On my first saturday night in Paris, where am I? Chez moi. I forgot my cellphone charger at the hostel (luckily Taylor picked it up for me), and this baby hasn’t been charged since Tuesday night. Consequently, my cellphone died about 2 hours ago, and now I have no means of communicating with anyone in Paris. Oh well, that just means that I can sit down and start what I’ve been putting off since I got here: creating a blog. This beautiful puppy dog is going to serve three purposes: 1) develop of journal of my days here in the City of Lights, 2) let everyone back at home know what’s going on here, and 3) add some discipline to my life.
I moved in last night to my chambre de bonne, and I think its fair to say that it was love at first sight. Granted, the rooms are small (maybe 9ft X 8ft), but I do have two of them, and they are jam packed with character.
The term chambre de bonne comes from the days when maids - or les bonnes - used to live on the top floor of bourgeois apartment buildings, in single-room units. Since there were no elevators originally, the lower floors were more desirable than the higher floors. So the rooms 7G and 7H were dirt cheap (<—- those are my rooms). The top floor is underneath a mansard roof, so I have sloping ceilings in both rooms, as well as in the communal hallway. Each room has a tall French window with a small balcony, and a view of the Place Parmentier, the Hôtel Concorde LaFayette, and (drum roll) the Eiffel Tower.
19, rue Montrosier is an adorable stone apartment building; however, it’s actually not in Paris, it’s in the suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, which, along with the 16th and 17th arrondissements, make up the Parisien equivalent of the Upper East Side. The commute to the NYU in Paris site is about 15 or 20 minutes, door to door. I’ll snap some pictures of the chambre and neighborhood tomorrow, so everyone can see its tourist-free beauty.
On that note, I think I’ll sign off for tonight. Hopefully I get my cell phone charger tomorrow…
À bientôt,
-Dave
PS - Here’s a pic I snagged of the Eiffel Tower on Wednesday during my lunch break.
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