The Road to Domestic Bliss Is Paved With Dealing (and Some Dessert)

I’d be remiss not to share some of our weekend adventures with Nicole and Mark, our second guests in the new place. As Candice was truly here at the beginning, she had only seen the apartment’s true form begin to take shape. In the weeks between her departure and N’s parents’ arrival, we’d set up the majority of our space, but still had a laundry list of finishing touches to apply. N+M were more than happy to help with the final phases of home improvement, as they’re practically pros – they redecorate, rearrange, and embellish their space more frequently than one changes a Brita filter. And as many of you know, their taste is unconventional and totally killer.

N+M had generously offered to have curtains and pillowcases made for us in Indonesia, as fabric and labor costs are “la rupee de sonsonnet” (a lovely idiom which roughly translates to a drop in the bucket) compared to retail prices in France. The silk pillowcases slid onto our couch pillows perfectly and are now awaiting their new home on our recently purchased sofa, which won’t arrive until January. The curtains, as beautiful as they are to behold, were not as much of a cinch to set up. The velvet fabric was too heavy for the curtain rod holders we’d already taken great pains to screw into the walls. After a failed attempt at hanging them – which nearly resulted in ripping all the hanging apparatuses out of the walls – Nate, Nic, and Mark spent the better part of Friday marching back and forth between our place and the nearest hardware store in order to implement the sturdiest solution. I arrived home (after my traumatic Metro experience) to discover that they’d just finally succeeded. Phase one of home improvement was complete.

Creaky floorboards and an irritable downstairs neighbor spurred the next phase on. The first night of N+M’s visit was spent quietly schmoozing, dining, and otherwise chillin’. As we got up to begin bedtime prep, we were surprised to hear a knock on the door. It was the downstairs neighbor, with semi-crazed desperation in her eyes. “Have you been moving furniture?” I was flabbergasted. We’d already realized that the floorboards were old and noisy, but we’d barely moved an inch for the past couple hours. After calming her down, we resolved to get some wall-to-wall carpet for our living room, the most used room in the apartment. We planned to go to a nearby store, where we could find carpeting in bulk, on Saturday morning. Cut to me, Nate, and Mark hoisting a 15’ roll of carpeting on our shoulders for the 10-minute walk home through narrow streets and raucous crosswalks.

If only that were the hardest part of Operation Carpet. Nate and I braced ourselves for the subsequent task – taking apart all of our carefully constructed work in the living room. Bookshelves were emptied, electronics were unplugged (and obviously there were more than a few cables what with N’s monstrous computer center), and nearly all the furniture was removed from the room so the carpet could be unrolled, cut, and installed. Nate and Mark expertly took care of business, and now we can proudly say that it really ties the room together.

While the gentlemen worked on Operation Carpet, the ladies concentrated on decoration. We spent quite a while finding the perfect spots for our masks, puppets, artwork, and other bric-a-brac. Nic’s stylish eye and my laser-sharp focus were whipped up into a frenzy that eventually consumed Mark (we had lost Nate to a nearly catastrophic reassembly of his computer scene, as one of his machines wouldn’t power up again for hours). After lots of tweaks, we had produced a chic and definitively bobo ambience throughout the apartment. Home improvement was more or less complete! Exhausted, we four sat down for dinner at 11pm and while extremely satisfied with all our hard work, we vowed to relax and enjoy Paris on Sunday.

And so, on a brisk yet gorgeous afternoon, we braved the Metro (almost fully back to normal) and headed to St-Germain, the heart of the Left Bank and an area that I’ve barely explored since our arrival in August. Mark’s lovely sister, Pat, and brother-in-law, Howard, were visiting Paris, so we met for brunch at one of Paris’s most elegant and legendary tearooms, Ladurée. It’s a Paris institution, and while the restaurant is nothing to shake a stick at, Ladurée is more widely known for its pastries and chocolates. These confections are so preciously packaged and branded that we felt we’d wandered into Willy Wonka’s factory by way of Tiffany’s. We were seated in an airy room with murals of 18th-century garden scenes and feasted on some heavenly delights. My salad was comprised of ingredients so fresh they were virtually straight out of the veggie patch…soooooooo good, but merely foreplay for the food-gasmic desserts that followed. As Ladurée prides itself on its macarons, I had to try the mini-macaron sampler plate. These are NOT your bubbe’s kosher-for-Passover variety of macaroons. On the contrary, they are little sandwiches of sweet, airy coconut-infused pastry with a cream center. They come in an array of dazzling flavors and colors; I had chocolate with fruits rouge, rose petal, cassis-and-violet, and crème de caramel. I don’t even remember what everyone else ordered for dessert, so good were these dainty little treats.
We recovered from our decadent brunch wandering through the streets and hidden courtyards of St-Germain, soaking up the autumn sun and live jazz wafting through the streets.

All Settled

It’s been an eventful week in these parts. Our shipment arrived Monday without incident. The movers were super efficient and had our entire shipping container unloaded into our apartment within two hours. Nate was allowed a day off for moving purposes (another fabulous benefit vis-a-vis French employment laws) and Candice had arrived back in Paris from her Morocco trip, so the two of them oversaw it all. They spent the better part of the day unpacking a great deal of boxes and at least opening the rest. By the time I got home from work, the entire kitchen was unpacked, our furniture was set up, and the rest of our apartment was in box-world chaos…it felt great to come home to this scene, even if it was a minor train wreck.

Throughout the week, we unpacked the rest, organized where everything goes, and enjoyed having our belongings back. We’ve eaten dinner at our dining table (my first ever, such a treat to not eat dinner sitting on the floor!) and have done a couple loads of laundry in our washer and dryer (the ultimate luxury). At this point, we only have to hang artwork and take care of a couple more minor touches and we’re there!

I’ve provided a little tour of our building for your viewing pleasure. We have a classic Parisian apartment building – you enter onto a plant-filled courtyard, which feeds into a long corridor granting access to four separate buildings as well as three office spaces (art dealer, architect, gallery). Our building is all the way at the back of the corridor. After you pass through the second door, you can walk upstairs or take the tiny elevator – a rarity for us not only because we live on the third floor (really the fourth, as the French don’t count the ground floor), but also because it really, truly is tiny. In the photo, I’ve put my messenger bag inside for a little spatial perspective. We’ve had an interesting time getting all the cardboard refuse out of our apartment and into the garbage room, cramming as much as we can into the elevator and then racing it down the stairs, only to do it over and over and over again…yes, we’ve done it lots and lots of times.

Aside from all the household activity, we also had a nice, solid week of family time. Candice stayed in town for a few days and provided an invaluable amount of help with the unpacking process. Her presence also ratcheted up the hominess factor, as we cooked our first meals in the apartment and enjoyed cozy evenings just hangin’ out. Yesterday Nate and I visited his aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandmother, who live on a gorgeous farm about an hour outside the city. I hadn’t yet met his aunt and uncle, who are just lovely, warm people. It was heavenly to breathe in the sweet country air, eat a relaxed lunch, and visit the local golf course, really to see N’s aunt’s paintings (they’re on display in the club house) – but we wound up with vouchers for a free round due to the hospitality of the staff. Score! I also made it through the afternoon barely speaking any English – which is not to say that I was able to communicate perfectly, but I was pleased with my ability to follow conversations and contribute.

N’s parents will be in town in a couple days. More hosting! More family goodness! More reconnecting! And more blogging soon, now that things have calmed down a bit.

How to Stay Dry in Paris

I caught a cold at the end of the week. I knew it was inevitable when some students started complaining about their own, plus the weather has been wildly unpredictable: gorgeous and sunny one day, rainy and chilly the next, gray and windy for the rest of the week. I have a limited wardrobe until our grand shipment arrives, and I didn’t account for unseasonably cold weather in Sept/Oct. Years in San Francisco prepared me for dealing with dramatic changes in the weather, but I hadn’t at all expected it in Paris. So I unfortunately didn’t feel well enough to go out last night and therefore missed out on Nuit Blanche, which I’d been looking forward to all week. It’s an annual event organized by the city in which free art and multimedia installations are open in several neighborhoods until late-night and one Metro line runs free all night. Well, there’s always next year.

I felt well enough to brave some errands yesterday. Once again, navigating certain parts of the Marais was crrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaazy. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it continues to astonish me how widespread this is—people really just stop right in front of you in a very crowded street or on the stairs exiting the Metro, as if they’re the only ones on the planet. Yes, I’m walking behind you, but no, I really didn’t want to actually GO anywhere (heh). Anyhow, during our travels we discovered an odd yet valuable piece of information: key copying shops are not also hardware stores, but double as shoe repair places. Do metal cutting machines also work well on leather? Huh. Kind of like the logic of the ubiquitous donut shops in SF that also serve Chinese take-out (if the deep fryer is already on, just keep putting stuff in it!). Aside from tending to mending some shoes, we bought a washer and dryer – we’re very excited to have laundry in our apartment. This is especially a dream come true for me, who has never had laundry on the premises since I lived at my mom’s. And for those of you who are wondering why we’d bother to buy appliances at all…That’s just how it works here. Any empty (unfurnished) apartment in France comes unequipped. You must supply all of your own appliances (fridge, oven, all of it), your own curtains and curtain rods, and even your own light coverings. [It’s true that there are a lot more overhead costs to moving into an apartment here than in the US, but consequently utility bills are cheaper.]

Whereas Saturdays in Paris are busy and boisterous, Sundays are quiet and contemplative. Most businesses are closed, traffic is calmer, the streets aren’t as crowded—it’s a day usually reserved for family visits and simply lounging around. This morning, we rushed out to the one market we knew was open until the afternoon to buy some groceries, thanking our lucky stars for the one épicerie out of 20 that was open for at least part of the day. It’s a rare gorgeous day in Paris, so afterwards, we had wanted to picnic in the gorgeous Jardin du Luxembourg in the 6th, but I wasn’t feeling up to the trek. Instead we took a stroll around another part of our neighborhood only to discover a tucked-away, thriving Sunday scene. Who knew?! On Rue de Bretagne, just around the corner from us, several businesses and shops are indeed open on Sunday, not to mention the Marché des Enfants Rouge – a covered outdoor market with overflowing produce stalls, milky chevres, tasty salamis, fresh fish, tons of other fine foods and wines, flowers, and take-out crepes, Moroccan, or sushi that you can eat on the many picnic tables on the perimeter of the market. After admiring the bounty, we walked up the street to Square du Temple, an adorable little park with benches galore, a sizable playground, gazebo, ping-pong tables, and a nice swath of grass. Lots of families were out to play and so we enjoyed some people-watching in the sun. We took some smaller streets back home and discovered lots of cute restaurants and shops that we plan to indulge in at some point. We’re glad we abandoned our too-ambitious (for the sick girl, anyway) Sunday plans to uncover a bit more of our neighborhood. Each time we do, we get even more excited that we live here. Come visit and you’ll see…For the time being,check out the remaining pics in this post for some other interesting local discoveries we made today.

Back on the home front, this weekend brought another victory: we finally won our battle with the shower. For those who have been to this country, you may have already experienced the oddities of French showering. Unlike in the States, where showerheads are permanently attached to the plumbing and always positioned well above your head, showerheads in France are at the ends of metal hoses and if they can be held in position at all, you’re lucky to find ones that sit higher than the top of your head (we’re among those lucky few). Getting wet in the shower isn’t even so much the issue as is keeping the rest of the bathroom dry. Our hotel didn’t have a shower door or curtain – only a small glass pane that barely jutted out past the location of the showerhead. There was always a huge puddle outside the shower, even when we turned the head as far away from that part of the bathroom as possible. Our apartment has a shower curtain rod, but because of dimensions of the bathroom it has to be L-shaped and really closes you in if a shower curtain is pulled all the way around. OK, there’s not much we can do about that, but what was even more puzzling was that the previous tenants had a shower curtain that wasn’t longer than the top of the tub, and thus only succeeded in funneling water right outside the tub. Isn’t the point of a shower curtain to keep the water inside the shower? The solution was clear: buy a longer shower curtain.

And so I shopped. And shopped. And shopped. And every single store I went to did not carry a shower curtain longer than 200cm, the same length as the original curtain. What we had chalked up to poor thinking on the tenants’ part was soon replaced with utter disbelief: if this is the standard longest length, what about those of us who have shorter bath tubs? Is the entire country so precise at showering, or just not bothered by stepping out of the shower into a giant puddle?! Anyhow, upon coming to the conclusion that the perfect shower curtain just wasn’t out there, I had a eureka moment in a store: lower the shower curtain rod. Of course! I rushed home eager to investigate, only to be deflated. One end of the shower curtain rod is connected to the wall right above the tiny bathroom window. We couldn’t lower it. After another day of despairing over our watery dilemma, I finally figured it out: buy more shower curtain rings. We now have three rows of rings holding up our curtain, the bathroom floor is dry, and showering is now the stress-free experience it’s meant to be.

In other household news, our shipment arrives tomorrow – it’s about time! A real bed, dishes, warmer clothes, electronics…just a few of the things we’re very excited to finally have.

Chez Nous

Well, after five weeks with hazardous cables draped across a living room, a haphazard Internet connection, sleeping on twin beds pushed together, cooking out of a tiny kitchen, and getting glorious weekly housekeeping, we left the aparthotel for the greener pastures of our apartment. We moved in yesterday and we’re thrilled beyond belief. We love it! Although we have yet another week before our shipment (with most of our belongings) is delivered, we’re not exactly sitting on the floor eating out of tin cans, either. We have some furniture and kitchen appliances already and a loaner mattress to make our first week here far less barebones than it could be. I’ve included some pics so you can get a taste of our space in its nascent state. (Stay tuned to see more of its transformation!)

Our first hour in the apartment was a perfect demonstration of the division of priorities in our household. I immediately started cleaning and unpacking; Nate rushed to set up our Internet connection, lest we be reduced to early 90’s-era communication standards. (Oh, the horror…the horror.) But once I saw how insanely fast the Internet connection is here, I was (as I usually am) quite grateful for N’s quickness to act and get all that techy stuff dealt with. At this point, we’ve got a fully operational multi-media set up on my desk, and if you know Nate, you know this is NOTHING compared to what the scene will be once our shipment arrives.

This weekend was all about errands and setting things up. Although shopping for hardware and banal items like a dish drying rack doesn’t sound terribly exciting, it’s good times for us at present. We’re reaching the end of all the hard work involved in preparing for the move and actually doing it. Now that we have the blank canvas of a new home to work with, the fun can truly begin.

We had a brief visit yesterday from Candice, who is currently on her way to Morocco for a weeklong trek in the Atlas Mountains. It was great to have our very first visitor on our very first night – it made our still-spare apartment feel more lived in, not to mention how lovely it was to see my sister-in-law for the first time in two years! She returns next Sunday for a longer stay in Paris. Hopefully by that time our shipment will have arrived and this place will be up and running for real…