Welcome! and Our Paris Apartment

 Welcome to the inaugural post of my new blog, in which I will be documenting our second sabbatical year in Paris. (Our first year was 2017-18, and is documented at pariswiththeellisons.blogspot.com.)

We arrived nearly two weeks ago, and the time has been a whirlwind of recollections and memories, bureaucratic hassles, lovely meals, exciting adventures, Kate visiting, and just getting our feet planted on the ground. Where to start? In the next few posts, I will try to catch up on everything that has transpired and reflect on our move, but let me bite off something more manageable for this first post. (I'm also trying to navigate a new platform, Wordpress, as I write this. Not at all sure that I have it mastered, so please excuse the awkwardness that will undoubtedly result.)

So, our apartment. Our new apartment is only an 11-minute walk from our old one from six years ago, and both are adjacent to the Jardin du Luxembourg, but there the similarities stop.

Our apartment last time was a five-minute walk from the Odeon metro stop and a five-minute walk in the other direction to the Luxembourg RER stop. So, within five minutes, we had an RER line and two metro lines at our disposal. And there were many bus lines that stopped nearby, too. Eleven minutes makes a difference. Now, to get to Odeon, our walk would be 15+ minutes, so the metro is no longer nearly as convenient. (We are still similarly close to the Luxembourg RER stop.). We are exploring our immediate neighborhood and relearning where the RER B can easily reach, but we certainly miss how well-connected our old place was.

Our apartment six years ago was extraordinarily roomy for Paris--three good-sized bedrooms, lots of bathrooms, an open floor plan with a dining room, living room, and kitchen. We could and did have gatherings of 25+ people there. We will not be doing that this time. Our apartment this year is about 800 sq ft, and Glenn and I realized that we have never lived in such a small space before, even as graduate students. Kate has been visiting--more on that later--and it seems very tight with three people. Also, our kitchen is tiny! Certainly any entertaining will have to be done with very careful planning, as cooking any kind of a meal, for even two or three people, is a logistical challenge. I assume we will become well-acquainted with restaurant and carry-out options in the months to come.

One more complaint: We are on the 6th floor of an old building. There is an elevator, but it has been "hors service" for the past few days. I appreciate the workout, but it's a bit much with a heavy bag full of groceries, or at 11pm after taking Sandy out on a walk.

But the view. The view is extraordinary. (Being on the sixth floor adjacent to the park does that.). I have never lived in an apartment or house with anything like this view. The entire Paris skyline, south of Tour Montparnasse, over the Jardin du Luxembourg, past the Eiffel Tower, out to La Defense, and up to Saint Sulpice and le Senat, opens out through our large picture windows. We see the sun setting on the horizon every evening, as the lights on the Eiffel Tower come on and sparkle to life at the top of every hour. We cannot stop looking at it. Here is a slice of our view, with the Eiffel Tower, Invalides close by, and the towers of Saint Sulpice on the right.  The gate on the lower right is an entrace to the Jardin du Luxembourg.