It spitted rain off and on yesterday, Thursday, so we stayed close to home. Which turned out to be a wise move since a guy (in French: “guy”) came to do some routine maintenance on the hot water heater, then another guy showed up a little later to do something with the electrical system and finally our household goods were delivered two hours earlier than expected! A young man from Rome all by himself schlepped everything up the five flights of stairs and seemed to rather enjoy himself in the bargain. So we (OK Susan) spent the rest of the afternoon putting things away and getting the house in order before the second bed is delivered on Saturday.
And speaking of stuff, as if we didn’t have enough already we have a box of yet more stuff coming from the US, but of course things we will need in the coming months. The arrival of the box, which will come to the post office here, should provide another valuable challenge to our speaking skills (or rather lack thereof). But hey, so far so good.
Susan has her walking route down: through the Jardin des Plantes and along the Seine. She also ran a test walk to the Montparnasse Metro stop; the plan will be for her to walk there, which takes about a half hour from home, and then hop on the no. 12 to the Vaugirard stop and from there it’s a 3-minute walk to school. In inclement weather she will probably have to hop on the no. 7 at Les Gobelins, change to the no. 6 at Place d’Italie and change again to the no. 12 at Montparnasse. Whew. Lots of changing but the Metro here really is pretty fast. And the Les Gobelins stop is not 5 minutes from our apartment. All this assumes of course that one doesn’t mind being jammed underground in a carriage with hordes of strangers coming and going from and to all walks of life.
So things have quieted down a bit for us, at least for the moment. Susan is spending a relaxing morning doing crosswords and finishing her coffee before the day reaches out to us with a firm grip telling us to get a move on and finish getting out house in order.
Our apartment is indeed a wonderful place for us both right now. It is surprisingly quiet here – at least so far -- particularly we live on a fairly busy street – although thank heavens not on one of the enormous boulevards (from the Dutch word “bulwark” or “bulwerk” I believe), such as nearby Blvd St Marcel. Running roughly east-west through the 5th arr. St. Marcel made up of two two-lane streets – that’s right -- with a pedestrian island in the middle, making for a most interesting challenge to cross on foot believe me, even with the light. And driving it doesn’t appeal to me either.
No we like our neighborhood just fine thank you. Just around the corner is the Salon des Orientes, and Cafe de Oriente, a sort of middle eastern club, which yesterday early evening was packed with older couples dressed in their best clothes sitting around on couches doing what I have no idea, but apparently just talking, all easily seen from the street. And right across the street from the ”club” is a building that apparently used to house a horse training and sale facility, as evidenced by the sign on the upper level and the horse’s head overseeing the traffic below.
And there is very little tourist traffic in our part of the 5th arr. and for that we are most grateful.
So today we finish putting the house in order, and since we have pretty much spent all our time so far in the 5th or very close to it, we want to head over to western Paris. We’d liketo stop in at the American church near the Invalides – it’s a great source of information for English speakers so we need to touch base there before the end of the week to be sure.
Regarding my recent comments about the city looking so clean one person wrote me that may be because so many of the Parisians and their canine companions are in the country for the holiday and wait until September when one has to keep an eye on the traffic and another on the ground scanning the pavement for “crotte” (dog droppings). I think living in Florence prepared us well for this however – the streets there are half as wide and full of “crotte”, a characteristic of the city that the Sienese recognized long ago.
Wish you were here,
Steve
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