Our daughter Mirabelle was born in March 2007 and two and a half months later, we packed up as a threesome to spend a summer in London. We had visited the city once before as a couple for a few days in May 2001, but were looking forward to getting to know it better.I didn't realize it until much later, but London is an extremely baby-friendly city. There are clean baby changing stations in nearly every McDonalds and Starbucks (which are ubiquitous) and fortunately you don't need to purchase something to use them. This was a stark contrast to Paris. A few weeks into our London summer, we took weekend trip. After finding numerous Starbucks and McDonalds with no baby changing stations, I started asking people on the street where I could "changer le bébé?" but no one had any suggestions. Had this never come up before? We finally found a Paris museum which had a wooden shelf in the bathroom that served the purpose. After that, we changed her outdoors in her stroller. I also didn't realize until later that the pre-crawling stage is a great time to travel with a baby. Our daughter was a dream on the...
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Our daughter Mirabelle was born in March 2007 and two and a half months later, we packed up as a threesome to spend a summer in London. We had visited the city once before as a couple for a few days in May 2001, but were looking forward to getting to know it better.I didn't realize it until much later, but London is an extremely baby-friendly city. There are clean baby changing stations in nearly every McDonalds and Starbucks (which are ubiquitous) and fortunately you don't need to purchase something to use them. This was a stark contrast to Paris. A few weeks into our London summer, we took weekend trip. After finding numerous Starbucks and McDonalds with no baby changing stations, I started asking people on the street where I could "changer le bébé?" but no one had any suggestions. Had this never come up before? We finally found a Paris museum which had a wooden shelf in the bathroom that served the purpose. After that, we changed her outdoors in her stroller. I also didn't realize until later that the pre-crawling stage is a great time to travel with a baby. Our daughter was a dream on the...
In French, the word "bureaucratie" means both "bureaucracy" and "red tape" - the different meaning comes through by the length of your sigh after the word. Anyone deciding to come to France for any length of time will soon learn that like all stereotypes about any country's government procedures and employees, this one would also prove true.In August, Geoff and I had made our decision to come to France the following month. Of course, when we looked into it, we learned that if you wanted to stay in France for longer than three months, you need a visa. Sounded quick and easy enough really, but four trips to the French Consulate later, we had our doubts on both points.On our first visit to the French Consulate in Boston we picked up a sheet of paper that listed all the requirements for getting a visa, including four copies of an official statement of good conduct from our local police department, a letter of intent on why we wanted to go to France, our travel itineraries, multiple photos, and bank statements to prove we would not turn out to be a drain on the already strained French social system. And it all...
We had become addicted to this pastry shop located on our walk home from school. Called Bread & Roses, it was clearly friendly to English speakers. But I still always spoke French since I told them (in French) that I need to practice. There were two very friendly women who worked there and I always saw an older gentleman who seemed like the owner. One time I ordered something and pointed and said "celui-ci" but he corrected me, saying it was "celle-ci" (because the fennel pretzel snack Geoff wanted was feminine apparently) and he sympathized with how difficult the French language was to learn.The shop had amazing pain au chocolat any hour of the day (although one afternoon I got the last one) and melt-in-your-mouth mini brioche loafs. They also had a little snack menu that was a nice change from the standard café items - quiches, tarts, salads. A couple of days later, I discovered my new favorite dessert there - the chocolat tartelette. Theirs was the perfect size for two people with an evenly and lightly browned perfectly flaky crust. The interior was basically just soft chocolate, similar to ganache. I adore that all chocolate defaults to dark...
It was Monday - the first weekday in our new apartment and our first day of school. It felt like the beginning of something.But first, something smelled a little funny. Literally - we started to notice something rancid in the stairwell of our apartment building. We tried propping open the windows, but the odor wouldn't budge.Meanwhile, I constantly voiced my amazement that in the week since we had arrived I saw very little garbage on the street. Obviously people must have had trash but where was it? In New York, it seemed that there are always smelly black plastic bags lining the streets. Compounded with the dogs using the streets as their public toilet, Manhattan emitted quite a summertime aroma. Paris didn't seem to have this problem. Despite the French's reputation for being dog-obsessed, I had seen many more dogs smuggled into cafés in New York than Paris. And the trash, where were they hiding it...Our suspicion proved true when we discovered a closet on our ground floor filled with green plastic trash containers, which were obviously not air-tight. These were the containers put on the street for garbage collection. Although honestly I hardly ever saw them, so they must...
