Thursday, October 6, 2011

I love Paris every moment...

   You can keep London or New York. Nowhere beats Paris, and I go into a total fizz of delight the moment we climb off the train. We arrived here yesterday after a sleepy race through the French countryside: sleepy because, as usual, we'd left tons of stuff to do till the last minute and consequently had little sleep; a race because we took the TGV, which rampages across the country at hundreds of kilometres an hour.
   Two weeks equals two different apartments, both in Le Marais. The first is on the sixth floor of an ancient building. The smallest elevator in the world takes us as far as the fifth floor so we only have to climb one flight of wide, polished stairs. If I can find the tape measure that I may, or may not, have packed, I'll measure the elevator next time we use it. Small? Let's just say that if you stand facing the door, your shoulders touch the walls on both sides. Two people and two suitcases were out of the question, so we rode up in shifts.
    Large by Paris standards (about 40 square metres) this little apartment has sloping ceilings and four oval windows, which make you feel as though you're coming in to land....  
 Here's the apartment I'd buy if we won the Euro lottery. 

No prizes for guessing that it's the one with all the geraniums. That pipe-covered building in the distance is the Pompidou Centre.

    When we were here in June, we stayed just down the street so we came to know the quartier fairly well. One block over is a little street crammed with Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, which is where we ate last night. Nems, squid, chicken with cashew nuts, and a couple of grande Tsing Taos to wash it all down...we can eat French food anytime but we do occasionally crave Asian flavours. 
     



2 comments:

Rebecca Dawson said...

AND I LOVE PARIS EVERY MOMENT TOOOOOOO!!
Bex
to move or not to move. I miss France so already.
:-((
bex

North of Andorra said...

Ange, very coincidental that I just heard a story on our NPR radio about a French film being released "The Women on the Sixth Floor". The story is about all the young Spanish women who came to Paris in the 50's and 60's looking for work, and ended up as maids and housekeepers. Their living quarters were always on the 6th floor (top floors) of the buildings. But, it appears, they did not qualify for elevator access. The film is being released in NYC and LA today, so maybe already in Paris. Enjoy your stay!
Nancy