Bienvenue chez moi

Welcome! Come in! Here is the hallway.

I’ll spare you the bathroom off to the right. Yes, it stinks. Any ideas what that stench could be? Egh. Mon dieu! I do not know what to do! I’ve even spent a lot of time in there with Mr. Clean (er, I’m sorry, that’s M. Propre) including singing that song from his U.S. commercial. Now it smells like lemon masking something rotten and dead. Dégu!

Well, next on our brief tour, is the kitchen. Please keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times, ladies and gentlemen. Food is not cheap here, and there will be no snacking, thank you very much. I also feel like I’m buying food every two minutes because there is no storage. Every meal makes me feel like I’m back in hunter-gatherer times having to go to Monoprix (the big supermarket chain, where you can buy aaaaanything). Also please keep your feet inside the vehicle at all times, I just washed that floor. I have not even been here a week and I have done more cleaning than I can ever remember doing in my last apartment…..

Next we have the living/sleeping/eating/everything room (it’s amazing what 850 euro/month cannot get you in Paris)…. I spared you shots of the other side of the room where I had yet to clean the table. There is also a second bed, a TV, some drawers, and some lamps that you probably are not seeing…. I have to keep a little mystery so folks will come visit me, right?

And finally, the thing that makes it all worth it, the reason for being: my pretty little balcony. Now, if they would just stop doing construction work on the Indonesian Embassy, or whatever that is next door, at the rump-crack-of-dawn!

The return of the suitcases

I have been delinquent. A little over a year ago I promised to start posting again on my "next" trip to France. Since that promise I have been back and forth to France three times without a post. Je m'excuse.

In my own defense, I was on crutches with a broken foot during my 2-week August 2009 trip (lesson: DO NOT make a transatlantic flight with a recently broken bone). Misty T. Kitty was less than impressed too....

My 1-week January 2010 trip I flew Boston-Iceland-Paris (this was pre-volcano-unpronounceable's spewing) I was jetlagged enough and my hosts were in an awkward enough way that again no posts (lesson: $470 roundtrip airfare might just be too out of the way, adding 4ish extra hours onto the trip in each direction, that it becomes not worth it).

Then, on my 2.5 day June 2010 trip I was only on French soil for a long weekend and I spent about 89% of that meager time studying for the NY Bar Examination (lesson: yes, a long weekend in Europe is entirely possible...but just not during bar prep)!

BIG take away lesson: All of these trips over the last year were shorter (2 weeks), and shorter (1 week), and then shorter yet (2.5 days!) in length. That's not right. So, with an eye toward remedying that, this Friday I'm moving to France.

Thus, the RETURN OF THE SUITCASES! Which, on my first trip back in January 2009, I was allowed to bring 2 for the price of my plane ticket. This trip I will be charged $50 extra for my second suitcase. Sorry, American Airlines, a transatlantic move will be impossible in just one suitcase.... Plus, the cat's put on some weight since the last trip and gotten way feistier about trying to make her way not just on top of the suitcase, but actually into it....