The Penthouse

Photo collage -
top row from the left - winding staircase, the key!, our door, our loft bed
second row - um a ladder to get to the roof?, our balcony view, part of our living room, the foyer doors entering the building
third row - bathroom, water heater in bathroom (it leaks!), door to balcony, the other half of the living room
fourth row - asian trendy light fixture in the bathroom?, view, balcony!!!!, kitchen

Now for the rest of the story -
We are moving up in the world! The day after our Bastille Day adventure weekend we had to rise and shine and move our treasured few belongings across town to move into our new Paris penthouse. We will miss Cite U. I will especially miss being in walking distance of my favorite park Montsouris, the cleaning service every Wednesday and the view from the top of the building as it overlooked the entire city of Paris from Montmartre to the Eiffel Tower to the Defense. It was a great place to start our Paris adventures and adapt to Paris. Now it's time to move on and experience life in Parisian studio penthouse!

We have been here now for about two weeks and it really feels like a home as opposed to a dorm. The neighbors only speak French and they are very friendly. You can't help but be reminded that you are in Paris when you enter the building - the large wooden doors, winding wooden staircase, the door knob in the middle of the door and the key looks like something stolen from a museum. It's been retrofitted with modern conveniences like TV! an oven and a WASHING MACHINE. Our building is fairly new for Paris having only been built in the early 1900's. Mind you the penthouse is on the 6th floor with no elevator and keep in mind that Europeans start counting floors with the number zero so it's really a seventh floor penthouse. We are really moving up! On days where I have strolled the city streets until I could collapse the penthouse may feel more like I am climbing Rapunzel's tower . This feeling quickly fades though after I lounge on our gorgeous balcony with a cool drink of white wine or flavored water overlooking the rooftops of Paris. Sometimes when I walk along the tourist shops you see photos of the rooftops of Paris in the glimmer of a full moon and a cat or two. We have this view minus the cats.

The apartment decor is Asian trendy and we have even had a our friends over for a brunch because it really does feel like a place to entertain and be entertained. It's a great place to read your books and savor life here. The layout is very thoughtful. You enter with 15 foot ceilings into the great room of the kitchen with bar and living room with couch and coffee table. There is a bookcase that scales up to the top of the ceiling. One section of the room there is a loft which functions as the bedroom. The loft area is quite spacious with a dresser, TV and a futon bed on an Asian grass platform. There is even storage for our unused suitcases. We can scoot around quite comfortably on our knees. One section of the stairs to the loft area has a platform I call my dressing room because I can stand there and get dressed quite comfortably. Yes, more stairs! Can we call this the 7 1/2 floor? There are several plants scattered throughout and I am trying not to kill them and their are beautiful paintings on the wall with an
Asian theme. The fellow renting the studio to us mentioned his love for sushi. This is represented by the fact that he has 20 cookbooks on sushi and the kitchen is stocked with twelve sets of chopsticks and sushi knives. The plates and glasses are so nice we considered buying paper products because we didn't want to damage anything. The studio's book collection contains a book called the Frenchman. It's quite famous and just published after WWII with an introduction by Art Buchwald. It's a rather funny collection of photos of a famous French actor making expressions and then after each photo a caption that says something like, "What do you think of American baseball?" It's published by Taschen so I imagine it's on eBay someplace.

As with any place there are few interesting quirks. Certain light fixtures looked unfinished, the water heater is hung above the toilet and leaks and the washing machine takes two hours for each load. To dry the clothes we hang them on a drying rack on the balcony. It took me two hours to figure out how the washing machine worked and I even sat and watched it a bit. It fills with water, spins and then sits there and then repeats itself. The first time I used it I thought I would wait until the clothes were finished. I waited and waited and two hours later I think it was done. I am not exactly sure what it's doing but there are points where it just sits there and does nothing. Our friends who came from England to visit us also mentioned they had the same type of washing machine in England. They said the dryers their may take all day to dry clothes and sometimes the washing machine and dryer are the same machine. One couple mentioned that you can buy dryers like those in the States but there is no space for the ventilation in the old buildings and electricity is expensive. Well I think it's time for tea on the balcony! A bientot!