Maureen’s blog:
Sorry, no pictures this time. Extremely busy getting our lives set up in Paris, but thought we should give a quick snapshot of how we spent today:
Tonight we walked the Champs d’Elysee and all along the Sienne. This is a ‘music festival’ (Rock La Sienne) in Paris and there are free concerts nightly by the river in beautiful squares etc. and bands playing a long the water between the bridges. It is a fantastic, atmosphere. Security is very tight entering and leaving, but groups of people are still sitting on the ground with their beers on the street and the kids are seeing a different world here. So we took the train into town tonight and went to a free concert for 30 minutes or so and then bought a beer on the street and walked along the Sienne, which now has a beach poured onto it and bands were playing on these beach areas. All very vibrant, and surreal at this point…
We walked to the Louvre after and then were down on a bridge to watch the Eiffel tower sparkle at 10pm for the first time ever that we’ve seen. We got off at the wrong train stop on the way home (easy mistake as the name was what we thought it should be) and had to walk up a steep town to get to our hotel after walking about 8 km in the city. Then when we arrived at our hotel we were asked to stay out on the beautiful patio area to have wine and discuss ‘life in Paris’ with some Americans and Parisians celebrating a birthday – it was a beautiful night – this hotel has a lot of charm. We just got in at 1:30am.
During the day today, we were looking for an apartment and there were a lot of glitches in that process (agents without keys or missed calls by the relocation agent …crazy) but we still saw 6 apartments between 10:30am and 4:30pm. We have narrowed it down to 2 of these. One is in Vaucresson – lovely…and another in Garches…lovely. Garches is closer to the school so much more convenient…but more expensive (400 euros more) – …so we are applying to both of these because in France, it is an application process and the owner decides whether he/she will take you or not. It is quite a process. Then next week perhaps to IKEA to buy everything (including fridge, washing machine, oven etc.!).
Things are moving along as planned. Apartment shopping was arranged long ago for the 21st and the agent knew what we wanted from many questionnaires as well skyping with her…It was a great learning curve today! Toured the whole area in her little VW.
So if you’re interested in the area, do a virtual tour of Vaucresson and Garches online and you’ll see what we saw today and the type of neighbourhood we’ll be living in soon!
C M G B Overseas 
Sounds like a great day! Good luck finding your new home! Big day for us today!
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So glad to hear you are there safe and moving through the process with your usual enviable energy Mo!! We miss you all already , big hugs ox The Robinsons
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