The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Our First Few Days in Paris

It’s around 9:30 in the morning on our third day in Paris. I am sitting next to Lisa, who is working on her French with Rosetta Stone, on our futon sofa that takes up 75% of the space in our apartment while it is down at night and roughly 35% of it during the day. The large window on the other side of me is ajar and the sounds of the streets of the Marais (our neighborhood) request my attention every few seconds. A motorbike starting its engine, a conversation between two French women, and the beeping sounds of the recycling truck color the city that lies just outside our tiny apartment.

Inside our small but charming apartment, finding the proper way to perform everyday tasks within our minimized surroundings has taken a larger portion of our time that we would have liked. Navigating the tight confines of the shower, for example, requires practice on par with an Olympic sport and, in my opinion, should seriously be considered by the International Olympic Committee as a new competition to add the games. One cannot so much as turnaround in the shower without inadvertently turning the handle with one’s backside so the water becomes scolding hot or ice cold.

Outside our apartment, on the other hand, is a city that is more beautiful than a simple blog-post could ever hope to describe. Within a seven minute walking distance from our front door is the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Seine river, and the Place des Vosges and we have walked to and along them all in the last two days. Last evening, we walked down the narrow medieval Rue Vieille du Temple to the Seine and Notre Dame. Along the way Lisa commented that the scenery looked like a set from a movie which got me thinking of all the romantic films shoot in Paris. Watching such films, one thinks that the directors pick and choose out-of-the-ordinary beautiful places to heighten the romantic drama of their scripts. Walking along the streets last night proved that the beautiful scenery captured by those directors and cameramen is only a small sliver of the beauty Paris has to offer. I have traveled to or lived in some of the most beautiful cities in the world, but none of them compare to Paris in this regard.