Appartement

n. – apartment
As I may have mentioned, I looked at almost 40 apartments before settling into the one we love here. That included moving twice from the original temporary apartment where we started on Ile St. Louis.

The Ile St. Louis, one of the oldest parts of Paris and an island that is located directly in between the left and right banks, is charming and quaint. However, although it’s in the center, it can feel a little isolated and the neighborhood, being so small, gets familiar quickly.

We moved under pressure, as our temporary lease was running out, to the 16th. It’s a lovely neighborhood and a very large arrondissement so much so that it has two postal codes for the Northern and Southern parts. But where we were was not very “vivant,” or lively. And as a contrast to the stillness outside our door, we had very noisy neighbors living above which rendered the situation unfeasible.

With reluctance, we moved out almost as quickly as we moved in, but we finally found our nest in the 7th. We’re on the top floor therefore eliminating unruly neighbors above and have a lovely view of the “toiles” or rooftops of Paris including a little glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. I kept a list of all the places I saw with one or two words that I scrolled next to them at the time which I thought made up an interesting observation of the apartment hunt adventure. So following will be some short blogs on each to make up for my first quarter hiatus.