My trip and arrival to Paris was uneventful (phew). Our taxi driver didn’t speak any English and I was happy that I spent the time sitting in Chicago traffic learning French. The cab was a new, clean, SUV and the cab driver apologized profusely when he missed our destination by a couple of buildings and offered to back up. Now there’s something you don’t see in Chicago.

My apartment is in a very old Haussman-style building. I had my mom and Marianne wait outside because I didn’t think it would make a good impression with the landlord if I showed up with two other people that had enough bags to look like they were staying as long as I am. I thought that I would just buzz the apartment, but there was only a security code pad, with no buzzer. As I was trying to figure out how to dial a French number to call the landlord, someone let me in.

After I entered the building I was faced with my next hurdle—climbing twenty marble stairs to get to the lift. This of course would be easy if I weren’t carrying two large suitcases that collectively equaled my body weight (literally). (This is where you’re impressed that I managed to pack a work and vacation wardrobe for six weeks into two suitcases.) I drug one suitcase up the stairs, left it, then went back for the other. I then realized that the lift is approximately the size of a telephone booth. I weighed my options: do I (a) chance leaving one bag outside the lift and make two trips, or (b) put both bags in the lift and race up the 100 stairs of the winding staircase to meet it? I went for option 3; I put both bags in the elevator and hopped on and rode my suitcases up to the 6th floor (I thought I was being savvy because in Europe, they count the second floor as the first floor). When I got out of the lift I heard the landlord calling for me—I wasn’t as smart as I thought; the landlord had Americanized the floors for me when she gave directions to go to the 5th floor, so I overshot the apartment by a floor.

The landlord showed me around and pointed out some of the apartment’s quirks (I’ll get into that in another post), collected my money, and when she left I went and collected my mom and Marianne. Finally, home sweet Parisian home.