Le Marais / Bastille

On Sunday we decided to go au Marais to stroll around. After wandering around and looking in Hall de Blancs Mureaux and the closed storefronts for a while, we went into a cute restaurant (Glou) on rue Vielle du Temple for a highly-pleasant lunch of gazpacho and a smoked salmon, Chinese cabbage and grapefruit salad. After lunch, the cute clothing shops had begun opening, so we stopped in a few (igniting a lust for rive droite fashion in Liz that I’m sure I will regret) before stopping into the amazing 0fr. librarie for an small-but-excellent Sam Haskins exhibit and some art-book reading.

Sam Haskins

From there, the Marché des Enfants Rouges for some produce photography (taking a page from our dear friend Rebecca Maxwell)

In the marché we came across an amazing little photo shop and spent a while digging through old small-format photos...

Afterwards we stopped into Mariage Freres, and although we were hungry we were uninterested in spending 30€ for a crumpet. So, we took a falafel break at L’as du Fallafel on Rue des Rosiers. From there we wandered to the Place des Vosges, then around Bastille where we visited an insanely expensive vintage store and saw a few of the Space Invaders (including one that is unfortunately falling apart near a cool bar called The Motel on rue Ledru-Rollin).

Madame L

Our landlord is crazy. Sweet and oh-so-typically French, but certainement folle. Every day so far has given us a new angle on her unique personality – I can’t figure yet whether her craziness will be problematic, but for the time being it has been entertaining...

• We spent the better part of our first day with her in the apartment. After explaining that she blames the lack of gas in our apartment on “les Ashkenazs” (!), she set out to be as thorough as possible in instructing us on how to use the basic stuff in the apartment (like trash cans) and chronicling every item of a centime’s value or more – from the random ham-holder we found in the exceptionally large closet, to the hundreds of plates / bowls / utensils that were in the kitchen. She also spent what felt like hours telling us how attractive she thinks the furniture is (it isn’t). Thankfully she showed some signs of forgetfulness, so I began telling her that we had already accomplished some of the later tasks on our list.
• She came by on the morning of Day 2 to check in on us, and after I let her know about the cat hair’s allergic effects she insisted on taking me to a healer to de-program my allergies (I only agreed because she offered to take us to IKEA afterward, and we hadn’t picked up our car yet). After driving approximately 45 minutes to another departement, we went into a rotting log cabin on a lake where a sixty-something French woman with an impressive fupr swung a pendulum over my chakras, cleaned the stress from the seven invisible layers of my extra-body, and instructed my body on how to resist allergens by writing the name on a piece of paper then stirring a red-lit probe clockwise around my palms and heart. On the way home, Madame L explained her Tolkein-ish belief system and the supernatural powers she possesses: in addition to the elves (which control above-ground vegetables), and gnomes (root vegetables), her moral purity allows her to communicate with the fairies that control the clouds and the sun. However, she will only change the weather on very special occasions, so don’t bother asking for favors.
• On our fourth day, she took us to Orly airport to catch our flight to the Cote d’Azur (very sweet) and proceeded to tell us about how the Bilderberg group rules the world (I want in).

I’m sure there will be more in the way of stories from this one. Stay tuned…

L’appartement

The apartment turned out to be nicer than I remembered / did justice to with my poorly-shot introductory video for Liz, especially without the former tenants’ clutter that was there when I first visited. The ceilings are really high, the kitchen is enormous (“une cuisine Americaine” by French standards, but bigger than the kitchen in our apartment in DC) and the location is great – right on the sprawling grounds of the Chateau de Fontainebleau, and not far from the train station, downtown Fonty, and the stores in Avon. Of course, there were some initial quirks and challenges – dungeon-master keys; no gas, and thus no hot water; some terribly-ugly furniture and a small bed; no internet / TV / contact with the outside world; cat hair everywhere, with the associated allergic effect on me (our housekeeper is a little old lady named Hilda that is going blind and thus couldn’t tell that she hadn’t really cleaned the apartment). But, we’re working to overcome all of these, with the help of our kooky proprietaire Madame L.

Arrival

We’ve arrived! After a less-than-grueling flight over on Air France (thanks Mom!) and managing to get all 10 of our bags into Nico’s Peugeot (not to mention my adorable cousin Lola), we finally got to Fontainebleau.

This post marks our arrival to France, and our new blog chronicling our adventures in Europe and Asia over the next year.

Since it has taken a while to get our internet set up, the next few posts represent the the highlights of the first few days of our life in France. Drumroll please…