that we can, and are constantly leaving traps, and they just won't leave us alone. I just looked over and noticed one perched innocently on the edge of my glass. Gross! Any tips or ideas? We never had them at our other place, despite regularly leaving fruit out on the counter.

31 Hours in Valencia

A How-To Guide

Step One: Make sure you are listening to O Valencia! by the Decemberists as your flight lands in Valencia. Have your husband waiting for you at the airport.

Step Two: Have a great lunch on the patio at Cuvee Restaurancion. We highly recommend the tempura vegetables and calamari. Try out your Spanish by ordering "dos cervecas, por favor"

Step Three: Take a walk down to see the magnificent buildings designed by Calatrava.


Step Four: bus back to the old centre of the city, and buy sunglasses.


Step Five: wander through the many plazas admiring the old buildings. And the oranges.


Step Six: stop for a drink and marvel at how cheap the drinks are. Our record this weekend was 3euros for a glass of wine and a coffee.

Step Seven: wander through a church that we had visited previously with Karina. Marvel at the painted panels and ceilings that we under restoration when we had been before.


Step Eight: stop for tapas on the Plaza de la Reina and admire the views of the old church.


Step Nine: Have an aperitif at Tula, a cute cafe near the hotel

Step Ten: Eat an amazing tapas dinner at Tapas Gastronomik. All the food was fantastic, and the service couldn't have been better.

Step Eleven: Go for drinks at Marasquino, just around the corner from the restaurant. Again, be amazed at how little they cost.


Step Twelve: The next day take advantage of the extensive hotel breakfast.

Step Thirteen: walk up to the Modern Art Museum, and visit for free because it's Sunday.

Step Fourteen: Eat Paella for lunch at a restaurant in the Plaza de la Reina, and decide to walk back to the hotel.

Step Fifteen: stumble upon a covered marketplace that is filled with little cafes. Stop for one last glass of wine.


Step Sixteen: Pick up your bags at the hotel, and cab to the airport. Wish you could stay longer.

PS. Erik got new glasses. What do you think?

Progress

I know, I know, it's been awhile, and I'm sure that you're all dying to know what we've been up to here at our humble abode. Aside from a nasty case of assumed food poisoning (my stomach of steel apparently wasn't up for steak tartare) we spent this weekend buying, painting and installing the baseboards in our main room. In case you were wondering, yes, two metre pieces of baseboard do fit on the metro, but not easily.

So, here's your tour:

Lighting fixtures on one wall. I don't know if Erik is more proud of the installation or the fact that he's wearing a suit.

I'm still not 100% crazy about these sconces, but they are certainly an improvement on the bare bulb look we had going on before. There will be different sconces on the other wall, but their bases are smaller than the boxes in the walls that the cords come out of, so, there will unfortunately be more plastering and dust in our future.


Last weekend I finished painting the toilet. I love it! The bottom colour is the colour that we had originally chosen for the main room. I think it looks much better in here.


And now that the baseboards are installed, we can finally start putting things against walls. We saw the floor in the centre of the room for the first time in almost a month tonight! It was dusty.


And don't worry Howard, your atelier is still alive and well. But getting smaller....

The Top

So it's not all wall paper removal and wall building fun around here! Today after mom and I finished painting the bedroom, and after Rob joined us for a great couscous lunch, we paid a visit to this guy:


Surprisingly there wasn't any line (we figured it was because of the lousy weather and the big screen above the ticket window that was advertising limited visibility from the top), so we bought three tickets and took the express train (or elevator) straight to the top. We didn't find the visibility limited at all, and spotted all the important landmarks. The view from the top (first time for all of us!!) was spectacular, and I can't believe it's taken me so long to get up there.


The Champ de Mars (with the Tour Montparnasse in the background)


Can you spot Invalides?




Trocadero with La Defense in the background


I love this city!


A long way from home...


My mom and I have the same smile!

The Chinese, The Germans and Erik.....

.....what do they all have in common?

This weekend we said aurevoir to the pipe, and bonjour to a new wall (there's your hint!)!


Now you see it....







...now you don't!

Observant readers may have noticed that a) the wallpaper is gone, and there is a new colour on the wall, and b) that the studs supporting our wall are metal. Apparently this is the French way, and according to Erik we will never do it this way again. So there is your tip for the day: wood studs are infinitely easier to work with. Just another thing that the French have complicated for us!

Heat and Other Highlights

Fall has officially arrived here in gay Paree, and although the days can occasionally be sunny and cool, the nights tend to be more on the damp and cold side. I was thrilled to discover that the heat had been turned on at school this morning, and even more excited to discover that the heat in our apartment has also been turned on. It's the small things that tend to make my days lately.

Small things like the lights in the toilet and the bathroom. This is old news for Howard, because he and Erik took care of this more than a week ago, but I thought you would all like to see photos of these great lights.




Other highlights in apartment land include the installation of the freezer (still not plugged in, but pretty looking)


The construction of our closet by moi (no doors yet, and they will eventually be placed properly against the wall and in the corner but there's still wallpaper hiding behind there...)


And I think I mentioned in the previous post how Ross and Katie had fun de-wallpapering our toilet. They also had fun signing it. :)

Visitor's Part Deux

We just said goodbye to our second wave of visitors this morning. Our good friends Katie and Ross were here for a week, and were kind enough to say many nice things about the construction site that we were all living in.

No construction this week, although Ross did a great job of peeling the wallpaper out of the bathroom. They can come back anytime!




The wine harvest in Montmartre was being celebrated this weekend, so we headed up there last night for the fireworks. We had a snack of escargots before the show.


A really bad shot, but the fireworks were amazing! None of us had ever been so close before. We were sitting on the hill in front of Sacre Coeur, and they must have been lit from the big park just below. It was great!


We had dinner after at the Zebre. Champagne for the ladies.


I'm not sure what to say about this shot. Let's just say that it was an entertaining night.