On this, my first Sunday in my new home, I went strolling around the 16th arrondissement to get my bearings, and to find another RER station from which to make my daily commutes. RER is like an express Metro. I discovered many things.
Remember the pre-ATM days of making sure you had what you needed on Saturday because everything was closed on Sundays? Well, the Casino grocery store where I shop – as well as almost everything else in this neighborhood – is closed on Sundays. That half-bottle (demi-bouteille) of Sancerre in the fridge will just have to do for this evening.
I also discovered why my colleagues here all shook their heads and exclaimed what a bourgeois neighborhood I’d chosen. Apparently the 16th is a traditionally upper-crust area, with many embassies and affluent residents. Of course that’s not why I picked it. My home-finding strategy from the beginning was to find the right apartment; location was secondary. However, as I took my first spin around the ‘hood, here is what I saw: A ghost gray Lamborghini was parked on a corner sidewalk – on the sidewalk, not the street. It looked like a sleek, wild animal curled up and waiting for its owner to come out and play. A few minutes down the street, I watched the woman ahead of me at the flower shop pay for a $60 bouquet of flowers with a 1000-euro note (about $1400). They asked if she had anything smaller. The shrug of her shoulders said no. Side note: the guy ahead of me at the Conforama (an IKEA-type home store) yesterday paid for his 6800-euro purchase with CASH. Finally, I passed by several buildings with service entrances clearly marked with shiny brass plaques. Rivermont used to be the affluent neighborhood in Lynchburg, but I’ve never seen signs for service entrances – not that there weren’t any; maybe they just weren’t so…explicit.
Sid and I have always said that the property values in the “oh-three” district – the Rivermont zip code – went down when we moved in. While we likely won’t have the same impact in such a big city, clearly someone didn’t check our credentials!
Oh yes, I did discover the Henri Martin RER station. It turns out that sometimes, more walking means less commuting. From La Muette, the closest Metro station to my apartment, the travel time is about 45 minutes. If I continue walking through Muette to the Boulainvilliers RER station (an underground connection between stations is called a correspondence), it’s more like 35 minutes. I’m going to take this new path to the Avenue Henri Martin RER station in the morning, and it might cut me down to 30 minutes, which would be great – enough time to get the game face on in the morning, and to down-shift at night but without feeling like I’m losing so much of my life going to and from work.
While I’ve been writing, the small, bunch of tulips I bought has opened up right beside me on my dining table, bright yellow bursts of spring on a quiet Paris afternoon. And for only 8 euros. That’s a bargain at twice the price – in any neighborhood!
By Cass
February 14th in the Rue Nic Hood*
No comments:
Post a Comment