Everything at the airport went normally enough. My Blackberry phone isn't working so I still don't have access to work email, but there are worse things (though I admit this is highly frustrating). I took a taxi to my apartment and arrived quite early. Luckily, the inventory representative and the landlord showed up not long after I did. They even carried my [very heavy] luggage up the five flights of stairs for me. Thank goodness for French gentlemen!
I'll do another post separately about my apartment (including pictures), but I will say that--aside from ONE specific thing--I really like the place. The one thing is the door to my apartment. Apparently, the guy in the apartment a floor below made renovations to his apartment. These renovations included working on stabilizing the walls. Understandable since the building is old. How old? I don't know, sorry. Anyway, the guy did these renos ILLEGALLY because if he had filed for permits and such, he would have been denied. And why is that, you ask? Because it would have required renos for the whole building, not just the one floor. Because doing a reno on one floor will impact other floors. Like the one above. And messing with the walls meant that the door to the apartment above will no longer work properly. So it takes me 10 minutes to lock my door when I leave. And also 10-60 minutes to unlock it when I get back home.
I unpacked my luggage and arranged my closet and bathroom. I took a quick nap (only an hour, I swear), then headed out for my bank appointment. I had looked up the address and mapped my route on the computer and took pictures of it on my phone to follow. I cut through the Place des Vosges and made my way toward the street I needed. Unfortunately, I took the wrong street off of a weird intersection, but signs kept pointing where I needed to go. I thought I would be fine, but then got very turned around and confused when I reached the Metro station that is near the bank. I got there late because of the confusion and I couldn't be seen. The receptionist only spoke French and started writing down what day and time I should return. But the day she wrote down was "dimanche" which is Sunday so I was a tad confused and figured she misheard "demain" (tomorrow). I resolved to return to the bank the next day and EARLY.
I had a mini-breakdown after missing my bank appointment because it all was very overwhelming and I felt awful about getting lost because I'm better than that. Or at least that's what I thought. Anyway I headed back to the apartment, packed up a small overnight bag for the hotel (very, very long story that is not worth blogging about, I can assure you) and headed for the hotel before meeting up with a friend for dinner.
I of course took the extremely long route to the hotel (aka I walked longer than I was on the metro), but checked in and met Bri. I'm sure the journey length was not helped by the fact that after stepping out of the Invalides metro station, I had my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. And my second and third. And it was a little distracting as I was walking to the hotel because it hit me that "I LIVE HERE NOW."
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| my first view of the Eiffel Tower! (blurry since I was using my phone) |
Bri met me at the hotel and then we stopped by Bri's apartment before heading up to Montmartre to meet some other coworkers for a dinner to celebrate Bri's time in France. We ate at this fabulous Italian restaurant (amazing pizza!), drank wine, laughed, enjoyed ourselves. The guys bailed but four of us girls remained and spent more time together drinking more wine and enjoying the views of Sacre Coeur and the Paris panorama. We made it on the Metro before it stopped running, said goodbyes, and my first day in Paris came to a close :)
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