Bijou in Paris/now home

I have to say after travels, I am happy to be home. Home never looked so good. After Paris, my 610 square feet with high ceilings seems like a mansion. Don’t forget about the 100 stairs to get to the top floor of my Parisian apartment. Lighting was iffy, so you might be half way up with groceries and books and everything would go dark. Much more to write about that. I did practice counting up to a hundred in French which came in handy making change. My winter coat (and it did get cold) was too long. That made climbing in the dark harder.

Let’s talk about the kitchen. My Parisian landlady who was actually a transplanted American, showed me around the apartment and finally said, “and this is the kitchen”. If I blinked, I would have missed it. It was right next to the door. It had a sink and 2 electrical burners with a mini refrigerator below. OK, there were plenty of restaurants to get alimentations partout , but I was a student (Masters in Theatre) and on a budget. And I don’t enjoy eating alone.

I became good friends with the merchants in the neighborhood (11ieme). I guess to them I was the funny Americaine. The only trouble I got into was with my downstairs neighbor. Part of the pluses with the apartment was I had free intercontinental phone calls. So, I didn’t know his bed was right below my phone. Given the time change, I would make late night calls to California. Oh boy. I received a few letter written notes of complaint. This took a couple of months to work out. The end up is that we became friends and I desisted from my late night calls.