Paris Day 2: May 19th, 2009

Cody and I woke after a long, tired sleep. I cleaned up and waited for the phone to ring. Nothing by 9:30 AM. So I call the agency, and get nothing but a message saying that they will be open at 2 PM that day. ACK. This is not the story I got the previous night when I was assured a call first thing with new options.Who starts work at 2 PM!? Even I get moving earlier than that. Maybe it is an agency of people with DSPS (Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome).

Panic sets in. The hotel is fine but I don't want to have to spend the entire trip here. I want an apartment where we can cook, entertain, write and relax. So I start searching the internet leave message after message and hope someone will call me back. I finally happen up two seemingly open apartments that are in neighborhoods we like and both are listed by the same agency. I call and speak to Johanna, who tells me the one apartment is not available but the other may be, and that maybe, just maybe we will get lucky and find something last minute for the entire trip. She miraculously gets a hold of the owner immediately, explains our plight and he agrees to get the place cleaned and move to his other place starting the next day. We can move in at 6 PM Wednesday, with just one catch: we need to pay for the whole thing in cash.

I call the bank and thankfully they work with us to get our daily cash withdrawal limit removed. We then hightail it down to the agency to sign the contract. On the way back I go into a couple of banks and find French I didn't know I had, to get the money. They keep sending me back out to the ATM where we run into THEIR cash withdrawal limit. MERDE. Long story short, we eventually got l'argent together through lots of withdrawals at different banks and a cash advance on the credit card (which I paid right back off electronically). Finally we could start to relax.

So we did! We met up with Jayme, Salim and Gavin for lunch and headed straight for Les Philosophes, on of our favorite cafés, for tomato tarte tartin and citron pressé, followed of course by tarte tartin with creme fraiche. Gavin ate bread and drank super fancy hot chocolate, while the rest of us savored our delicious lunch. We then walked around the Marais and ended up at Hotel de Ville and BHV. (BHV is an amazing store—7 stories of anything you might want, at reasonable prices.) The guys didn't feel like shopping, so they hung out at the BHV café while Jayme and I looked for baby clothes for her daughter to be. We were far from done, so we sent the boys to hunt dinner while we gathered more goods. We met them back at J and S's apartment and cooked up a delicious pasta dinner. We shared some wine, food, love and laughter and then headed back to the hotel and went straight to sleep.