To Paris

We moved out of our place in Lyon today. Stéphanie was wonderfully helpful as usual and we again had good luck with out taxi driver. The train from Lyon to Paris was very full--chargé, as is said in French, a handy adjective because it is the proper one for saying "the train is full" and "we have lots of baggage." This train was even more express than the usual TGV because it went from Lyon to Paris with no stops at all in between.

We arrived in Paris--persons at all familiar with the city or the French rail station will instantly know at which station--and took at taxi to our apartment. It is in the neighborhood known as Batignolles (17e arr., métro: Brochant). It's close to the Porte de Clichy in the northwest part of Paris. There's a pretty big park at one end of our street. We expect Eli will be spending a lot of time there; he already went today, which I will discuss later.

We took a taxi from the station to our apartment, but we couldn't move in right away as the previous tenant was still leaving. (This was our fault. The landlady, Nadège, was very helpful, though.) We went over to the Gare du Nord to meet Sam, who was coming in from the airport north of town via commuter train (RER). Please note that French people do not refer to this airport as Charles de Gaulle; it is called Roissy after the village in whose boundary it sits. (I've actually been to this village; there's nothing there.) You will sound like less of an interloper if you will adopt this terminology. Anyway, we managed to meet Sam on the platform and had lunch is a rather touristy, but good, café-brasserie facing the Gare du Nord. That's our old neighborhood, by the way, and we hope to return.

We came back out to Batignolles by bus, which took us through Montmartre and right past the Moulin Rouge. That's somewhere we don't hope to return. Eli and Sam napped while Ally and I explored the neighborhood and picked up some essentials. We found a street of Cameroonian restaurants. Does such a thing exist anywhere else outside Cameroon? We may have to try it. We also saw a poster for Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance, which is here for a week in November. Can anyone possibly still need to see this?

The sleepers awakened and we went to check out the park. The weather had improved; Ally remarked on how unaccustomed to the sun we had grown over the past couple weeks. Eli engaged in two of his favorite pastimes, exploring grade and texture of ground, before switching over to his absolute delight, closing doors. He figured out how to close the gate to the park, which was pretty impressive. It seems his plan was to install himself as a sort of park troll and extort fees from those desiring entry, but we adults frustrated his plan to introduce an evil custom. Poor little guy--he has no fun. It is just not fair. Other children were playing games with balls, which as usual are prohibited by regulation at public parks. They did not care, for they had not been able to play outside for weeks. There were lots of families and children there.

Our apartment is charming. Like the place in Aix, it appears to have been furnished entirely through visits to IKEA. The building has a central courtyard, so our apartment has both front and back windows. There a staircase and an elevator of recent installation running up its shaft. This is a pretty common configuration, but I've never seen it in a place like this, where the dimensions of the staircase require the elevator to be about two feet wide. It's just narrower than the unfolded stroller. We're on the 4e étage--5th floor to Americans--so the elevator is a necessity.

For dinner we got Chinese takeout. I am always trying to get people who visit France to have Chinese food. Some other time I will provide a detailed explanation why. Anyway, it was good, particularly the boules de coco.