Apartment hunting

It's about 11pm here on Wednesday evening, and we've finally gotten a chance to breathe the smoky cafe air for more than a 15-minute "what did you think of that apartment" chat with our relocator. Let's see, after we made it through the airport on Monday ... wait, let me steal from Betsy's email to Jenny about that:

I have to say, when we got off the plane at Charles de Gaulle (totally jet lagged, of course), I really felt like we'd made a terrible mistake coming here. I miss you all like crazy---actually, I'm tearing up just thinking about it---but with a couple good nights' sleep and a couple nice dinners behind us, it's feeling more manageable. The whole airport experience went amazingly smoothly. We (blogger's note: Betsy) found a porter, who found all our bags, and (blogger's note: after Chris asked him for help) also found us a cab big enough to fit all of us and our bags, and got us directly to our temporary apartment. But it may be a good story to hear about us getting from here to our long-term apartment.

She didn't say that we gave the porter 40E to take care of us and the taxi was 120E plus a generous tip, but hey, that was NOT the day to worry about our cash flow.

We went to our French bank to finalize our account on Monday afternoon, after settling Mom and the boys down for naps. They didn't have a checkbook or Visa card for me, but they should be ready in a few days. Our first conversation with the relocator also brought home that:

1) 3-bedrooms in the 15th and 16th in Paris (here's the map if you don't know the districts) are VERY hard to find, at least in our price range ... and the law sets our price range relative to income earned in France

2) we're going to need not two months of rent to get started, but four months - two deposit, one for the first month of rent, plus one for the realtor ... NOT the relocator, who has a separate fee.

So the past couple of days have been a bit of panic for me about lining up our funds for transfer over here, along with the literal LEGwork of walking around looking at apartments.

Am I complaining? Slap me, I would.

We've now seen nine apartments, with one to come tomorrow. Two are in the fifteenth, walking distance from Carter's school. The others are in the 16th, over a wide area. We're kinda down to two, one in each district, but the one in the 16th is being renovated and won't be done until next Friday, which is our drop-dead date for leaving the short-term apartment. We'll see what we can negotiate if it comes to that. Let's see if these map links work: rue de Laos in the 15th
and rue de Boulainvilliers.

Want to know something about the other 7? See Betsy's comments on the most recent of them:

Today we saw one that made me laugh. We were trying to figure out what was wrong with it: about a block off the Champs de Mars, nice shopping neighborhood, beautiful classic Parisian building, pretty decent sized compared to what we've seen (meaning, over 1000 square feet). So the apartment turns out to be lovely. All the rooms are really nicely sized, great closet space (VERY unusual here in the old buildings)...the only problem is that a bedroom is missing. It turns out that the "third bedroom" is actually a "servant's closet." And although the apartment is on the 1st floor, the last bedroom is on the 7th FLOOR! With no elevator access---must reach it through the servant's staircase out the back of the apartment---and no toilet (although the agent says there might possibly be a collective toilet on the floor). So we're thinking either (1) this will really weed out the visitors, if this is our guest room, or (2) what a perfect place for the kids. No elevator, but there is a dumb waiter, I figure I can send up bread and water to them in the garrett with the rats and they'll grow up to be fabulous writers with lots of raw material.

We do have to make a decision quite soon, given the time it takes them to review our "dossier" and the deadline to be out of this short-term apartment next Friday. So hopefully tomorrow is that day, and we can join Mom, Carter and Calvin for more fun. Here's what Carter had to say about today ... well, he had tons to say, but it does take him a while to type it out.

Dear grandma
1. Today we had chocolate cwacant croissants for breakfast.
2. Second we went all the way up in the eiffel tower and we could see all over Paris! .
3. And then we bought a Paris soccer ball.
4. Next we got a chocolate e clare with chocolate frosting and chocolate on the inside and it was delicious mmm.
5. And now we are going out to dinner.

Love,
Carter and Calvin

p.s we miss you.

Type at ya tomorrow, I hope. We miss all of you ...