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Published: October 14th 2010
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Sigh, oh the life. I am just sitting at my table, over looking a quaint little square in the Marais district. Our petite apartment has these perfect little windows that in typical french fashion are almost floor to celing,swinging inwards and opening up to a juliet style wrought iron balcony,with a flower box attached.
Outside the window in the square we are surrounded by cafes and restaurants. This is a much more relaxed feeling in comparison to this morning. Rewind to earlier in the day...... trying to push thru the crowd at the hotel lobby to check out and find a taxi. The front desk girl calls us a car, but does not tell the taxi driver that we have 5 pieces of luggage, so when our small mercedes pulls up, the taxi driver is busy snapping at us in french, so quickly that the only words i could pick out were "too much bags, you should have got a van, this is an exeption,my cars not big enough." He makes us sit inside the car while he hurls our small carry on baggage into our laps, then takes off with great speed into the throng af paris traffic. Paris traffic
is pretty dicey at the best of times and the traffic is packed and impatient. We almost get into 3 seperate accidents,one so close I was sure that the scooter driver may have peed himself. Driving toward our apartment the streets are narrow. Again all I can pick out is "merde!" (shit) and mumbling about how these streets are not meant for cars. He drops us off( we are now 25 mins late meeting our apartment hookup) and our bags quickly makes an exit and the taxi is off. We are now standing infront of the nondescript apartment building, there is no one there expept a couple of the restauranteurs who are quietly waking up their sleepy restaurants. I can hear church bells in the backround and a couple pigeons in the distance. And that is it. No apartment hook up, and no ideas of what to do next. I ask one restaurant owner if he has a phone. He does not, Another man approaches us and asks us if we need help. I tell him our situation and he brings out his cell phone and calls our host for us. Thank god I can speak french or else this
could have been a lot more difficult. Unfortunatley our hostess does not pick up her phone. We are stranded outside the apartment with no contact of our hostess, surrounded by 5 pieces of luggage, and I also have to go pee so badly I can't stand straight. Fantastic. I take a walk towards the busy street rue St.Paul, quite the opposite of our quiet square. Cars and people and noise. I wander down the street leaving Sonja to tend to our luggage, not quite sure of what I was looking for.maybe a starbucks where I could access wifi? I felt frantic and considered maybe finding a hotel to crash at until we figured it out. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a pair of shoes in the window of a shoe store and my inner shopper almost took over and almost lead me towards trying them on , but the vision of Sonja shivering with all our luggage came back to me and I remembered my mission. (and really Im not that much of an jerk, just saying it crossed my mind) I went back empty handed , and now no idea what to do. I was
almost ready to have a mini fit when this petie woman came over, signaling to us. Apparently I thought we were late. It was the other way around. Thank god that work out. The idea of having to sleep on our luggage in the square was unappealing.
After we got settled we headed over to one of the local markets at Richard Lenoir, a market that only happens every thursday and sunday in the marais. Rows of Purveyours selling fruit and vegetables, meats cheeses and miscellanous clothes and wares. We pick up some groceries for the week and after dropping them off, got back out and did a little more damage on the old visa. I am loving our new neighbor hood, and our apartment. It is a lot more relaxing and will be easier for 2 people sharing a space. Whats even better is that our tv has a bit more english channels for Sonja to watch. The only thing that was on tv in english was the reports on the rescue mission of the spanish miners. Although I am glad they are all rescued and yada yada, It was staring to get a little testy everytime Sonja
would turn on the tv and she would yell out every so often, " 3 miners rescued now! now its 4! ok 5 miners, 5 miners rescued now" Even one night, Sonja was already asleep,and of course I am always staying up late on the computer, when i got into bed and turn off the lights, she rolled over and mumbled"How many miners do they have now?" I just rolled over and went to sleep.
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