Oops?

Some people celebrate Gay Pride, and others choose to transport a stove.

We picked up a stove that we found on Craig's List today. Luckily it wasn't too far from us, so Erik rented a dolly and we wheeled it home. Our route took us across Boulevard Montparnasse and straight through the parade.

Doesn't he look too happy to be wheeling a major appliance down the street?


Looking up our street from Montparnasse. It was deserted because of the parade, and we had fun walking down the middle of our usually busy street.

Our new gas stove is now living in our bedroom, where we surprisingly found room for it beside the desk.

In other news, we went back to the apartment today so that Erik could get a better look at the fuse box, and so that we could start making a plan for all the electrical work that needs to be done. It's the one major thing that really needs to be done before we move in. Erik was happy to find that there was a ground wire coming into the apartment in the electrical box (none of the outlets are currently grounded), apparently that will make things easier once the work begins. We stopped into Conforama on our way down to the metro, and found a good deal on an undercounter fridge and freezer. They were both on sale (it's the Soldes!), and with the very generous gift card I received from one of the classes at school the price was right, so I think they're next in line to be bought. Only problem is where to store them...

The agent was telling us a bit about our new neighbourhood, and apparently we have the second best croissant bakery (there is actually an award) and a couple of award winning charcuterie stores in our neighbourhood. This means that anyone who is interested in a 'working' holiday in Paris will be well fed. :)

So we signed....

....on the dotted line.

On September 18, if all goes well, we will be proud apartment owners!

The rez de chaussee apartment....

Offer made, negotiated, accepted.

Now the fun begins....

We Went Back...

And we took lots of pictures! Please enjoy the wallpaper.

Outside the building, main entry from the courtyard. The two windows to the left of the door are the kitchen and bedroom.


The street side of the apartment, the living room window. Quite picturesque, isn't it? :)



Entry (the bedroom is just to the right of the mirror)



Living room, facing onto the street


Kitchen entry, with a closet opposite the bookshelf



Kitchen facing onto the courtyard


The beautiful bathroom (the toilet is in a separate room right beside the tub room). You can't really fully appreciate the beauty of the wallpaper from this picture.


View from the bedroom and kitchen.

I just realized that I didn't take any pictures of the bedroom! I took one of the view, and one of the crack on the wall, but that's it!


Here are the two big cracks on the walls. The left is in the bedroom, and right in the living room.

Afterwards we went and looked at another place. Smaller at 38m2, and 20 000euros less expensive, but on the second floor of an older building (1930). Large separate kitchen, tiny bathroom (much smaller than what we currently have), chair rail and ceiling moldings in the living room. Electric heat, all the rooms overlook the courtyard which is opposite a school. Clean and in excellent condition, nothing needs to be done. Really, it was perfect, if a bit small. We also thought it might have better resale value than a groundfloor apartment. In the end, we couldn't decide which we preferred, there were pros and cons for both of them. So, we've just made offers on both. Hopefully that will take care of things for us.

The hunt continues...

We looked at some more apartments this afternoon (sorry, no pictures), and one of them was a real winner. The price was right, and it was in a new building (1970) being sold by the original owner. It was in great shape, and was a lot like stepping into a time machine, in that it had pretty much been preserved in it's original state, with floor to ceiling wallpaper in every room (even the ceiling was papered in the bathroom!), and I'll let you imagine what lovely patterns the wallpaper was. Just imagine shiny....

The kitchen, bathroom (comes complete with bidet!) and electrical need to be updated, which is what we want to do, it has a good sized storage space in the basement, has double exposure onto the street and courtyard, has central heating, has a great layout with a big entry way, and it's big!! Almost 50 square meters.

The only thing that's stopping us from making an offer right this second is that it's rez de chaussee, or street level. The bedroom and kitchen open up onto the (very nice and flowery) courtyard, and the main room opens up onto a very quiet street facing an elementary school. All the windows have lockable shutters, but I don't know, how to you get around not being able to sleep with the windows open in the summer? Or just the fact that during the day, anyone can essentially stick their head into your living room as they walk down the street....

What would you do? For more reference, the apartment that I talked about in the previous post that we really wanted has been sold, so we're moving on, to hopefully bigger and better things. If this apartment were on any other floor, I think we would have already made an offer.

Apartment Hunting

For anyone who is interested, here are some pictures, and information about our apartment hunt. We're looking to buy something, along the line 6 of the metro, likely in the 13th arrondissement. With our budget in that area, we're looking at two or three 'rooms' (pieces), around 40 square meters total size, about 5 more than we currently have.

Apt #1: 3 rooms, 40 m2, first floor in a three floor 1920s building (that's the second for all you North Americans), two windows looking out onto the street, three or four looking onto the courtyard. Needs work. Also, our favorite. And, the pictures make it look a lot nicer!

Living room

First bedroom, we'd probably use it as an office/guest room. There's also a closet behind the door on the right that was once a toilet, and another larger storage space around the corner on the left.

The third room, with water hook ups hidden in that slanted wall thingy. We'd like to eventually move at least the shower into this room, and make the kitchen bigger (kitchen and bathroom are currently next to one another)

Kitchen-we'd like to open up the walls here and make it an American style or open kitchen.

Bathroom--the only room in the house that had been recently updated.

This place needs to fixed up. The floors are covered in old linoleum, and the walls have a gross textured wallpaper on them. The windows would eventually need to be updated (double panes), and it has electric heat (but a gas stove!!) It also was originally two apartments, which is why there are plumbing fixtures in the farthest room, which is good news for us. Best of all, this place felt huge! Having the second bedroom made it seem a lot more spacious. The location is great, and well, we just both fell in love with it as soon as we saw it.

Apt. #2- 2 pieces, 42 m2, ground floor, 1960s building, in good condition, not requiring any immediate work. Over looking a park, radiant hot water heating in the floors.

Kitchen


Living area


Bedroom


Bathroom. Toilet was in a separate room.

Don't have too much to say about this place. It was about the same price as the first, but was nothing special. It also seemed smaller.

So there you go. Hopefully we'll see some more places next weekend, but we really can't stop thinking about that first place.

For Deb...

...and anyone else who likes strawberry desserts.

Here is the recipe for the Strawberry Mascarpone Tart that I made for dessert while Mom and Deb were visiting.

And this is the crust recipe that I used.

Enjoy!

The Visit Continues

On Friday morning, we met up on boulevard Edgar Quinet to check out the antique market. Nothing caught our eyes, so we carried on to the Centre Pompidou.

That's the line we were in outside

After waiting in line for about 30 minutes, we made it inside, realized that there was no line at all for the automated ticket machine, and cruised up to the sixth floor to visit the Kandinsky and Calder exhibits.

Both exhibits were wonderful, we loved the wire sculptures and the circus that Calder had done, and the colours in Kandinsky's paintings were breathtaking.

We took a quick coffee break at a nearby boulangerie before wandering down the rue Montorgueil.

Saturday Mom and Deb were on their own, visiting the market at Edgar Quinet, doing some shopping, and walking through the Marais, the Tuileries and visiting the Orangerie. They then invited us over for a delicious market dinner at their fabulous apartment.

I met up with them Sunday afternoon on the Champs Elysee, where we braved the hot temperatures to climb to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. It was a beautiful, clear day, and we enjoyed the spectacular views of the city, and the many rooftop gardens that we could spot.


After freshening up, we met for dinner at Chez Janou. We stuffed ourselves with their generous portions, and enjoyed sampling some of their many pastis.

Today they are visiting the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Grand Palais, and I think tomorrow they will stop by the nursery school in the morning.

Hard to believe their visit is almost over!

The Visitors

Mom and Deb arrived bright and early Monday morning.

After getting them settled into their awesome apartment near rue Daguerre, we wandered around the neighbourhood, stopping for a nice lunch and continuing on through the cemetary.

They have been filling their days since with all sorts of touristy fun, and we were lucky enough to join them today, on this holy holiday of Ascension. We headed out to visit the chateau at Fountainebleau, enjoying a surprisingly quiet visit of the castle and gardens.

After a relaxing train ride back into Paris, we're just heading out to meet them for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, La Cerisaie.

To be continued....

My Adventure at the Farm

Last week I spent four days at a farm. With sixteen five year olds. And it was actually pretty fun!

Every year the five year old class goes on this trip, and usually the teacher takes her student teacher with her. But this year she didn't have one, so they asked me to join them, and I said yes.

As the trip approached, I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. When I told one of my tutoring families where I was going, she told me to get lots of sleep the night before we left. I began to think that I was more stressed about this trip than the kids were. I'd never spent more than six hours in a row with kids before, how was I going to deal with them 24hrs a day for four days straight?

This attractive picture was taken on the second last day. And I'm kind of smiling, right?

Monday morning, I arrived a the school to be greeted by a handful of kids running around the garden, with their little rolly suitcases lined up by the gate. As more and more kids arrived, they got more and more excited. Eventually we all loaded into the cars, and a couple of parents drove us to the train station at Montparnasse. We quickly got them settled on the train, and before I knew it, we were off. A one hour TGV ride brought us to Poitiers, where we had a very stressful 3 minutes to unload 16 kids and 18 suitcases. That done, we found our coach that would take us on the last leg of the journey, one more hour to the Centre de Plein Air de Lathus.

After the kids settled into the rooms, we were off to the farm, just a short walk away. The next three days were filled with activites like milking goats, riding ponies, fishing for tadpoles and making bread. The days passed quickly, with the time before dinner spent getting the kids cleaned up and into pyjamas, and the time after dinner spent trying to get them to sleep. Of the sixteen, only two had trouble getting to sleep, and well, luckily there were two of us.

Our bus picked us up on Thursday afternoon, and we loaded 16 tired and dirty kids and set off for the station.

I think the best part of the trip (aside from the fabulous weather that made me wonder how I can stand living in grey, grey Paris) was watching the kids see their parents for the first time as we got off the train.

And I slept for ten long hours on Thursday night. Thank goodness it was a holiday on Friday.

Weekend in Basel

The month of May here is France is basically one long weekend with a couple of work days thrown in. Last Friday was European Labour Day, so we took advantage of that to go to Basel to visit Alex. A couple of hours on the TGV is all it takes to leave a dreary, grey Paris and arrive in sunny Basel (we spent most of the trip sitting across from a very cranky woman who COULD NOT BELIEVE that the train was running late. She complained to the conductor that the train was not going fast enough, and then spent the whole trip huffing to herself. Lucky for us she got off at Strasbourg)

We spent Friday afternoon wandering around Basel, then we had a BBQ at Alex's and got to meet all of her friends. It was a lot of fun, and I sadly took a total of zero photos that night. Erik in particular had a blast, and as a result was feeling a little under the weather the next day for the outdoor activities we had planned.

Alex took us to a little town just outside of Basel to do a hike up a mountain, following a waterfall.

It was fun, although I apparently walked too fast.


We were treated to some spectacular views from the top, and Erik enjoyed the rest the hangover Whopper that he had bought before leaving.



The best part was that once at the top, you could rent scooters to zip down the mountain all the way to the bottom. Scary, but worth it. When else will I get the chance to scoot down a mountain?

We spent the rest of the day lounging around warming up (it rained all the way down the mountain) and had dinner Saturday night with one of Alex's friends. And that was that. Sunday morning we caught the train back to Paris, and sadly said goodbye to Alex, making her promise to come and visit us soon.

For Your Viewing Pleasure....

First of all, Karina is a way better photographer than I am, so the majority of these photos are taken by her. I will accept credit for any bad photo, and I place the blame entirely on our camera :).

Secondly, I've edited the 300+ photos we took between the two of us down to a manageable 75 for you to enjoy. If you want to see more, you'll have to visit :). Us, that is, not San Francisco. Although I highly recommend that you visit San Francisco too, if you haven't been in the last five minutes. In case you haven't heard, it's awesome. But there are a lot of homeless people, and they're much more aggressive than they are here. But don't let that stop you. The food is fantastic. Although you might feel slightly guilty enjoying it due to the high rate of homelessness. I should really stop typing now.... Go visit, enjoy photos, we loved it, etc!

Please, enjoy the show!

San Francisco

I know, this post has been a long time coming, but I just don't know where to start.

We had a fantastic time (well, I did, and so assume that Erik and Karina did too).

It was a wonderful week, one of those weeks that felt at the same time much longer than a week, and far too short.

Some highlights:
The food. Oh, the food. So good. And I live in Paris. I'd argue that the food was much better in San Francisco. I've never had so many fantastic meals in such a short period of time.

The people. Are people always so friendly? Maybe I was particularly sensitive to the friendliness which is such a contrast to the general crustiness of the French. I've never had people be so helpful, and genuinely (or so it seemed) happy to help.

Can we go back to the food again? You know how at French markets, it's generally frowned upon to touch anything? Let alone ask for a sample? Karina and I made the mistake of eating breakfast before going to the farmer's market at the Ferry Building (well, not much of a mistake because the breakfast was really good). Every single stall had samples. Some had signs that said that sampling was mandatory. Vendors would offer samples of other things after you'd already paid for your purchase. Amazing! And so good!

The wine. Surprisingly good. We found some really nice small producers in the Russian River valley, and had a great time driving around the area. Our favorite visits were Mill Creek and Benziger.


The sights. I couldn't get enough of the bridges. And I'm not even the engineer of the family. We drove over the Golden Gate on our way to and from Sonoma. And we had spectacular views of the Oakland Bridge from the rooftop bar of our hotel and from the Ferry Building. Alcatraz was fantastic. The cable and street cars were fun. Chinatown was delicious (am I talking about food again?) The ancient Redwoods at Armstrong National Park in Guerneville were amazing.

The shopping. Everything is on sale in the States!! Nothing is on sale in Paris! Need I say more?

Karina. Can't think of a better person to spend a week touristing with.