Tag: Paris

Re-bonjour Paris

On By StevenIn France, Paris, Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized1 Comment

Wow, it has been over a month since our last post. Sorry dear readers. We spent July in Chicago visiting our friends and family and so there didn’t seem to be much to write. We have a love/hate relationship with that city. What we love: our friends and family, the food, the food, the food, the parks are plentiful and beautiful, the lake front, the vibrant night life and of course, the food. What we hate…That winter is 9 months long. I used to say that Chicago in the summer is a Siren calling us to crash into the rocks. It is so beautiful, the weather is so nice, the food so good, the entertainment so plentiful for 2 months of the year. The rest of the year it is like living in a very large freezer.

Once the calendar page turned to August, it was time to hit the road again and return to Paris. We landed at De Gaulle on Monday morning and after a relatively short wait at immigration (the sign said less than 30 minutes, and it took us about 90) we hopped a cab and headed toward the apartment. We are once again cat sitting the fabulous, but ancient Seuss. Our friend sent us a video reminding us of the front door code, how the Dutch appliances work (Extra Drugge!), the alarm system codes and where to find the keys. We said hello to Seuss, unpacked and settled in.

It is amazing how quickly we fall back into a rhythm when we return somewhere. We headed to the Casino grocery store, the home of the infamous “We can’t get out” incident and picked up some necessities. We grabbed our favorite grocery cart (see pic) and walked over. It was as if we never left. Muscle memory knew where to go, the shop was familiar, yet still fun to wander through.

The cart we long for

A quick side note to let you know that France is suffering from a mustard shortage. Yes, as horrific as the rest of the world’s news is, it pales in comparison to the dreaded mustard shortage in France. When I read the article, I assumed it was overblown and while there might be a shortage, I wouldn’t have any trouble finding mustard. I was wrong. The Casino had no mustard!!!! It was terrible. I even screwed up my courage to ask someone in the store where the mustard was (où est la moutarde?). She kindly took me to the spot and pointed to an empty shelf. Hmm…This could be an issue, I thought to myself.

We only bought the absolute necessities today – milk for my coffee, salad fixings, cheese, some easy to make pasta for lunch, bread and of course a bottle of wine – we headed back to the apartment and had lunch.

After lunch we had our required jet lag nap and then got down to work. One of the nice things about being six hours ahead of New York is that we have the entire morning to do as we wish, and then just work in the afternoon and evening. I really like this schedule.

We had a simple dinner of salad, bread, cheese and wine. Afterwards we settled into the evening trying to stay awake until a reasonable hour. I tapped out at 10:30, Sue made it to about midnight.

Le Piston

Last year, we did not have any luck with the espresso maker, so we bought what we in the US call a French press, but which the French call a piston (say it in French, accent on the first syllable and more or less just hint at that last letter). However, this year, Sue quickly remembered how to work the giver of the sacred caffeine and on Tuesday morning we had great coffee in the morning. Thank you, Sue. (You’re welcome, although it really was mostly self-preservation.)

We ventured back to the grocery store during the day to pick up more necessities and then worked all day. Not exciting and I would have stopped the blog before it, but I wanted to get to Wednesday morning – so fast forward to Wednesday morning. We woke up late and headed down to the local farmers market. There are many of the them in Paris, and ours runs from the Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet down a few blocks towards the Palais de Tokyo on the avenue du Président Wilson – Charles, I included this in case you wanted to look it up on Google Maps 😉.  At the very end of the market, is a Lebanese stand that has great falafel. So we wandered over there and bought a bunch of stuff (falafel, kibbeh, vegetarian kibbeh, Jerusalem salad, hummus, garlic sauce, pita) for a lunch. Well, actually lunches because I am not very good at portion control and we bought way too much. Oh well, we will eat it up. We also stopped at one of the vegetable stands and bought more fruit and veg.

The weather here is unseasonably hot. Today will reach 36˚C (96˚F), which is about 11˚C (19˚F) higher than normal. Our apartment has no air conditioning, but the high ceilings and a few fans keep the temperature reasonable. It gets cool at night – 18˚C (64˚F), so we sleep with the windows open. Lucky for us we are on the second floor (in the US this would be the third floor).

The rest of the week will likely be the same, out for a walk and errands in the morning, followed by work in the afternoon. We haven’t made any plans yet for the weekend, but I am sure we will do some fun things.

And finally – Just some random photos of Paris until we get out and get some of our own:

Settling In

On By StevenIn France, living abroad, Paris, Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized2 Comments

We have started to settle into our new place. We spent most of Thursday unpacking and getting set up. We met Sue’s friend Suzanne (the one from Burgundy) for lunch as she had come up to Paris for the day. We walked about 8km (5ish miles) from the apartment to the restaurant, ate lunch wandered a bit more and then took the Metro back. One of the Metro lines near us (the #6) is undergoing some repairs and is closed, so we had to exit at a station that was about a 10 minute walk. We could have taken a bus, but at the time that seemed a bit daunting to me. We will try the buses another day.

Everything is a huge adventure especially having to interact with people. We are desperately trying to speak French and the Parisians have been patient and helpful. It seems like most people speak at least some English and they will switch back and forth for us. It must be pretty funny to hear us butcher French, have the reply come back in reasonably good English, and then we reply once again in butchered French (although a couple of times Sue has mistakenly answered in Spanish which make the whole interaction even funnier). We are wrapping our heads around prices, especially for things priced in kilos. We keep looking at prices and think 15 Euros for a kilo that is a fortune … only to realize that we would pay $7.99 a pound at home. It seems like things are more expensive here, but we expected and budgeted for that.

Saturday morning we walked to a farmer’s market about 15 minutes away and loaded up on fresh produce and some Middle Eastern food (there were a few Lebanese vendors and it seemed like a nice treat). After lunch we strapped our walking shoes back on and headed for a Monoprix, which is sort of a small department store. We needed some toiletries and other minor bits and bobs. It was about a 20 minute walk and the weather is beautiful, mid-70s and sunny.

The evil espresso maker
Our coffee savior

We have had one challenge – as there always is. The apartment has an espresso machine that clearly hates Sue. No matter how carefully she follows the directions (even watching a couple YouTube videos), it proceeds to leak coffee out the sides and put a bunch of grounds in the bottom of our cups. We surrendered and picked up a French press to satisfy our need for coffee. While we were out, we asked one of the shop attendants for the name of a store that might sell them. She kindly gave us the name Darty and we wandered off to find one. We now have the ability to make coffee.

Our final outing was to the grocery store to pick up a few more things; pasta for dinner, rice, more coffee and wine. All in all a successful, but exhausting day.

Steven forgot to mention that we got trapped in the grocery store because we didn’t know we had to scan our receipt after doing the self checkout. So many little things to learn.

The adventure begins! or …

On By SusanIn Paris, Travel4 Comments

I am going to have to step up my wardrobe when we move here

Tuesday evening we got on a plane to Charles de Gaulle. Only 2 1/2 hours after we were supposed to take off, we actually left the ground. No big deal, since we had to wait to check into our hotel anyway, but boy am I tired of sitting on planes that aren’t moving!

Now that my whining is out of the way … we’re in Paris! We spent a night in a lovely hotel (Hôtel Bradford-Élysées), which I would recommend. They still give you free water (in the U.S. a hotel bottle of water always seems to be $4, really?) and cute little things like a sewing kit. Plus, the bed was comfortable (Steven would have slept on a log he was so exhausted), and we could see Paris from our fifth floor room. We took a nap at the hotel (I took a nap Steven SLEPT) and then prepared for our next adventure: Meeting the people whose apartment where I sit now typing. We met Paul and his daughter, Oona, so they could show us everything we need to know. (Most important: Try not to set off the alarm!)

The view from the balcony at our hotel.

The two of them were amazing and helped us get SIM cards and Metro cards for the month. I am trying to speak French, but it is not going very well. I wish thought bubbles came out of people’s mouths so I could read what they are saying.

After we said goodbye to them, we realized we hadn’t eaten at all and were not up for a fancy meal or a long walk. We ended up at an outdoor cafe a couple of blocks away for dinner. I picked one, but somehow we ended up at different one because there was a cafe on all four corners. Cie la vie! (Dinner was very nice, we sat outside and tourtured the waiter by trying to speack french. I ordered a glass of wine and had to count on my fingers to figure out how to say which size I wanted (25cl). After dinner, we went back to the hotel and I fell asleep for the next 11 hours!)

Today, we went to a cafe for coffee and it came with the most delicious little pastry!

After coffee, we hauled our suitcases (I mean we allowed the Uber driver to get our suitcases in and out of the car) over to Paul’s and then took a short 4.4 km walk to meet my wonderful high school friend for lunch, wandered some more and took the Metro back here. It is a work day, after all.

The home stretch

On By StevenIn Clamecy, France, living abroad, Morocco, moving, Nice, Paris, Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized3 Comments

We are into the home stretch and somewhat surprisingly, we are thinking that the packing is nearly done. We are down to just a few kitchen things that we still need, our linens and a few clothes that are all going into the suitcases. We have decided to finish packing by Tuesday the 20th, and are then spending the 20th-24th at our granddaughter’s house (oh yeah, with her parents too). The movers are coming on the 22nd, so we will just swing back to the house on that morning and supervise. We figure we will return on the 23rd and do a final clean and that will be it for our time in Edgewater, MD. It was a good place to land for COVID, but it’s not going to be a home base for us.

Some boxes and stuff (we have a lot of stuff but not as much as before).

We are packing for four different locations all at once. Paris, our first stop in August, should be nice and warm so we will need summery clothes. We go to Burgundy in September and Nice in Oct./Nov., so it should be cooler (highs in the 60s and lows in the 50s, which means we will need sightly warmer clothes. When we return, we fly directly to Chicago which will be cold (highs in the 40s lows in the 30s) as it is the end of November when we are there. From there it’s back to Baltimore, which will be warmer than Chicago (highs in the 50s lows in the 40s). All this on one suitcase each, which is proving a little bit of a challenge. Just pointing out that my suitcase is lighter than his by at least 5 pounds.

We made a small concession to the space issue and packed a box of winterish clothes which we are sending to our friend in Chicago. She will store it until we arrive. Hopefully, the ride from the airport to her place won’t be too terrible as we really won’t have much in the way of warm clothes.

More boxes and stuff, plus a suitcase that isn’t packed for France, Fes or Chicago.

We also decided that we would put together a suitcase of things that we thought we might want but couldn’t fit. We are going to leave that in one of cars and when we return from France, we will swap out anything we are tired of/didn’t use/don’t need any more for our trip to Morocco (highs in 60s lows in the 40s) and wherever we decide for the couple of months after Morocco (right now Italy and Amsterdam are the leading candidates).

All the other clothes are going into boxes and are destined for the storage unit.

We have been watching with interest the changes to the COVID rules in France, and it now appears we will need a card from a doctor or pharmacist that shows we have been vaccinated. The reading we have done seems to show that our CDC vaccine card should provide us with the documentation that we will need to get the French card, but as with all of these fast changing regulations, we are going to just figure it out as we go if we need to. We think the worst case scenario is that we have to get a PCR test before they issue us the card. My uncle (who speaks French) has kindly provided us with the phrase we will need to ask the pharmacist for the card (or at least I think that is what he sent…he does have an excellent sense of humor, so for all I know his phrase says something like “I am an ugly American and your country sucks, I don’t need no stinking medical card”, perhaps I should run his phrase through Google translate 😉)

As you can imagine, we are getting very excited and are counting down the days.

Just some updates

On By StevenIn airbnb, Barcelona, Burgundy, Clamecy, France, living abroad, Morocco, Nice, Paris, Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized1 Comment

We are continuing to make plans and knock items off the to do list. This week has been, for lack of a better term, workmanlike….oh god…sorry Sue…workPERSONlike. 😉 (Finally, my positive influence sinks in.)

We are grappling with a list of necessary, but fairly uninteresting, things we will need to arrange while we are away. We need a place for our mail to be sent and a place for our cars and stuff to be stored; we need to order power converters, find movers and research local phone plans. All of which are to a greater or lesser degree being moved forward.

For the French portion of the trip, we have been looking at all the secondary arrangements such as car rental, place to stay in Paris for our final weekend, transport between Clemacy and Nice and then Nice to Paris. Sue is trawling through a bunch of guidebooks that we borrowed from the library looking for interesting things in Burgundy [apparently we can go wine tasting…who knew ;-)], and on the Côte D’Azur (I would like to digress for a moment to whine about WordPress…They introduced new editing software which has removed non-English letters such as ô from our version. So when I want to use characters with an accent, I have to go Word, insert the character and then copy it into WordPress. I hate when software upgrades remove useful features – especially when the feature is then re-released as a paid for upgrade – sorry about that digression. (No, I am really disliking the latest WordPress version. Try someone else, if you ask me. It seems less intuitive and less user-friendly.) Somewhat surprisingly, wine tasting is also available near Nice!

We decided to rent a car for the month we are in Clamecy, as we will be pretty isolated and we want to be able to take day/weekend trips (remember – wine tasting is available). I checked all the normal sites and found reasonable pricing, but, as always with rental cars, insurance and additional drivers are extra. Those two requirements nearly doubled the price of the car. The French government has a program that allows auto manufacturers to provide new cars on rental periods of 21 days or more, tax free to non-EU residents. This is the link to the Renault information on the program which is called Temporary Transit. The program provides brand new cars, includes all insurance, allows multiple drivers and does not charge to drop the car off in a different location from where it was rented.

Our original plan for traveling from Clamecy to Nice was to drive back to Paris, drop off the car and then fly to Nice. However, the flights to Nice (including our expected luggage) and the car pricing have us thinking we will drive. It looks to be an 8-hour drive, which is significantly longer than the 1-hour flight, but once you add in traveling back to DeGaulle, getting to the airport early, and my time insanity, it seems like it will be a couple of hours longer to drive, but not as big of a difference as one would expect. We are considering stopping for one night somewhere along the way just to get in a bit of touring.

We are planning on taking the train from Nice back to Paris on Nov. 12. We think it might be good fun to watch the countryside roll by from the south of France. I think it is about a 6-hour journey, but the train schedule and tickets are not yet available. Sue found a nice AirBnb in Paris for our last weekend (Nov. 12-16). It is in the 10th arrondissement on Faubourg Fishmonger street (I think Sue is sending me a message. I won’t add the message here; it’s subliminal). It is a ground-floor studio which means we won’t have to haul our luggage up any stairs, and that makes me very happy.

We also decided that on our way to Fez in December, we would stop for a few days in Barcelona. One of the challenges of going to Fez is that the flights only run on certain days of the week. Tuesday and Thursday gave us the most flights. We found that the cheapest nonstop route from the U.S. that would connect to Fez is through Barcelona. Once we knew that, we figured we might as well stay there for a few days and see the city. (It is high on my really-want-to-visit list.) We found a nice AirBnB near to Las Ramblas and booked it.

The extended trip now looks like:

Aug. 30: Fly to Paris

Aug.31: Arrive in Paris, rent car and drive to Clemacy

Oct. 1: Drive to Nice

Nov. 12: Train to Paris

Nov. 16: Fly to Chicago

Nov. 22: Fly to Baltimore

Nov. 30: Fly to Barcelona

Dec. 6: Fly to Fez

Mar. 6 (ish): Go to somewhere else (Roma, Barcelona, Greece, Amsterdam…who knows?) (All ideas welcome!)

May 10 (ish): Fly to Baltimore

That is all for now.

Our trip to France has been cancelled

On By StevenIn airbnb, Burgundy, Clamecy, France, living abroad, Morocco, Paris, Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized1 Comment

My wonderful wife was a journalist in a previous life, and I am pretty sure she will accuse me of burying the lead (I would spell it lede) on this one. Yes, we are cancelling our France trip in July. However, the real lead is that we have decided to spend nine (and maybe more?) months abroad.

The whole insanity started when Sue’s friend, who lives in Burgundy said that we could rent a place in her village really cheaply. Sue looked at me and said: “Want to live in France?” I looked up from the Yankees game (pretty sure they were losing – it has been that kind of season so far) and said: “Sure, how do we make that work?” The answer, believe it or not, was pretty straightforward. All we really need to do is:

  1. Decide when we want to leave, where we want to go and for how long
  2. Ensure that we have enough income to cover the costs
  3. Find a place to live
  4. Go.

Ok, so maybe not so straightforward, but as someone once told me. Solve the first problem first, then move to the next one…

Step one.

Figure out when, where and how long we would want to live abroad.

The when was pretty easy. Our lease is up on Aug. 31, so after that day we have nothing tying us down. September 1st seems like a good day to get started.

On to where: Our starting thought was that it had to be somewhere our cost of living was not higher than our current spend. In reality that isn’t very hard. We pay nearly $3k per month for rent, utilities etc. We hopped onto AirBnB and started listing the places we wanted to live…Fez, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Almalfi Coast, Istanbul, Israel, Amsterdam, Copenhagen….and that is just Western Europe (and Morocco and the Middle East). We found reasonable places in our price range wherever we looked, so we put price aside as a limiting factor.

How long was next on the list. We decided pretty early on that we didn’t want to be away for longer than three months – at least for the first tranche. In part because we want to be home for Thanksgiving, in part because that seems like a nice amount of time to spend in a place. That means tranche one will be 10 weeks long (Sept. 1-mid-Nov.). Our initial thought was to go to Fez to start. Sue is very keen to live there and it seemed like a great place to kick off the adventure. Our second choice was to go to Paris and Burgundy. Might be nice to be near someone who knows our name and speaks our language (neither Sue nor I speak French yet, we are Duolingoing: Je m’appelle Susan). After a bit of negotiation, review of weather and letting it marinade in our minds, we decided to start in France, come home for Thanksgiving then go to Morocco for Dec.-Feb. This decision is firmly embedded in Jello – so who knows if we will change our minds.

Decision one made….now move to can we afford this foolishness

My consulting work is doing reasonably well. I have a few clients and with the amount of projects they have asked me to do, I should be reasonably (25-30 hours per week) busy for the foreseeable future (is foreseeable redundant in this context? yes, I don’t believe in foreseeable except that I have picked up the matriarchal saying, “Mark my words”). In addition to teaching, Sue has been doing some freelance writing, 10-15 hours per week right now. (If you or anyone you know is in the market for a writer, I am available!) All in we are pretty comfortable that we have more than enough income to keep the circus on the road.

Step two down…Time to find a place to live

Sue’s friend in Burgundy has been helping us with areas in France. Once again, after much discussion, we decided to split the 10 weeks into 4 weeks in Burgundy and 6 weeks in Paris. AirBnB or VRBO seem like the best choices as houses/apartments come fully furnished including kitchen utensils and linens. We have both been trawling through the sites looking for appropriate places (interestingly, while we both put in the same filters we do not always see the same places – especially in Paris as the how close in/far out the zoom on the map is seems to effect the listings shown). Our first stop is a town called Clamecy (shown on the map with the big red(ish) balloon. It is about two hours by train from Paris and in the heart of Burgundy.

Here is an aerial photo of the town; it is at the confluence of the Yonne and Beuvron rivers. Read more about it on the Wikipedia page. Please remember that Wikipedia will tell you that it is not a reliable source, so do not use it as a reference for any scholarly materials. (This blog falls well short of scholarly…I personally am hoping for nearly cogent).

I really have no idea what the photo to the left is, but I found it when I was searching for photos of Clamecy, and it was too weird/cool not to include in my ramblings. Anyway, back to the story…

We found a nice little apartment in the center of town and Sue took care of booking it. One place to live organized.

We have looked at a bunch of places in Paris, but not booked anything yet. You, dear readers, will have to login in next time for updates on Paris. Following our six weeks of Parisian indulgence, we are going to return to the States to celebrate Thanksgiving. We are flying home mid-November, stopping first in Chicago to visit with friends, then back to Baltimore for a few days of overeating and watching football – American football that is.

Next stop: Fez! Before we started this blog we did a three-week tour of Morocco. It was fabulous and I would highly recommend a visit there to anyone who has even a little bit of an adventurous spirit (although spirits themselves are hard to find there as it is a predominantly Muslim country). We stayed in Marrakesh, Fez, Tangier, climbed the 13,671 foot Mt. Toubkal (well more accurately Sue climbed it, I tapped out at 11,000 feet), visited Ouarzazate (one of the worlds largest movie studios (Lawrence of Arabia, Kingdom of Heaven, Gladiator, Game of Thrones (Season 3) were filmed there) and glamped in the desert (our tent had running water). As with Paris, you will have to tune in next time to see where we will be living. Our goal is to live in the Medina (the old walled part of the city) at at the moment, we think we have found a place, but until we book it, it isn’t firmly set.

Everything after Fez is up in the air, other than we have from end of February until the middle of May (we have a hard stop in Mid May as it is our granddaughter’s birthday and we will not miss that!) to wander, we may come back to the states for a week, or maybe not. Currently high on our hit parade is Istanbul, but for no reason other than it seems interesting. Suggestions are always welcome.