Saturday, July 16, 2011

Hello Friends...It has been nearly 15-1/2 years since we first arrived in Paris. It was our first time in Europe and our honeymoon. We were so inexperienced and quite broke actually but we weren’t one bit concerned about how we would manage. We were far too excited to worry for a moment. In 1996 Paris was not our intended destination; we simply found a very good price for roundtrip airfare. The bonus was a quick 1-1/2 day overview of Paris. We thought we may return someday, God willing.

In October 2010 we received a request from a family in Paris through the Home Exchange service we use. They loved what they saw and read about our home and wanted to swap their flat in Paris for our home in Temecula. And so we returned on July 14th older, yes, but with a lot more experience under our belts, ready to see everything we could see.After a couple of days in New York we caught an evening flight and arrived at DeGaulle late morning the following day. All had been arranged with our host. We were greeted by Hector, the housekeeper, who graciously showed us around what would be our home, or at least headquarters in France, for the next three weeks.

We are pleased to report that we are enjoying a lovely 3 bedroom, 3-1/2 bath flat in a beautiful old neighborhood. For those of you familiar we are in the 16th Arrondissement (district). Our hostess is a designer and it is obvious from the time you enter their home. Bright and airy large floor to ceiling windows front a green area allowing lush views. We were pleased to discover all the shops we may need to set up housekeeping within two to three blocks.I paint a pretty picture, and for the most part it is, however when you are a Home Exchanger you must be prepared to cope with some things that you do not encounter when staying at a hotel. In a hotel if you have issues in your room or have questions about how to operate something, you can simply call the front desk. If you need something fixed, simply pick up that phone.

If you are a Home Exchanger the story may go something like this.Once we were unpacked and settled, had walked to a café around the corner for dinner we sat down to watch a bit of TV. Hector had turned on the TV for us, showed us the remote and when it didn’t come on, after some puzzling, he determined it would likely come on later and he left. I was worried about all the time we may have missed watching BBC or CNN looping over and over when found the TV had not ‘come on later’.We thought we would fire up the IPAD, Notebook or our guest’s computer and answer emails and maybe check Facebook. WiFI was down too. Hmmm WiFI and Television down sounds like some kind of local line problem.Well no worries we can just go down to speak with the “gardienne” who will surely help us. Nope, she didn’t answer her door but that is ok because we have her phone number. Hmm, where is that land line in this lovely apartment? Try as we might it just couldn’t be found. We did have a phone we used in Italy last year but knew it had to have a new Sim card for France so that would be of no use until we could get to a local phone store. Oh wait….we loaded time from TRUPHONE on our IPAD we can use that. Oops…..no WiFI. We were pretty much out of luck electronically this Bastille day our first evening in Paris.

Of course, ultimately whatever shut down area TV and WIFI was resolved and we were reveling in BBC/CNN once again. Of course we have other stories! The master bath has a lovely old claw foot tub, much like that in the home in Oslo, with two shower heads. At the end of John’s first shower the bathroom floor was somewhat flooded and by the end of mine we were gathering any towel we could find. This too was a repeat of our experience in Oslo. I began to dread shower time, but today we discovered two additional bathrooms we didn’t know existed. How could we miss that you ask? We thought they were closets in each child’s bedroom. Yes, I look forward to my shower tomorrow morning.

And then there is laundry, something we all have to deal with at some point in a three week vacation. Sometimes it is a laundry in a foreign country when you don’t speak the language making it difficult to set the machines or the alternative of washing clothes in the hotel bathtub hoping it would be dry by the next day. We had been gone for 5 days so we began the project, hoping it would not be a repeat of our sometimes hilarious and never totally resolved laundry issue in Norway. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. Once again, the machines seemed to run forever, literally for hours. Finally, John remembered that the dryer in Norway had a reservoir that had to be emptied. It was not vented like our US dryers. Yes, this dryer was the same and the reservoir was totally full meaning the dryer would never dry our clothes! Now if we can only find the iron, we should be set!So a word of advice for any would be Home Exchangers out there, this is not for the faint of heart! When you are preparing to leave and busy with packing you must be mindful that someone will literally be sleeping in your bed, eating at your table, cooking on your stove and hanging clothes in your closets. You have to ask yourself, is my home ready for that? And then when you land wherever you land and set up housekeeping in your host’s home, you will almost certainly face some of the issues that John and I can now relate to you with some level of humor. Yet in the end, it is an adventure adding depth to the travel experience and provides colorful memories.Now to those colorful memories, our first 48 hours has not simply been a struggle with electronics! As mentioned we did arrive on Bastille Day and learned while we had dinner that we could walk down our avenue about 25 minutes and we could experience the fireworks with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop. I will say on our first trip to Paris we likely would have been up for the adventure. This time around we decided that we just weren’t up for walking ‘about’ 25 minutes to an area we were totally unfamiliar with, at 10:00 at night on one of the country’s biggest holidays.

We made that walk the following day. The area is called Trocadero and offers a spectacular view of the Eiffel Tower. We continued walking along the River Seine and ended in the Latin Quarter where we had a rather unimpressive dinner while people watching and enjoying of course a nice red wine.This morning, Saturday, we took pause to explore our neighborhood in an effort to shop for food and supplies. What a treat for us and one of the reasons we love the Home Exchange concept. We started with a stop at a corner bakery for coffee and of course a croissant. Oh my goodness! Most of you know that we have been living very low carb for over three months and it has paid off in terms of significant weight loss. With that said we agreed we were not going to come to France and live totally deprived of its special treats. And so was the joy of sharing the most delicious croissant I have ever tasted with no feelings of guilt. What a delight to go to the butcher for our meat, next door for our cheese, another shop specializing in only fruits and vegetables and finally a wine shop of course. We felt like one of the locals picking up our fresh baguette, and just a little of this and that. We found it to be such a contrast to our big box stores.

We ended our day with a trip to Champs Elysees just to get our first look at the Arc de Triumphe and the Louvre. Although it was raining we had to return to a bistro that was ‘our place’ when we were on our honeymoon. Admittedly, it is quite touristy and may lack in charm but we enjoyed the return and the memories we were reminded of. And so we close our first two days here in Paris looking forward to a tour of the Louvre tomorrow and other excellent adventures contingent on Mother Nature and the weather.

Au Revoir
John & Carol