Paris

Paris Part 4 – Striking out on our own

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Wednesday was the first day totally on our own, not meeting up with anybody who spoke French. Actually, it was kind of nice. We didn’t have to meet anybody at a certain time or anything, so we were able to go at our own pace.

Part 4A, Museum Day

So where did we go? First up was the world-famous Louvre.

The Louvre is huge and crowded! I’m sure there are tucked away corners that you can catch your breath (seriously, the place is huge), but we were looking to get in, hit the major sites, and get out. Apparently so was everybody else, especially the tour groups.

The museum pass saved us from the massive line. We tried to go in the side entrance that nobody knows about, but they told us we couldn’t because we had a stroller (I think maybe it was just because they thought we would want to use an elevator, but there was a little language problem). No problem though, we strolled passed the entire line with our museum pass. Sayonara, suckers!

This is Paris tip #6: buy a museum pass! Even if you end up losing money on it, it is well worth it to skip all the lines! (I guess you could consider this tip 2A, since it is very much like buying a timed ticket for the Eiffel Tower) On top of that though, if you make any effort whatsoever, I can’t imagine you would lose money on it. I think we saved over 50€ (about $70) in museum admissions. Well worth the money!

We saw Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo, and La Jaconde (a.k.a. Mona Lisa). Evie had a running commentary on everything.

On Winged Victory: “Lets keep our eyes open for her head!
On Venus de Milo: “I liked the statues WITH arms.”
On the Mona Lisa: “Why is she smiling?” – Good question! People have been wondering that for years.

I think the thing that Evie got the biggest kick out of was the Mona Lisa. I think that was the only one that was famous enough for Evie to have encountered before in her short little life. She definitely recognized it and gave an appropriate “Ooooh!” when I lifted her up high enough to see it over everybody’s head (did I mention it was crowded?)

One thing that really annoyed me at the Louvre was the disrespect. Here we are amongst some of the most famous, priceless works of art in the world, and people just can’t stop touching it and taking flash photography. “This vase lasted 1,000 years, so I must get a picture of me touching it!” How do people not realize that *everybody* thinks they are the one special person who is allowed to break the rules? And if every person touches that vase, it’s not going to make it another 50 years, much less 1,000.

And there are signs everywhere about flash photography. If you don’t know how to turn off the flash on your camera, then just don’t take pictures. It’s not that important. Buy a post card, the picture is going to look nicer than your blurry, cheap, 50-heads-blocking-my-shot picture anyway. But I saw you taking picture after picture, just flashing away. “Oh well, the rules don’t apply to me, but I’m just one guy! What kind of damage can my one camera do?” It turned my stomach. (I would also like to say that I don’t know what percentage of the people doing these things were American, certainly some percentage, but not the majority. I’m looking at you Asia.)

After we were done with the Louvre, we needed some outside time, so we ran around in Tuileries, the big open park outside of the museum. It’s actually worth going to Tuileries even if you aren’t going to the museum, it’s a pretty nice park. In particular, you can see kids renting batteau (boats) and floating them in the pond. They have these really long sticks to push them away from the edge if they get too close. Evie liked watching the boats, but we tried not to hang around there too much because we didn’t want her to figure out that you could actually rent the boats.

Next we had originally planned to go to Musée d’Orsay, but we thought that might be a little much to do in a day. So instead we decided to go to the closer and smaller Musée de l’Orangerie. It ended up being a wise choice!

We couldn’t completely skip the line with our museum pass, but we were able to go in an expedited line. This was really a gem of a museum. It was small, but the big draw are the extremely large water lilies by Monet. Everybody was really nice here. They practically forced us to take our stroller in (at many museums you have to check them) and stoic security guards would break their cover to tell us how to get to the secret elevators. We were pleasantly surprised at how nice of a museum it was! Unfortunately, both kids fell asleep before we got to the water lilies. However, that did justify us going to l’Orangerie instead of Orsay.

Part 4B, It’s all about the kids

Next up, we went back to Champs-Élysées to make another attempt to catch the marionette show. Evie LOVED it! I thought I could sit by her and sort of explain what was going on, but I couldn’t understand anything. A true French marionette show requires a lot of participation by the kids, and Evie was right there with them yelling, “Oui! Oui!” when the other kids were yelling, even though she had no idea what she was saying. She was just giggling away. It was awesome! I would never have guessed she would have liked it so much. All French marionette shows star a particular puppet named Guignol (pronounced something like “Geen-yol”) and there is always a lot of shouting for Guignol. This became a MAJOR theme of the trip, shouting “Guignol!” at each other probably a hundred times a day.

Evie also managed to snag a crêpe on the way, which she ate on a park bench. She loved “French pancakes” (it was a traditional one, with just sugar) and made grand plans for eating more of them. She was literally only eating bread-like things at this point, but she was willing to add crêpes to the line up, next to baguette and croissants. Eating nothing but bread is a crumby, messy way to go through life. Evie didn’t really hold herself responsible for that. We were complaining about the state of the floor under the table and Evie declared, “Someone even put crumbs under MY chair!”

For Oliver’s part, he was getting really sick of riding in the ergo (the baby carrier we use). I think it was hot and sweaty, and he’s not used to being so tied up for most of the day. At home he gets some time to spread out and play a little bit. He was starting to get fussy every time we put him in there. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of options (though we put him in the stroller now and again, when we had the chance).

Part 4C, Nous sommes Français

At this point I really felt like we were getting into a rhythm and starting to assimilate: we went shopping for toilet paper at our “usual” grocery store, we were eating stinky cheese and baguettes, and getting to know the people at the boulangerie (another 3 trips! I expect a personalized thank you card!)

A side note about the apartment: it feels really chintzy to leave everything almost used up. There were only 2 half rolls of toilet paper. Every cleaning supply (including dish soap) was just a finger’s breadth from the bottom. It could be coincidence that every single last thing was just about to run out when we got there, but I somehow doubt it. I really don’t want to accuse someone of emptying out dish soap and stealing toilet paper, but that’s what it felt like. Another scam somehow. If you don’t want your place to seem sleazy, just go through ahead of time and spend the $10 and stock up on a few things. It will be money well spent. (Too bad we gotcha and took home the rest of the toilet paper we bought! Looks like the shoe is on the other foot!)

One more thing to mention: if French people see us coming, they should run. We’re an omen of death.

Two times during the day we were witness to some horrible incident that involved an ambulance. The first was while Sara was waiting in line in the Louvre gift shop. An old man collapsed like a ton of bricks and smashed his head onto the stone ground. She did eventually make it out of there, but there was quite a scene with a ring of people around the guy, trying to make him comfortable until the paramedics got there. We didn’t wait around to see what happened after that.

However, a short while later, while we were waiting in the park for the marionettes to start, we heard some kind of commotion. Our best guess is that someone had found a body lying behind some hedges. Maybe a homeless man? Or maybe something happened to someone that the guy was with? We’re not sure. Anyway, he alerted a security guard who got the police who called for an ambulance, and there was another big scene. We couldn’t see the person from where we were standing, but there was definitely someone on the ground. Before the situation could resolve itself, we had to go in for the puppet show.

The moral of the story is, if you’re old, don’t come anywhere near us! (Maybe this death aura only applies in France, but better safe than sorry)

Paris Part 3 – Working hard for the money

/ Shane / 2 Comments

On Tuesday I had to do what we actually came to France to do, namely, work.

I had to go to Brussels for the day, so I had to get up very early to take the train. In order to avoid waking everyone up, I slept on the couch in the living room (side note, probably the biggest benefit of renting an apartment versus a hotel room, having a separate bedroom). Unfortunately, the apartment did not come equipped with an alarm clock.

My phone didn’t work there, but Sara’s did. Unfortunately, it was on Chicago time, so I had to calculate what the correct time would be to set the alarm. I didn’t completely trust that, so I set a backup alarm in the form of a borrowed French cell phone. However, it turns out that the time wasn’t set right on that, and the alarm went off about 30 minutes after I fell asleep. So I had to re-set the time, using all-French menus, and I wasn’t feeling too sure about everything. All this anxiety caused me to not get very much sleep.

However, everything worked out well, my alarms both went off (on time, and yet, too early!) and I caught my cab for the train station. The cabbie found out I was from the states and proceeded to ask me questions about L.A. the entire way to the train station.

Part 3A, Alone in the City

In the meantime, Sara took the kids out all on her own. They spent some time walking around before eating lunch by the Panthéon. They met a man who was so delighted by Evie that he started blowing her big, French mwa! mwa! kisses. Afterwards, they visited the Center de la Mer (an aquarium), and finally ended up at the Jardin du Luxembourg (Luxembourg Garden).

Jardin du Luxembourg is sort of like a weird kid’s paradise (weird that it is a paradise for kids, not a paradise for weird kids). There are huge playgrounds, but you have to pay to play on them. It’s not too expensive though, and it’s worth it because the stuff they have to play on is truly awesome, and unlike anything I’ve ever seen on a playground in the states. There are food vendors and carousels, and just a lot of cool kids’ stuff. People said that was a good place to take kids, and they were so right. Best place for kids in the city. Plus it was close to our apartment.

And, in the irony of all international travel, Sara ran into someone from music class at one of the playgrounds (the one with the miniature Eiffel Tower that you can climb on)(and by miniature, I mean not that miniature!)

Part 3B, healthy, wealthy and wise

Brussels went really well work-wise, better than I could have expected. I didn’t have much (any) time to see the city, but what I did see of it was not very impressive. Sara had been debating about whether to come to Belgium or not, and, in retrospect, I think she made the right choice in staying in Paris. I don’t think there is much of a comparison.

We finished our business early, and we had about 3 hours before our train left. Rather than wait around with nothing to do, we hopped on a train just as it was leaving the station. Now, the train tickets work like plane tickets: you have assigned seats on a certain train. If you want to change that, you have to change your tickets (and probably pay). So, being the goody two-shoes that I am, I was a little nervous about this ordeal. “Don’t worry about it,” said my boss, “most of the time they never check tickets anyway. And besides, the next stop is Paris. So if they throw us off, we’ll be in Paris anyway!”

We couldn’t go to our seats, since we didn’t have any, so we were just sort of hanging around in the hallway like vagabonds. A conductor came through and, just as I was about to get nervous, someone else stood up and blurted out, “I don’t have the right ticket, I was supposed to go on another train later.” The conductors took him off to be guillotined (I assume), and we were safe for the moment. But it was very obvious that we didn’t have the correct tickets, or there would be no reason for us to be standing around where we were. “If he comes back, just act American, like you don’t know what you’re doing!” said my boss. A few minutes later, the conductor came back and told us there were seats further in the car. Hey, he told us! So we were home free.

We were sitting in the very last seats in the very last car, which would explain why the conductors didn’t get back to check our tickets until we were just moments from pulling into the station in Paris. I started speaking loudly in English to sort of set the tone, but they immediately started conversing with my boss in French. It went something like this (except in French):

Conductor: “These are the wrong tickets. You shouldn’t be on this train.”
Boss: “I’m sorry, I didn’t look at the tickets. I live in the United States…”
Conductor: “But you’re speaking French.”
Boss: “Yes, but I’m not…”
Conductor: “But you’re speaking French.”

For my part, I just tried to look dumb and concerned, as if I had no idea what they were saying. In other words, American. The conductor seemed pretty annoyed. He told us that it was going to be a 93€ ticket (about $130). Yikes! I think the only thing that saved us was that we were so close to Paris, that he didn’t want to take the time to write the ticket up. Whew! So our luck held, and we got home 3 hours early.

Of course I had the ring the buzzer like 10 times to get Sara to open the door, since she wasn’t expecting me so early. But at least I didn’t have to sit out on the stoop for 3 hours.

Part 3C, General Musings

Another day, another 3 trips to the boulangerie. I bet they’re missing us now that we’re gone. We started noticing that the final price was always less than we expected. Obviously we weren’t complaining, since it was cheaper, but it always surprised us. Eventually we figured out that the food got cheaper through the day, as it became less fresh.

So this leads to Paris tip #5, don’t buy your food in advance! It’s so much better fresh, and everything is set up in such a way to make it easy for you to get things fresh. And on top of that, it gets cheaper through the day! So don’t go in the morning and buy bread and deserts for supper, wait until you’re on your way home (the downside is, you have less selection at the end of the day).

French kids must love carousels. They are everywhere!

Going out of the country with kids definitely changes the whole dynamic. People everywhere go out of the way to talk to you or help you (or judge you for not having socks on your baby…some things are the same no matter where you are)(And can I just mention, he had socks but he can kick them off like nobody’s business! The streets of Paris claimed 3 socks from us.)(And by the way, it was like 70!), even when they can’t speak English (although, it turns out, very, very few people in Paris can’t speak English). Evie and Oliver can charm people across language barriers. This made the trip just totally different than when Sara and I have been out of the country on our own. Much more social.

One other thing to mention, and that is in relationship to the homeless people of Paris. First off, there’s not nearly as many as you would expect in a city the size of Paris. I probably saw less than I see in my neighborhood. Second off, the vast majority of the homeless people have dogs! This was strange to me. It just seems like you’re struggling to take care of yourself, why add another dependent? On the other hand, maybe the dogs are so cute they make you so much extra money, that they end up more than paying for themselves. This seemed to be the case. Finally, the poor people of France seem to be extremely hard working!

Everywhere you go, you see people selling crap, playing the accordion in the metro, or at the very least trying to run some scam about how they are deaf and dumb and need help. Very rarely do you see people just standing around begging (the traditional mode of bums around my house). The only ones I saw truly begging were a few outside of churches with some obvious physical ailment (in other words, people who, in a sense, truly deserve it). I think my favorite were the ones who collected chestnuts from the ground and then roasted them in trash cans perched in their shopping carts. I don’t know how much they were selling them for (or who would buy them), but you have to admit, that is ingenuity!

Considering the size of Paris, and the amount of it that we covered, it was amazing that we never really saw a bad neighborhood or a situation that felt unsafe. I had no problem taking the metro or walking all over everywhere, day or night. Good work Paris!

Paris Part 2: Tour Eiffel and (almost) scarring my kids for life

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Monday morning felt like the first real day. We woke up more or less fresh, ready to face the day. On Sunday, pretty much everything in the neighborhood was closed. The place was dead. On Monday things started to liven up a bit (although only about half way… apparently it is a French tradition and about half the places are closed on Mondays as well). In particular we were able to hit up the boulangerie / pâtisserie that was two doors down from our house.

A boulangerie is a bakery, and a pâtisserie is a pastry shop. Most places, including this one, are both. These things are all over the place in France, and I would say maybe they are the best part about Paris. The pastries, tarts, deserts, etc. are absolutely amazing, and taste as good as they look. They’re not that expensive either!

And the bread…oh man, do they have good bread.  How good can bread be? Well, ask Evie, who pretty much ate nothing but bread from this point forward. In fact, Evie couldn’t even wait until we got home with the baguette, and nibbled the end off before we got there. I don’t blame her, it is addicting!

Actually, nibbling the end off your baguette is sort of another French tradition, and you can see people all over the city carrying baguettes with little nibbled off ends. It’s kind of funny, because it is such a stereotype to have a baguette in France, but you really do see people all over everywhere carrying them.

Part 2A, Tour Eiffel

Anyway, the first stop in the morning was the Tour Eiffel (or Eiffel Tower for you English types). Here’s Paris travel tip number 2: a timed ticket for the Eiffel Tower is a must! You buy it online, ahead of time. We had some trouble with the trains in the morning and ended up puffing up to the base of the tower just as our time was coming up (and we had specifically gotten a later time!). No problem! We strolled past the long line and right up to the ticket taker.

There’s not much to say about the Eiffel Tower. You know what it looks like, and taking the elevator up is pretty much like going up any touristy destination, such as the Sears Tower, or the Empire State Building. You have a nice view of Paris, but Paris is a city designed to have nice views: pretty much every major attraction involves climbing a bunch of stairs to the top for a good view. That being said, Paris is truly a beautiful city, and you never really have too many views of it.

So going up the tower was really cool, and a must do for any tourist to Paris, but at the same time there wasn’t much to say. We only went up to the 2nd level, not to the very top (the top requires an extra ticket and an extra wait in an extra long line), and I think that was fine. I’m not big on heights anyway.

The other thing to say about the experience is that the base is crawling with people trying to sell you souvenir Eiffel Towers. I cannot imagine how there can be so many of them! They are all selling the same junk for the same price, and nobody is buying from them because they are so annoying. I don’t know how they can make any money.

Afterwards we went over to Trocadero for pictures of the Eiffel Tower. This is Paris tip #3. When you’re at the base of the tower, you’re too close for good pictures. Walk across the Seine and up a bunch of stairs and you’ll have just fabulous views of the tower, for free no less. I think these were some of the best pictures we took on the trip.

Part 2B, Sacré-Coeur / Montmartre

Next we went over to Sacré-Coeur (Sacred Heart), which is a really big, cool church set high on the hill of Montmartre. It ranked up there with some of the cooler churches we saw in Italy. In particular, it was very dimly lit with hundreds upon hundreds of candles lighting it. It was a pretty spectacular effect. (Of course the candles are paid for and lit by tourists, but it still looked good.)

Afterwards we walked around Montmartre, which is an area that always has been and still is dominated by artists. You may have heard of some of the more famous ones who used to hang out here like, oh I don’t know, Dalí, Monet, Picasso or van Gogh to name a few.

This was a really cool part of the city, with old cobble stone streets, an open-air artist’s market, houses previously owned by famous artists (see above), and street musicians. There’s a certain pride to the artistic history of the place, and the street musicians we saw certainly upheld the tradition: they were awesome! We caught some gelato and listened for a while. We debated buying a CD and now I wish we would have.

We also took a break somewhere in here, and Evie and I rode a cool 2 story carousel (the French are apparently really into carousels), and Evie took plenty of time to do some pigeon chasing. There really aren’t that many pigeons in Paris, all things considered, but they do tend to congregate where there are tourists, because there is usually food there. They are quite bold. I don’t think anybody really objected to Evie chasing them around for a while.

Finally Evie fell asleep…on Aymeric’s (my boss) head. He had been giving her a ride on his shoulders and she just conked out, resting her head on the top of his and snoozing away. He said that he felt her sort of nod down a few times and then just smash into his head.

We were walking around Montmartre, looking for famous houses and windmills, when we eventually realized we had accidentally wandered into Pigalle. For those not familiar with Paris, Pigalle is sort of like the red light district. So of course, Evie immediately woke up. I don’t think she managed to see too much. The stores and things are shockingly obscene, but only if you can read the signs. I would say there was less to actually see than I saw on the streets of New Orleans. Still, it was the middle of the day, and I’m sure nights are a little more…rowdy. We also crossed the street and realized we were standing in front of the famous Moulin Rouge; a fortunate accident.

After this we went to Aymeric’s cousin’s house to use the computer and find out that we had not, in fact, paid the security deposit. I dashed off a quick email apologizing to the land lord (Did I say quick email? Did you know that the French keyboard is subtly different than the American one? It took me like 15 minutes to type a 3 line email).

Part 2C, Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose:

Even in France, Oliver gets lots of pointing, smiles and goofy faces made at him. When we were riding the metro, he kept grabbing a lady’s paper out of her hands. She loved it. Evie, on the other hand, gets lots of “what’s wrong with that girl, is she sleeping?” faces. Every afternoon she would just pass out, boneless. You would think kids in Paris never sleep, the way some of the people were looking at her. Like, “Does she have some kind of condition?” She was pretty out of it though.

Just in general, you notice a lot of differences between the way Europeans live and the way we live at home. Kids are living in the lap of luxury in Paris. Every kid is dressed up in super fancy, expensive duds, sitting in an expensive stroller. We kind of got the impression that kids are a big status symbol, at least among the people with money. So maybe we were being judged more on the quality of our little umbrella stroller that didn’t allow Evie to recline, more than the fact that she was sleeping.

Maybe the kids are just dressed like the parents are dressed. Paris tip #4: don’t come wearing your Abercrombie sweatshirt and your grubby jeans and expect to fit in. These people know how to dress. I think that they tend to buy less clothes, but more expensive items. Even teenagers are awesome at putting together an outfit, and putting on makeup. And everybody is thin! There really were times when I thought I was walking into model-land. Tourists were easiest to pick out by their dress than anything else. So I guess it’s no surprise that every kid was dressed to the nines.

Also, everything in Paris was smaller. Tiny cars, tiny apartments, smaller portions. The apartment we rented was significantly bigger than the one Aymeric’s cousin lived in, and believe me, it wasn’t big. And you know what? It was the perfect size for what we needed. It was really just sort of refreshing to see people living like that, and not just sort of urban-sprawling all over the place.

Although I still don’t understand why the toilet and the rest of the bathroom are always in separate rooms…

Paris Part 1 – Off to see the wizard

/ Shane / 2 Comments

The trip started off very stressful.

I had been working long hours for a couple of weeks leading up to the trip to get ready on the work side. The last two days were particularly bad, with nothing going well and working late into the night, and then too keyed up to sleep very well after that. Finally, on Friday night I said, “I need to start packing!” On top of that, the maids were scheduled to come while we were gone, so we needed to pick up the entire house before we left.

So I was a bit frazzled going into the whole thing. In addition, there was some question about how to actually get to the airport. Taking anything besides public transportation meant that we would need car seats. Also, we weren’t sure if we could arrange to not need any car seats on the airplane, or on the France side of things. However, we didn’t want to be lugging them all over Paris all week.

So we decided to park in a lot close to the airport and take a shuttle (I’ve never parked in a lot operated by someone other than the airport). As a compromise, we borrowed a CARES airplane harness from someone, and took one car seat that either Evie or Oliver could use. If, by some miracle, the plane was empty and Oliver could get a seat, we would put him in the car seat and use the harness for Evie. Otherwise, Evie would ride in the car seat, because we thought she’d be more comfortable (the CARES is very small, so it wasn’t a big deal to bring it and not use it).

As it turns out, the car lot was fine and Evie used the car seat in both directions. Literally as we were going out the door, I found the strap to hook the car seat behind one of the suitcases, for easy carrying. It was still a pain dragging it to and from our apartment in Paris (particularly in Charles de Gaulle airport, which is NOT set up to move wide things around)(kind of like the rest of Europe), but it wasn’t that bad.

Part 1A, Travel:

So we actually go to the airport early, and everything was fine. Not too shabby!

The flight went pretty well. Evie only wanted to eat pretzels the whole time. This sort of began her love affair with grains that would last the entire trip. The flight was direct and overnight, so Evie slept for about 3 hours and Oliver for about 3 1/2 (Sara and I got about 1 1/2 and 1 hour, respectively).

We had reserved a bassinet for the flight, which we had heard you could do, but never actually seen before. From what we could tell online, it would bolt to the bulkhead in front of you. So we were a little surprised when we got to our seats and they were just regular seats in the middle of the airplane, with no room to attach anything. We paged a stewardess over and told her that we had reserved a bassinet, expecting her to either say, “Whoops, you shouldn’t be in these seats!” or “Well, you can’t have one in these seats.” Instead she said, “Oh yes, they’re very cute, I’ll bring it out once we are in the air.”

Okay, you’ve flown before. I barely have enough room for my feet. Where the heck were they planning on putting a bassinet?? We later heard that there is something that actually slides under the seat in front of you, like a drawer. Aside from the fact that the person would have to have no legs, and that we had enough bags to take up the room under all of the seats, I am not going to close my baby in a little coffin and shove it under a seat! No thank you! So, needless to say, we didn’t hold the stewardess to her word, and we never saw the bassinet. I’m kind of wishing we had, just to see the thing.

The big trouble was trying to keep Evie from kicking the seat in front of her. At one point, when Sara was admonishing Evie for kicking, the lady turned around and said, “Thank you for trying.” When we got up to leave, the lady said that Evie had been very good, even if she was a little “kicky”. Oliver got a little fussy at times, but we mostly just had to stand up with him and he was okay.

Changing Oliver’s diaper was also very interesting. Sara managed to change him in the airplane bathroom, with no changing table. I don’t know if you’ve been in an airplane bathroom, but there is barely enough room for me, and certainly no room for a flat surface of any kind. I’m not sure how she managed it.

Especially when Oliver had an explosive one later in the flight. It was getting close to landing time, and everyone had been told go get in their seats. Sara asked the stewardess if she could get up to change the diaper. Her answer was something like, “I can’t give you permission, but…you have to decide that on your own.” In other words, get to!

Part 1B, Paris at Last:

Finally, we were on the ground in France!

The first thing we had to do was get the keys to our apartment. We decided to rent an apartment in Paris for the week, rather than staying at a hotel. There were lots of upsides: it was cheaper, we’d be in a real neighborhood with real French people, shops, etc., and we could do laundry and thus avoid bringing as much luggage with us. However, there were downsides too. We’d read about unscrupulous renters online, who nickel and dime you with hidden fees, and try to keep as much of your security deposit as they could. So we were a little nervous.

Right off the bat, things started bad. First off they told us we’d have to pay for electricity, which hadn’t been mentioned anywhere before. Then, they said we hadn’t paid the (substantial) security deposit, which we were sure we had paid. I had to run out and find a bank to get as much cash as I could (not sure how much we got charged for that), plus give up most of our cash on hand. This made us VERY nervous! (Not to spoil it, but it ended up that they were right and we hadn’t paid the security deposit, so we can’t hold that against them. However, we didn’t know this for a few more days).

Anyway, no matter how nervous we were, we walked away with the keys and a place to put our stuff, and then we hit the town for lunch. We found a little farmers market and bought a bunch of dried fruit and a few tarts. We had no idea what one of them was, but it looked good, and turned out to be pumpkin!

We spent the rest of the day more or less just walking around trying to avoid going to bed. Conventional wisdom says to try and stay up as long as possible, to avoid jet lag. For Evie and Oliver, as long as possible wasn’t that long, and they crashed hard. We weren’t doing a lot better, considering how little sleep we had had on the plane, to say nothing of the nights leading up to the trip.

We had promised Evie we would see a marionette show, but she fell asleep before we got there, and we couldn’t wake her up for anything. She was completely dead to the world. We tried and tried, and even came back for the next show, but she was out. Predictably, she was pretty disappointed later, but there wasn’t much we could do about it.

Finally we did some grocery shopping, to stock up in the apartment. Here is where I have my first tip for travel in France: how to buy wine.

Basically, we wanted to load up on wine, but we had no idea what to buy. The French take wine VERY seriously, but it is also pretty cheap. However, they don’t have the same varieties, etc. that we have here in the states, and of course everything is in French.

So here’s what you do: loiter about the wine isle as if you are really looking hard, trying to decide. Wait until a Frenchman comes in, watch what he buys, and then grab it the second he walks away. Rinse, repeat. This works especially good if the person appears to be a discerning consumer. One guy picked up several bottles and really studied them, before deciding on a particular one. We felt pretty good about buying that one!

This worked great, as all the wine was fantastic. I suppose you could use this trick anywhere you had to buy wine, not just France. But we were very happy with the ones that we ended up with. And guess what? They were under 5 Euro each!

Back from Paris

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Hello all,

We just got back from Paris. Please bear with me while I get some things in order. Details will be coming forthwith.

-The Management

(Not our picture)