La fete de la musique--or, the longest day of the year.

Before I spill the beans, here are some good guesses from mom...
Guess number 2- You came home from shopping to find that your appt. was being fumigated, so you ate in the hall

Guess number 3-It was 45 degrees celsius in your appt, and only 30 in the hall, so you decided to eat there.

Guess number 4- you wanted to picnic, but it was raining outside and the hall was the alternative "out of the appt" location.

Guess number 5- the mess in the appt was beyond eating around, so like the Mad Hatter, you changed locations

Guess number 6- when you went into your appt to eat lunch, there was a rat/bat already waiting for the party to start, so you ate in the hall before doing pest control.

So, yup, we locked the keys in the house. Just as the door closed behind me as we were leaving last night, I realized I hadn't picked up my keys. Unfortunately, no one had picked up the other set of keys either. After trying to find our landlady for about an hour, we realized that we actually couldn't leave the building, or we wouldn't be able to get back in. Luckily, we had a picnic in hand, as we were supposed to head over to Zoes to eat before enjoying the Fete de la musique. So, Nancy and I headed out to the grocery store to pick up some essentials like a bottle opener, a knife, more wine, more bread, etc. and after returning to our building, we parked ourselves outside our elevator and enjoyed a delicious meal.


Nancy had smartly noticed that the Inno closed at 9:50, so as we approached the bottom of bottle number two around 9:30, we set out again for more sustinance in the form of wine and chocolate. When we returned, the reality of not getting back into the apartment tonight was starting to weigh on us. One of the residents who had helped us initially, also gave us the number for the serrerier, or locksmith. We made the call around 10:00 just to find out how much it would cost. For the low price of 180euros, someone would come to our place and open the door. We told them we'd call them back if we needed them. However, weren't we surprised when someone got off the elevator on our floor saying he was here to open our door. Great. He tried for about three minutes with some special paper before deciding that he couldn't open our door. Well, he could, but it would involve drilling a hole in the door (same price) or breaking the lock (800euros). We decided to keep waiting for the landlady. We were not impressed that he then told us we had to pay for his time. I mean, we told the company we didn't want anyone to come yet. After a heated phone call with them, and another heated argument with the guy, we forked over 21euros and he left.

Here he his working his magic.

Then Erik and Daryl decided to try to open the door with a Rogers video card.

It didn't work either.

So, we finally start thinking about hotels (Nancy was all for stretching out on the floor right there in the hallway). Erik made one last phone call to our landlady, and she answered! I have never been so relieved! We finished off the night with the bottle of champagne that Nancy and Daryl had bought, and fell asleep to the sounds of the music on the street.