We're here! Paris!

We're here! Or at least I think we are. Night is still day, and we've spent hours in the dark telling maggie "Fia stories:" essentially, our little made up adventures about Maggie and Nanna's corgi--at the zoo, the horse stable, the park, on a hike, etc...It all feels a little like one of those dreams where you're looking for something, reaching your hands out in the dark but can't, for the life of you, get your hands, or eyes, or legs to move.

I didn't think I would ever want to travel again after the flight to paris. We had a lot of luggage--a lot. I look back now and realize that no item could be worth the pain of lugging it across the Atlantic. In total we brought almost 250 pounds of STUFF. Before you call us totally crazy, what we brought wasn't so unreasonable: 4 suitcases, a guitar, and my sewing machine (yes, a sewing machine..) Come on...this is our life...we are living abroad for a year. But after the customs line, and the baggage claim (have you ever balanced that much luggage and a car seat and a crib, and a guitar on one of those carts??) Actually we didn't have to fit the guitar on the cart because we forget it at the Charles de Gaulle airport, but that's another story. So we fill up the back of a mini van with stuff, and begin the drive towards our apartment in Montmartre.

And here is where the hero in the story comes in: Jon. Of course, my husband with infinite strength and patience. When we rented the apartment we were told it was on the fourth floor with a lift. In France, the fourth floor is actually the fifth floor, and of course there is the flight of stairs to climb to get to the lift, and after that, another small flight of stairs from the lift to the apartment. So how did we get 250 pounds of stuff up to the fifth floor after no sleep, lines, airplane exhaust in our lungs? Jon, or course. When it was all over, he was finally done, Jon came into the apartment and I watched the sweat fall in large drops from his face onto the wood table and all I could think was, after all this, how are we going to take care of our cranky, exhausted toddler?

That night we had the windows open and we could hear piano, talking, babies crying from the neighboring apartments. We looked up and saw Sacre Coeur outside our window, glowing on its hilltop, and it was kind of magical. Then it began to rain. We listened to the water falling on the stone below, and breathed in that wonderful sweet air, and for that moment, it seemed that everything would be ok.

The views from our apartment:

Walking to Sacre Coeur