Paris

July 14, 2005
Ah yes…, the big plans to get to Paris on Bastille Day. Yep, had it all worked out so that we'd arrive on the 13th in time for the big July 14th celebration. We've been comin to Paris for years but never managed to be there for Bastille Day and we couldn’t wait to see the festivities. Apparently neither could the Parisians. As the taxi passed through the Place de Bastille, we watched the stage being disassembled and removal. The party was the night before. The cab driver told us the celebration was fantastique. He further explained we could still catch the fireworks at the Eiffel tower that night, but in July, the sun doesn’t set until after 10pm over here, right about the time we ran out of gas and crashed, lulled to sleep by the gentle rumblings of underground metro trains and the pyrotechniques in the distance.

It’s summertime and the face of our building is bathed in sunlight. The rest of the year we get about an hour of full sun a day, but in the summer we get a direct hit for most of the afternoon.

It’s really hot, mid 90’s Fahrenheit hot. Hot time summer in the city. And the AC doesn’t work, which is nothing new.  Air conditioning is a novelty in Paris and although the systems are “State of the Art”, the people installing these things are definitely from a different state.
Originally, we were charmed by the two little freezer boxes seated above the bathroom ceiling. But now I think of them as two evil gremlins waiting to be activated so they can inflict discomfort and suffering onto the inhabitants, the apartment and the building.  Although cool quiet air comes from the “cassettes” (the remote controlled blower units) when first activated, within a day they start to gurgle as if little monsters are in there having a mouthwash party. The technician told us the problem is because the renters are using the “clima” too much. I see, it’s OK to have the AC, it’s just not OK to use it. Within a week of the AC installation, the water that went into the machines ended up leaking through the ceiling, causing damage to the walls and doors that took almost 8 months to get repaired. The insurance claim is a story I won’t get into here. Now in our second summer, the AC seems to have sprung a leak through the wall of the building, finding a path over the mailboxes in the covered walkway. We are waiting for Hakim and Walid “the Clima guy” to show up this morning.  This could take a while.

        
Although it’s been hot in the front of the building, the bedrooms have stayed nice and cool and we’ve had no problems sleeping. The squirrel cage fans are more than adequate and, in fact, we usually have to turn them off during the night.
We’ve scheduled a lot of repairs for the last 2 weeks of July, notifying the "workmen" 6 months in advance. We even called the day before we left San Francisco to confirm the schedule and everyone reassured us all was as planned. The French are very agreeable. The mystery is ting to figure out what is was they agree to. As Hakim likes to say, “it’s standard”.

Brigitte, our apartment manager, did a special cleaning for our arrival; everything just the way we like it. She even replaced the plants in the window boxes. We used to have climbing ivy outside of the bedroom windows and small cypress bushes in the front. Although Brigitte agreed to water them every week, somehow they just dried out and died. Well, there is a lot of calcium in the water here.. But the replacement plants are beautiful and yesterday a flower bloomed. Delightful..

There was a rash of activity today. At one point so many people were coming through the front door, it looked the cabin scene from “A Night at the Opera”. Hakim got really lucky and found the AC leak on his first try. One piece of PVC pipe out and a new one in less than an hour. Michel’s crew showed up in force but soon after they left. The job was scheduled for 2 weeks. The first week is over today. About 30% of their work is completed. As Gretchen says. “it’s France, get over it.”

July 24
The Tour de France arrived to Paris today. A few years ago we saw riders throughout the Marais, but this year they stayed over by the Champs Elysee. We didn’t see any barricades, helicopters, Lance Armstrong or Sheryl Crow. It was just a very peaceful Sunday morning in Le Marais.
Brigitte treated us to a grand lunch at a lakeside restaurant near Chateau Vincennes, close to the end of the line on the #1 Metro. It was a chilly, rainy summer day and we sat in the old 1920’s club house restaurant watching the serenity of the lake and the country setting; so close to the city and yet so far away. In order to get to the restaurant’s terrace seating, we walked through the old ballroom complete with a fabric swag ceiling, mirror ball and bandstand with 1930’s style band shells for the musicians. We dined on shaved parmesan salads, lamb confit, camembert and a good wine from St Emilion and 4 hours later, when we finally left the restaurant, the ballroom had filled up with dancers well into their 60’s reliving the good years. As we walked through the room, the band had taken a break, but “le Killer”, Jerry Lee Lewis was blasting away through the sound system; “Goodness gracious, great balls of fire.”
A short holiday in France

We hopped on the RER A train to Chantou for a  visit with our friends (and rue des Tournelles neighbors). Peter and Stephanie are house sitting on the Seine, a mere 15 minutes by train from Paris. It’s peaceful, beautiful and one of the most bizarre collections of bric a brac I’ve ever seen. Even the house itself is a mélange of bits and pieces of other houses pasted together with wallpaper and cement. It’s almost impossible to tell where one house ends and another begins; mystery doors open up into bedrooms, closets, toilets, libraries and storage rooms. The owners are collectors of anything they like and they’ve obviously never thrown anything away. Peter and Stephanie, being retired antique dealers, are very much right at home here.
We sat under a large chestnut tree in one of the three gardens for lunch.

Il faut s’adapter literally mean it adapts to itself. Our friend Bill tell us that this is an expression the French use quite often that means eventually it will all be taken care of, don’t worry about it. For the French this is fine. Our friends in Italy told us that a large construction project in Italy is sometimes called an opera because getting it completed is very similar to a theatrical event; the drama, the suspense, the disappointment and then the finale, which sometimes comes way too late. It’s not much different here in Paris. But alas the upgrades on our apartments are completed. Actually they have a few more hours but they promised to complete them this morning since we’re leaving Paris today.