Showing the apartment

The MacD's spent a leisurely Saturday morning at their hotel, which worked out well since I had promised Drea that I would show the apartment to two different people that morning.

First up was an American, Peter who had recently taken a job here in Paris and was looking for an apaprtment comfortable enough for him, his wife and their little girl. He seemed very nice and quite enthusiastic about the space -- and even more so about Drea, the woman who owns the apartment and to whom we pay the rent.

I know what you're thinking: why not just call her "the landlady"?

Well it's not that simple really. If you met her you would, I think, instinctively get the idea that she does not fit the preconceived image most of us have in our mind of a "landlady": someone old, haggard, worn thin by years of dealing with cultural visigoths and 20-year-old male tenants and their attendant shennaigans. An American born in Paris, Drea is young, smart, witty, generous to a fault, caring, meticulous, thorough and eager to ensure that everything is just right. She is also very funny and carries a strong sense of humility about her.

No, she's no landlady.

Early on in our Paris adventures I believe I blogged the numerous things she did for us to make our move here as smooth and trouble-free as possible: getting us phone cards, arranging for the hi-speed internet connection (at no extra cost to us), even going so far as leaving an enormous French-English/English-French dictionary in the apartment! On our first real outing we joined her and her son at the nearby zoo for an afternoon getting to know each other. She is someone you like to spend time with, particularly given her knowledge of the city and her background in art -- of course it probably makes some difference that all of us share the same taste in art but that's another story altogether.

OK so now you're pretty familiar with Drea.

Second up was a French couple, husband and wife. Very nice also -- they seemed most concerned about the tenants on the floor above us: "Are they young?" Well, I replied, younger than I am! It was the potential for noise that had them most worried them but I tried to allay their fears: we had no problem with noise from the apartment(s) above us for eight months now. (It turns out that our neighbor across the hall explained that the reason was the tenants above us are females; the apartment(s) above our neighbor are occupied by -- you guessed it -- young males and have been quite a nuisance for some months now.)

Anyway, the French couple called later that afternoon, after the MacD's and I returned from our trip to Montmartre and wanted to come back one more time to see the apartment. No problem, I said, and minutes later they were at the door.

A few minutes later they were out the door. I sent an email off to Drea saying everything went smoothly and they all seemed quite taken with the space. But then if you have a good product at a reasonable price, people will stand in line to get at it. They do it all the time at the markets and some of the bakeries here in Paris and I see no reason why this apartment should be an exception.

Wish you were here,

Steve