Where we are now
Hi, it’s Stephanie. I don’t like writing about myself in the third person, so I’m announcing that I’m the one writing this post.
We’ve just finished our first week in Paris and it’s been glorious. We chose a quirky 6th story walk-up (meaning, no elevator) apartment in the 5th arrondissement (neighborhood) of Paris, literally two blocks from the Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame. It’s a lovely apartment overlooking the rooftops of Paris, with exposed beams, an attic office overlooking our kitchen with its own tiny window, tons of light and lots of privacy. Since we’re 6 hours ahead of our Eastern time zone colleagues, we have leisurely mornings – my favorite so far was lying in bed on Sunday morning enjoying the beautiful breeze coming in through the window, looking at the rooftops and blue sky, and debating which of the church bells at various times might be from Notre Dame. C’est une belle vie.
We’re immersing ourselves in learning French. Michael is well ahead of me, but I may be a more technologically-oriented learner, doing things like reading books on my Kindle in French, finding various podcasts or websites, making Quizlet flashcards, etc. (Word of warning for those who might think “Just use the French flashcards others have made” – I have yet to find a set without errors! What’s the point?). Not that any of that has helped much yet, but I assume at some point it will start to click. We work with our tutor Celine a few times each week – she’s an absolutely delightful person we found via Michael’s sister Milena (thank you so much Milena!). She’s so smart, funny, encouraging, and incredibly helpful – including meeting us at different cafés around Paris to help us learn about different areas (and calling ahead to make sure they allow Colby!). I try to spend a couple hours every day studying French in some way, between DuoLingo, our homework from Celine, meeting with Celine, reading books in French, studying vocabulary and word conjugations – it’s my new hobby and I’m having so much fun! Sunday we went to a social event where we spent time alternating between speaking English to a French-speaker who is trying to learn English, then speaking French so that we can practice our French. We do this with a few different people – like speed dating, only longer and without the dating part.
We’re just a bit over a week here. So far, we’ve explored the area near us a bit, walked along the Seine most days, checked out three coworking locations and chose the Coeur Marais WeWork location (we started here today), visited the Maison Européenne de la Photographie for a fantastic exhibit by Marie-Laure de Decker, and walked to the Eiffel Tower. Friday night we walked down to the Louvre and back, enjoying (mostly) the joie de vie of Paris, which is still going strong at midnight on a Friday. We have also, of course, found many great cafes and boulangeries (bakeries, though it’s hard to compare what they have here to US bakeries), fromageries (cheese shops, my favorite), un poissionnier (fish shop), and great markets for fresh fruits and vegetables. While the metro is convenient, we’ve only used it once so far, while getting to our apartment with all of our stuff, and otherwise we’re walking, so lots of healthy exercise.
In France Michael gets to celebrate his birthday in style, since it’s Bastille day. We went to see various plane fly over in the morning, then caught the fireworks at night, which were truly impressive, with ample use of drones (or at least Karina and Ethan informed us it was likely drones creating the magical birds, rollercoaster and people dancing), and fireworks that are shot off vertically from the Eiffel tower. Very exciting!
We definitely work longer hours – while we may not really start work until about 11:30 many days, we also have been ending well after 10pm or even 11pm (only 5pm Eastern), so that still makes for a long day. We assume we’ll figure out how to even things out eventually.
Exploring the World
We’re trying to marry the experience of living in Paris for 6 months with the experience of being tourists, making sure that over time we get to the different tourist locations – albeit, saving some of the more popular ones for when all these darn tourists go home (haha). So, we’re choosing the lesser-visited museums until the fall (the Louvre can wait) – as noted above, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie was wonderful – small enough to visit almost every gallery at a leisurely place and not too crowded, and an inspiring exhibit. We plan to go to the Rodin museum soon (maybe next weekend), and there’s a fantastic medieval museum about a block from us. We’re also planning a trip to Normandy sometime in the next few months.
Other than seeing the tourist and cultural sites, our form of exploring Paris is immersion – hanging out in a café for hours on a Saturday afternoon to soak in the ambience, walking everywhere, and keeping Parisienne hours (though not the Parisienne the work-life balance!).
Digital Nomad Life & Learnings
With no insult meant to Parisiennes, Paris is not nearly as dog-friendly as England. There, we could go pretty much anyplace with Colby and he was welcomed with open-arms. In Paris, we’ve definitely met some attitude. It’s probably similar to trying to take a dog anywhere in the U.S., perhaps a bit less welcoming. I have heard it’s better in the south of France; we’ll see.
Funny & unexpected moments
Sour cream in my coffee instead of cream – need I say more? One just cannot look up every unknown word! I have since figured out what I really want but I can attest that with a bit of extra sugar, coffee with a dollop of sour cream is still bearable. At least, if you’re in Paris and determine to draw all the joy from the moment, and sufficiently desperate for coffee.
Photo & video gallery
