Paris Update

Well we have set our date for leaving New York as the 10th of October. This will be the date all of our furniture gets picked up to be shipped across the ocean. This process takes approx. 6 weeks. We also get an air shipment leaving next week for essentials. So we'll be camping out in the apartment on airbeds and the like. We plan to come to the UK first, and take advantage of people's homes with real beds. Malc. will need to go back to Paris for work pretty quickly but I have a couple of months off, so won't rush so quickly.

Here are some sample pictures of the main room - look at the height of the door on the RHS compared to the ceiling, it's cavernous. The ceiling with lovely cloud frescoe. This is actually the only fancy room, the others are normal rooms. The view is from the maid's room. I will not post a picture of the maid's room, as for all of you with fantasies of staying in the maid's room may have them shattered soon enough. The room is like a dorm room with a loo at the end of the corridor (sans siege). Not to worry though as there will be a guest room, and plenty of space.

Straight or curly hair

Isabella's hair seems to be coming through now. Not decided whether it will be straight or curly. It seems to be curly at the back, however I think that could just be how it grows and then as it gets longer it goes straight. My hair's always been straight but Malc tells me his was curly as a baby, and it's never long enough now to know (thank goodness). Here are a few headshots so check it out and take a bet.

So how did it go in paris?

So how did the visit go? Well we saw about 12 apartments. We saw every shape and size. Personally I was torn between the contemporary "New York" loft style I love so much and the classic Parisian Haussman style. Funnily enough we didn't see many NY loft style, although we did see one amazing house in this style, but the access was bad for a stroller. We saw a 4 level house near the opera, hidden in a courtyard behind a chinese takeaway smack in the middle of tourist ville. The rest were apartments as you would expect. We saw a beautifully renovated apartment overlooking the Invalides, but just too small. We saw another with a view in the back windows of the Musee d'Orsay, but bedrooms too small. Anyway we saw many, and all of them seemed to have one thing not quite right. However on our last (third) day of looking we saw a duplex apartment in the 16th (tres snob), just vacated by the Spanish Ambassador. Once I got over my NY loft thing, given that we are leaving NYC after all, I figured I could get used to the Sistene Chapel style clouds on the ceiling. It is quite a special place, and it even has a shower (pretty unusual in the places we saw) and a walk in closet. Oh and it also has a maid/au-pair room in the roof. we didn't actually see this, but were told it is quite functional, so who knows. So now we have to work out how we mix contemporary furniture with Louis XV. I have some cool ideas, and am very much looking forward to moving in to my Louis XV phase of life. Anybody want to buy...

Trying out the public transport in Paris

Isa got to try out lots of diferent modes of transport whilst she was there.

A visit to Paris

We went to Paris en famille for a week. The main purpose of the visit was to find a place to live, but naturally we had time to get to know Paris a bit more too, and show Isa the sights.