L’AVENTURE COMMENCE . . .

Bonjour . . . et bienvenue à notre blog!  We’ve been in Paris for 48 hours now—time to get this blog up and running, just as we have been up and running . . . or at least walking.

Just as you’d expect from Air France, our Thursday evening flight across the big pond was uneventful and quite restful, and we arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport on Friday morning ready to step right into our Parisian life.  Originally we had planned to take the Metro from CDG into Centre Ville, but with two months worth of luggage, we wisely opted for a taxi.  Our Chinese taxi driver had as much English as we had French—luckily Katie was able to deploy her iPhone GPS, and we made it to our apartment avec pas des problèmes.  (As we drove past the Eiffel Tower I got a laugh out of our driver, despite the language barrier, when I asked, “Qu’est-ce que ce . . .?”)

Our apartment is in the 7th arrondissement—a relatively affluent neighborhood.  We are on the fourth floor in a remarkably comfortable space, all modernized for easy living: 2 spacious bedrooms, a good bathroom and a small but nice kitchen, and a well-lighted living room overlooking our quiet street, Rue José Maria de Heredia, named for a 19th-century Cuban-born French poet.  From the front doorway of our building we have a clear view of the Eiffel Tower about a mile away.

In our first 24 hours here we mostly just explored the immediate area, tracking down grocery stores, checking out bistros and patisseries, and basically trying to get the lay of the land.  We got in some supplies and had a nice meal at a nearby restaurant, Le Sept Quinze—named for its location in those bordering arrondissements.  At 7:30, we were the first diners of the evening and we wondered if we had chosen a dull hole-in-the-wall—but by the time we left, the place was packed with what seemed like mostly locals.  We spent a pleasant hour or so there and felt comfortable trying out our French on the friendly waiter—“Apportez-moi l’addition, s’il-vous-plait?”

In our second 24 hours—yesterday (Saturday)—we ventured a bit farther afield.  We started with a visit to a Starbucks (old habits die hard) about 15 minutes from our apartment, and then made our way to the Saxe-Breteuil open-air market about 5 minutes from our street.  With literally countless vendors set up in stalls, the market offers pretty much everything you could want; we picked up some fresh salmon and a pork tenderloin, some handcut raviolis, and fruits and vegetables—a good starter kit for a couple of meals.

Then we headed into the heart of Paris, where we had a rendezvous scheduled for 4:00—a meeting with an old friend of Katie’s and a new friend of mine . . . whom we had never met before in person!  (More on him in a later blog: we’re invited to an event he’s hosting on Monday evening.)  We had a long cuppa java with him in Le Select, a famous café popular with ex-pat Americans dating back at least to Hemingway’s time in the 1920s, in the Montparnasse area.

But before that we did some general wandering—specifically in search of Rue St. André des Arts, a narrow street in the heart of the so-called Latin Quarter.  One of my sabbatical research projects has a connection to that street—good to get the work underway!

After our coffee at Le Select we wound our way back to our apartment.  We stopped along the way to buy Metro passes—an elaborate process involving a cheesy photo booth and lots of confusion.  We still have at least one more step to complete the process—we’ll get that taken care of today, and maybe we’ll get a local phone for me: starting on Monday, Katie and I will be heading in different directions from each other as we settle into our sabbatical undertakings—but we don’t want to lose track of each other!

Katie is wearing a pedometer.  Yesterday she (and I too!) walked 20,696 steps—8.6 miles.  No wonder we were exhausted at the end of the day.