Our apartment

Richard and the boys will no doubt all make more detailed posts about our adventures on our first day in Paris. Which frees me to tell you about our apartment.

The building is quite old, though we're not sure exactly how old. Everything in it is off kilter. To get in you enter the key code at the street door, and make your way up a curving staircase encased in stone walls with peeling paint and minimal illumination. The stairs might have been level once, but now they feel like a potentially lethal sobriety test. Once you get the lock open, you enter into a kitchen which slopes no less than 6 inches from one side to the other--a distance of about 5 feet at that point. The kitchen cabinets have been hung straight, which means that at the top they're about 2.5 inches from the side wall, while at the bottom they're only .5 from the wall. In the bathroom, the tile was also hung straight, which as you sit on the loo and contemplate it around the doorway, makes you feel like you failed the sobriety test of the stairs.

The kitchen is tiny, but mostly functional, as long as one remembers that the electric kettle blows the main fuse for the apartment just as it comes to a boil. If the computer isn't plugged in, that's not much of a problem since the fuse box (and flashlight) are readily to hand.

We have a small living room with a couch and fold out mattress for the boys, and a second room with a queen size bed for the parents. All beds are very comfortable, and the place is very clean. Heat is good (thank goodness, as it is darned cold here), and there is plenty of hot water. We even have a washer and dryer for when we spill chocolate on ourselves. There is a shower with good water pressure. It felt great this morning, but of course the shower doors don't quite close (not squared up for some reason), so water dribbles around the bathroom a little bit.

We did have a little bit of a problem last night when we discovered that there weren't sheets or pillowcases for the boys beds. We called the property manager, and who very kindly said he'd bring some over. It took quite a while, but when he got here he apologized and said he'd gone to his mother's to borrow sheets for us. We'll be leaving her a nice note of thanks for lending us her beautifully ironed sheets.

We're just down the road a piece from the Sacre Coeur and up the road from a nifty little street of restaurants and cafes. Having made soup for ourselves last night in the apartment, we're heading out this evening for a simple French dinner. We walked past a cafe where someone was being served a gorgeous looking steak melting fat over a big pile of fries. I nearly stole it from him on the spot.