153 Quai de Valmy

Three floors up and no elevator…

Third floor.

Heather has already talked on Facebook about the flight from Singapore to Paris. The crew weren't as friendly as on previous flight but the A380 has thousands more passengers than the Boeing 777 so is understandable. The journey from Aeroport Charles de Gaulle was a bit stressful after almost no sleep for 15 hours. We caught a train to Gare du Nord then walked to 153 Quai de Valmy, but Gare du Nord is huge and just getting out of it was difficult enough. Then had to negotiate the streets round and about. It's amazing how difficult it is to navigate strange streets despite having a map. Finally, with the help of kind strangers, and being careful not to step in too much dog shit, we finally turned the corner of Rue Eugène Varlin by the boulangerie and there a few metres away was 153!! The apartment is gorgeous, three floors up a spiral, polished wood stairway, kind of Amelie style. Over the road is Canal St Martin where the locks empty and fill through the day as tourist boats and houseboats with little forests in pots on their sterns head up the Seine. We could sit and watch it all day if we weren't busy tourists!

Heather has already used most of the good jokes on Facebook. She is bold with speaking French where I am a bit diffident. She jumps in with a mix of half-remembered vocab from school, years of exposure to the Franglais of English comedians, a lot of imagination, exposure to lots of French movies and a big smile – and it works!

Just looking of course - Boulangerie to die for! 

Quai de Valmy is in the 10th Arrondisement and there are few tourists around – lots of old people walking dogs, many children and families and 'Bobos' (bourgeois bohemians).  It used to be a working class area but is going upmarket so there are restaurants and cafes at every turn, plus the amazing patisserie and boulangerie three steps from our door and several more in adjacent streets. Yesterday we walked for miles and miles including up the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe and down again, where there were vast hordes of tourists of all shapes, ages, ethnicity, draped with cameras, hungrily searching for tourist nirvana (not like us!) It was exhausting and we both found the the torrent of humanity overwhelming.  When we got out of the Metro at our station – Chateau Landon – it was like coming home to a quiet friendly place.

Jardin des Tuilleries.

Early Saturday morning near our place.

Moody early summer days - lots of sudden rain storms.

Heather spies her new suitcase…

The French are amazing and I really like them. They seem to live in their own Francophile universe more or less oblivious to the outside world. Graham Ross said the French don't give a f--- and I think that's maybe what he meant. Such a powerful culture. And they are all fagging away, girls,mothers with babies,  the old and businessmen. Haven't they heard that it's bad for you?  But living here, where you see yet another beautiful vista every time you turn the corner, who's going to argue with them?