A Room with a View

And then it was time to begin the part of the trip that was, well, the cause of the trip. The stage that would be, for one of us, the realization of a dream and, for the other, the making of one yet undreamt.

We arrived in Paris on August 1st (yesterday) and found our metro connections to Pyramides with very little effort. We were met at the stop by the mother of the family for whom Robyn is au pairing and therefore the owner of the flat in which we were to be living. She took us the four city blocks to her street and up into the building. I will pause now to say a few words about the woman, and the building.

Cassie Toulouse, American by birth, French through marriage, is the mother of 4 beautiful children and the wife of an extremely wealthy and successful investment banker. We first met them in July while they were on vacation in Tuscany (see journal "Italy Summer 2005). We knew from then on that Cassie was going to be an interesting employer to say the least. Wonderfully kind and generous, she also has some interesting oddities about her. For example, she was glad to be home from vacation because she actually had to cook and clean during the vacation, and she could only handle so much of that. (In reality, she had someone come to the vacation home to cook and clean more often than not.) She is very scatterbrained in an oddly organized way and seems to jump from one topic to another without warning. She appears busy and agitated all the time and is probably a little neurotic, in a good way, I guess. If this sounds familiar to anyone, you know that Robyn and Cassie will get only famously.

The family owns 3 floors of a 16th century building left standing by Hausmann because it was not on a major thoroughfare and because it met his building codes. Barely, I guess, because it is one of the taller buildings around the neighborhood. They have taken the top floor of the apartment, the former maid and servant quarters, and turned them into three small studio apartments. Actually, they were small studios before they got them, and the family is in the process of renovating them one at a time. Eventually, so they say, they will be combined to make one large living space. But, currently there are legal problems with a long-time squatter that don't seem to be anywhere near concluding. But as you can see in our pictures, the living situation is quite nice. The apartment in which we live was just currently redone and therefore looks amazing. Brand new appliances, mattresses, and bathroom fixtures top it all off. In short we couldn't really hope for a better situation, given the price of rent...

So we spent the rest of the first day moving in slowly. I went by the shop (Fat Tire Bicycle and City Segway Tours) to check in and meet my boss, Mike Franz, but didn't spend too much time there as we had a lot to get ready at home. (I will spend more time talking about the shop in tomorrow’s entry.) I had promised Robyn a bit of Sushi because we didn't find any in Rome (not that we looked too hard), and, conveniently, we are located in the oriental district of town, so Sushi was on the menu.

Paris is here. It is right outside our window and it is beckoning. We are all too eager to answer.

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