The Frustrations of Moving

We moved into our new apartment.  What a challenge that was!  Our new apartment is practically palatial by Parisian standards.  We have 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, dining room, living room, and 1 ½ baths.  It is very large, indeed.  And, to top it off, we overlook the famous Jardin du Luxembourg.  We are on the second floor with a balcony and we can sit on it sipping wine, enjoying the wide open space and view of the trees and scenic Senate building.   Yes, we are spoiled.

That said, we moved into a “furnished” apartment that has caused us a lot of headaches.  Some of them are French/American differences.  Others are due to the fact that we are the lucky first tenants in this newly furnished apartment.  We have had to do a ton of shopping to get us started.  Of course, as one would expect in France, we had to buy a shower rod and curtain to keep the water damage from the open bathtub shower to a minimum.  I finally gave in yesterday after hacking through an onion with all of my body strength, and bought two quality cooking knives.  This is after having added nonstick cooking utensils for the nonstick pans, pot holders, a rubber spatula, wine glasses, trash cans for the half bath and bedrooms, a plastic set of drawers to make a medicine cabinet in the bathroom, a bath mat, stacking boxes to hold toys in Elizabeth’s room (because there is no furniture other than a desk and bed), rugs, a table cloth to replace the neon green one in the dining room, a lighter to light the burners on the gas stove, scissors, a clothes hamper, a coffee maker and much, much more.  Without a car, you can imagine how much work this has been!

Now that we live in the super chic 6^th quarter, we are surrounded by expensive clothing stores, fancy tourist shops, and restaurants.  Try finding a household item anywhere.  We have been traipsing all over town, and back to our old neighborhood where they actually have hardware and house ware stores.  Did I mention our lovely view of the garden?  It gives me peace.

Needless to say, we have been making good use of the surrounding restaurants.  I think we are actually managing to spend more money eating out than we do on our apartment each month.  Cooking hasn’t been as easy as I had hoped.  First off, to glow about our furnished apartment just a little more, the forks and spoons are so flimsy they bend when you push into your food with them.  The cookware is on par.  And then there’s food shopping.  The closest natural food store is ¾ of a mile away by foot (in the rain!).  There is another grocery store that is closer, but again, it is tough to carry too much food at one time.  We are starting to work out grocery deliveries.  Our new concierge doesn’t seem to be very helpful in that regard, though.  She has added several days onto package deliveries by claiming that we weren’t home when she rang us.  This week, for example, Elizabeth was home sick for three days and there were at least two of us present at all times, but somehow we didn’t hear the doorbell ring.

To add insult to injury, we didn’t discover until the day that we moved in that the fourth wall of the interior “courtyard” is not a wall at all.  Rather, it is a fence to a primary school play yard.  Kids start arriving at 8:30 in the morning and the school bells ring loudly to alert them when to come out and scream, I mean play, in the yard.  The good news is that French kids only go to school four days a week.  They have Wednesdays off.  The bad news is the last bell is after 5 p.m.  School gets out at 4:00 but there is after school care that goes later.

On the positive side, I have to give an example of how palatial our apartment really is.  We had guests over yesterday and served ice cream in the dining room.  The 10-year-old boy politely picked up his bowl to bring it into the kitchen.  Shortly after, he yelled, “Mom, I can’t find the kitchen!”