Well knock me over with a feather. I did a little more research about our new flat and here’s what I discovered:

The building was formerly the Hotel d’Orléans. John Jay took rooms at this hotel in June 1782 and stayed for one year, where he, John Adams and Ben Franklin negotiated peace with England after the revolution. He had come to this post as United State representative in Madrid to help negotiate peace with England.

Also living at the address at the time was Thomas Jefferson.

So it seems that I’m not the first American in Paris that’s found this apartment attractive.

5am always comes early. We went out for dinner last night with my new French partner and his wife, to a nice place just off the Champs Elysee. Despite a fairly Anglo-Saxon on-time start at 8pm, it was a lengthy affair that meant we didn’t get home until after midnight. Which made dragging myself out of bed even more difficult. Aude, on the other hand, remained fast asleep, preparing herself mentally to tackle the sales in Paris.

I learned a few things this morning:

1. The RER may be the quickest way across Paris, but at 5:30am, you can get a cab from one side of Paris to the other for under €10. At this price, it’s hardly worth the hassle of lugging your bags around.

2. Paris is really a very small city. Denfert-Rochereau to Gare du Nord, basically one side of Paris to the other, only takes 15 minutes by car when there’s no traffic. And that’s with a normal, sane, calm driver. Put a typical Parisian behind the wheel and you’d shave three minutes off, at least.

3. When Eurostar insists that you check in an hour before your train, they’re not really serious. I arrived at the station at 5:50am to discover that check-in for my 6:43 train didn’t open until 6am. And, this being France, 6am actually meant 6:10.

4. They’re delightfully apologetic when Eurostar is delayed. Actually, I knew this already, but it’s always a pleasant surprise. We were about ten minutes late leaving Paris this morning because they had to change engines on our train. With the way the conductor apologised, you’d have thought this was pretty much the gravest sin you could commit, so humble was the apology.

When I can be bothered to get out of bed early (or when I’m jetlagged and stuck in a foreign city), one of my favourite things to do is to watch a city wake up – and Paris is a wonderful city to watch come to life.

5am is an interesting time. The last of the drinkers are heading home, in time to grab a quick shower and make a haggard start to their day. The dustbin men are walking through the street, clearing the rubbish. Bakers are hard at work in their bakeries, getting ready for the morning’s first customers, and the odd greengrocer is cleaning his stoop and beginning to arrange his vegetables.

When I arrived at the station, it was deserted. The odd businessmen walked purposefully to catch the 5:58 train to somewhere, but mostly there were just a few bums keeping warm for the night. A few minutes later, the police were moving the bums along, and 15 minutes after that, the station was full of people, catching their trains. Shutters were raised on shops, cafes started serving coffees, and Paris was awake.

We’re just back from a long weekend in Paris, where we spent the weekend searching for an apartment. My company arranged a relocation service to do the majority of the legwork for us. It was an absolute Godsend, and they did a fantastic job of working to our brief. I’d expected to see one or two decent places, half a dozen barely acceptable places, and two or three disasters but in truth we saw three serious contenders, five or six perfectly acceptable if unremarkable places, and only one “disaster” – and a qualified one at that. It was nearly €750 under our budget, and was presumably put on the list to show us what we could get for less than we were asking. It wasn’t a bad place, a little bohemian, but the chief problem was that it wasn’t available until 1 March, something the renting agent didn’t mention to relocation agent until we were actually in the property.

Our relocation agent was typically Parisian – turning up half an hour late for our appointing, a flurry of Chanel perfume, Hermes scarves and overly-coiffured hair. She drove (and more importantly, parked) a la parisienne, which was exciting, but I can’t fault her work. It was the most painless flat-hunting I’ve ever done, and we got a great result.

In the end, we took a place in the 6me arrondissment, totally redone and with a brand new, fully fitted kitchen – unheard of in Paris, and presumably designed to appeal to the expat market. For the first time since living in Europe, I’ll have a proper, American-style tumble dryer. Inside of which, knowing my cats, Daisy and Calypso will learn to sleep. One day we’ll throw in the sheets and hear a terrible noise, and we’ll discover two very fluffy cats. My money is on Daisy being the first one into the dryer.

Entryway to the new apartment

Looking onto the inner courtyard

Welcome to our apartment. Our new front door!

Brand new kitchen

Dining room / lounge

Bedroom. Lots of storage for all our crap.

“Un dressing” – a French walk-in closet. No doubt Aude’s earmarked all the space.

A real, proper shower. I can’t deal with the French hand-held ones…

Study & second bathroom

Second bathroom

Washer & dryer. What luxury!

Downsides to the flat are a single dining / living room (but we’ll work around it) and the fact that there’s no separate guest room – so if you want to crash at our place, it’s going to have to be on the couch in the living room.

A sad sight at Ashford International station. In a case of a sad self-perpetuating cycle, reduced train services at Ashford mean lower passenger volumes at Ashford – leading to fewer services at Ashford. The station was a ghost town. The newsagent was shut, the business class lounge was shut, and the security screeners had to be dragged away from their evening activity of “watching the city lights come on” to run our bags through the x-ray machine. In total, there were about 12 passengers who boarded the train at Ashford.

The deserted Eurostar terminal at Ashford International

It’s not as bad as the new station at Ebbsfleet, though. What idiot designs a world-class international station, then neglects to open the domestic capacity for more than a year? That’s right – you can catch the fastest train to Paris from Ebbsfleet, but there’s absolutely no way to get to the station by rail until 2009. Only in Britain.

Daisy decided that she wanted to play last night, so into the stereo cabinet she went.

Daisy playing peekaboo