Erika's Moveable Feast

Paris, Take Four

Hello! Welcome back!

I’m now in Paris for my fourth and longest stay–over six months! It’s hard to believe that I’ll watch the city go through three seasons before I leave.

I’ve been here for about three days, but have slipped into life here pretty easily. My French has improved vastly thanks to the class I took this past fall, which makes a huge difference, both at work and out and about in the city. I have lots of friends at work and outside of work, which makes the transition much easier. And now that I have a solid repertoire of “bonnes addresses” (special places), it’s been fun to revisit them.

There’s so much to talk about–from the exercise class I joined at work to the fact that the clementines are so fresh that they still have their leaves, but my biggest surprise so far has been my apartment. I guess I didn’t realize quite how small 17 square meters (about 150 square feet) was when I signed on to take this place, nor did I take into account that the elevator up to the seventh floor might be broken at any given point–and that getting into an elevator that is only operational about 20% of the time isn’t the most confidence-inducing experience, so I usually just take the stairs.

Times up the stairs today: four and counting

But it makes me feel better about the fact that I live above an amazing French-Japanese patisserie and can pick up yuzu and green tea macaron prior to making the trudge up the stairs.

Sadaharu Aoki (the patisserie) is a very dangerous neighbor