Sitting on the Eurostar back to London, I finally have a few minutes to write something for my blog.

My first day at the office went well enough. There were a few misunderstandings which meant that I got the extended tour of the area (as I had to walk back and forth a few times, not realising that my meetings were in different buildings) and a hectic schedule meant that my relaxed lunch at a nice restaurant with my new partner was replaced with a quick Extra Value Meal at McDonalds.

My secretary has taken pity on me and is showing endless patience, although secretly I think she’s probably not delighted to have been saddled with ‘le Yankee’. Nevermind, I’ll be out of the office frequently enough that I shouldn’t disturb her too much.

We’ve unpacked most of the boxes, but the house is still a chaotic mess. We’ve agreed that we need a system of “a place for everything, and everything in its place” if we’re going to make the space work; to that end, we went to Ikea the other day (an adventure in itself) to buy a few new pieces of furniture. I suspect we’ll need to buy a big wall unit for the living room if we’re going to make everything fit.

There weren’t too many casualties of the move – a few dishes were chipped, and one or two pieces of furniture were damaged, but we’ve been assured that they’re all covered by insurance and will be repaired accordingly. The only other casualties seem to be a broken toe (I managed to kick something that was strewn on the floor) and a gashed hand, although that happened as I was filling my tyres at a petrol station rather than during the move. Still, hobbling along to the office yesterday, I did look a bit sorry for myself as I did my best impression of the walking wounded.

The kitchen is definitely petite, with barely room to swing a cat (unlike our elevator, which is barely big enough for a cat and which has an alarming habit of stopping between floors). It should be interesting to see what sort of meals we can come up with in that kitchen – so far, it’s been mostly reheating prepared food from the supermarket.

We’re clearly the only people in the building who work (and possibly the entire neighbourhood, if my early morning tours are any indication). Our lights are the only ones on in the early morning. We’re working hard to befriend the gardienne (caretaker) – we’ve already offered flowers, and will shortly offer the more popular social lubricant – money. I’m sensing it’s a good idea to keep her on-side.

The car, unfortunately, has to go. I’ve put it in a multi-storey car park for the time being at some astronomical price each month, but the car parks in Paris aren’t really designed for a car as big as my Audi, so there’s a lot of backing-and-forthing to get it around the tight corners in the garage, and all four wheels have already suffered against the kerbs.

The bike, on the other hand, is the ideal way to get around Paris. I took it out for a spin over the weekend – the first time I’ve ridden in ages – and fell in love all over again. There’s parking just around the corner, so I’ve decided to keep the bike for a while.

That’s it – our first few days in Paris. I’m off to London for the rest of the week (the irony of being back in London on business so quickly isn’t lost on me), then back in Paris for the weekend.

One of my biggest surprises upon moving to France is discovering how tolerant everyone is of my French. I’m also surprised how quickly I’m picking up new phrases.

New words learned this week include:

Où est le bloody tournevis?
(Where is the bloody screwdriver?)

Merde, j’ai cassé mon orteil!
(Shit, I’ve broken my toe!)

Avez-vous des bandages ? J’ai coupé ma main et je saigne sur le plancher.
(Do you have any bandages? I’ve cut my hand and am bleeding all over the floor.)

Le chat s’est échappé encore!
(The cat’s escaped again!)

Peut-être nous devrions appeler un professionnel…
(Perhaps we should call in a professional…)

I’m off to London tomorrow, a few days back with the old gang in order to run a workshop for my client. So much for moving to Paris for a French lifestyle — it looks like I’ll be spending more time in London than in Paris over the coming months!

We’re now officially in Paris. We spent Thursday moving into our new place, and we’ve been unpacking ever since. It was pouring with rain the entire morning, but the movers did an impressive job (especially with their crane — they unloaded the entire truck through our living room window in about two hours!)

We’re settling in, but we’ll be without internet or telephone for a few weeks — so please use my office e-mail if you need to get a hold of me!

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.