The long awaited apartment!

This is the post many of you have been waiting for - I finally moved into my apartment on Friday! It is so nice to be able to unpack after three weeks! I spent the entire weekend cleaning, shopping and rearranging all the furniture. 

The place is great but like all Parisian apartments, it has its share of quirks. The guy I am renting from lives in Geneva so his mom is my primary contact, she is a typical french bourgeois and a little bit of a scatter brain. She was here when I did the walk through and I think it set us back about an hour! I'm also assuming she is the reason there are so many pieces of furniture in here - I think she likes to shop . . .

After spending three weeks at a five floor walk up, it is nice to be on the second floor. The building has an elevator but it only goes to the half floor, because that makes sense. And there is no stop between the second and third floor for some reason so I always have to go up stairs when I'm carrying heavy things!

By French standards the apartment is huge so lots of room for guests :) Every room is separate with a door which most North Americans wouldn't like but I don't mind it.

Entry Way

The living room is divided into two spaces which is awesome when you only have one bedroom and live in Paris, a place that everyone wants to visit! For those of you that know me, you will laugh at the size of the TV - I think it's the same size as my computer screen at work! On that note, telecom here is amazing - I get TV, home phone with unlimited calls to 100 countries and the internet which is fiber with no data caps all for 40 euro (see DPBers, we do suck!) - RIDICULOUS!

View from the other half of the living room

The "guest room" (with a brand new sofa bed) gets the sun in the afternoon which is great because it's also where my balcony chairs are. The art is left to be desired but until I find something better, sumo wrestlers it is.

Loving the fake flowers - super low maintenance!

Next is my room. Apparently Paris was not built for the vertically challenged. I have to keep random wooden chairs around just to reach my clothes! Paris was also not built for people who like clothes because I am already running out of hanging space and my shipment has arrived yet . . .And Ikea is truly the same around the world, I had the same lamp at one point and it too always looked like it was tipping over.

The kitchen is by far the smallest room but for me, it's the same as home! It's supposed to be "fully equipped' but I'm guessing that's a relative term given there are about 100 plates and sets of utensils but no bowls, for example. Glad I shipped some of my things but will still need to do some shopping!

And last but not least, the main bathroom. Which I may change the name to the "laundry room" since one load of laundry takes about 5 hours! I think I may be doing laundry daily just to make it through all my clothes! I also haven't quite figured out the whole washer/dryer in one concept yet. There have been some hiccups needless to say.

As mentioned in my very first post, I picked "character and cheap" so these next pics are the elements that I think are some of the nicest parts of the place.

Ceiling in the guest room

Bedroom lock

Toilet sign

So that's the place!