Our Dream Apartment
"It's now or never," I said to my friend Patsy. "We've sold the house in Vermont and we have a little extra cash: it's time to stop fantasizing about that apartment in Paris and take the plunge. Are you up for this?" Patsy wasn't so sure. We did have some cash from the house in Vermont, but Paris is far from our home in Provence and a Paris apartment would probably gobble up our minuscule profit from Vermont before we could say “le living room.” Besides, we already had one house in France. Taking on a second piece of French real estate might complicate our lives horrendously."Think of the plumbers," said Patsy. "Think of the carpenters and the electricians."
Patsy's arguments were entirely reasonable, but for me Paris is not a subject for reason.
Patsy's arguments were entirely reasonable, but for me Paris is not a subject for reason.
"I love Paris in the springtime," I began to sing. "I love Paris in the fall. I love Paris in the winter..."
"OK,
OK, I get it," she said. "We're talking about a love affair, not a
rational decision. And that Vermont money is burning a hole in
your pocket."
"Maybe we could find an apartment that we could rent out to tourists," I said, making a tepid stab at rationality. "Maybe we could make money."
Patsy was dubious. "I don't think so. Tourists stay in hotels, not apartments. And I don't want to run a hotel."
But if I learned one lesson in my former career as a lawyer it is that "no" is not an answer. "We could just go and look," I argued. Then I added, "Think April in Paris. Even if we don't find an apartment, we'll have a wonderful time. And if we look at a bunch of apartments we'll get to know the city from the inside out. And don't forget," I concluded, pulling out my trump card, "We could have dinner at Le Grand Colbert!" (Le Grand Colbert is a smashingly beautiful, recently restored Belle Epoque brasserie that serves excellent food in a bustling, highly sophisticated Parisian setting. Patsy and I get a high just from walking in the front door.)
"Maybe we could find an apartment that we could rent out to tourists," I said, making a tepid stab at rationality. "Maybe we could make money."
Patsy was dubious. "I don't think so. Tourists stay in hotels, not apartments. And I don't want to run a hotel."
But if I learned one lesson in my former career as a lawyer it is that "no" is not an answer. "We could just go and look," I argued. Then I added, "Think April in Paris. Even if we don't find an apartment, we'll have a wonderful time. And if we look at a bunch of apartments we'll get to know the city from the inside out. And don't forget," I concluded, pulling out my trump card, "We could have dinner at Le Grand Colbert!" (Le Grand Colbert is a smashingly beautiful, recently restored Belle Epoque brasserie that serves excellent food in a bustling, highly sophisticated Parisian setting. Patsy and I get a high just from walking in the front door.)
Le Grand Colbert did the trick. She began to weaken, and I pressed my advantage. "We'll just go to look," I said. "We need to get a feel for the market."
"Well," she said, "Maybe an exploratory trip." Then she frowned darkly. "But we're not writing any checks! You've got to promise!" And so, with a firm commitment to remain non-committal, we made our plans to spend a week in Paris in early April.
Buying real estate in France is very different from buying real estate in America. Contrary to what many people think, there are no restrictions against Americans acquiring property here in France, but the laws relating to taxes and inheritance are not at all the same in the two countries. Being reasonably sober and responsible, we made our decision to buy an apartment after consulting with a French notaire. We asked him a battery of questions about taxes and inheritance (including the taxes we would have to pay if we sell the property) and asked him about possible forms of ownership. Then we checked his answers with a second notaire.
It goes without saying that any American who buys property in France needs to make decisions that are individually designed for the buyer's specific circumstances and even then only after a careful consultation with a French notaire. But let us not discuss about French Real Estate and Tax Law as Applied to Americans. We’ll talk about what we did and why we did it and why the first thing we did when we got Paris was purchase a copy of a publication called "Particulier à Particulier,” which means "Private Party to Private Party."
Particulier à Particulier (P/P) is the principal tool used by Parisians to buy and sell residential real estate. P/P has a web site that is updated daily, a weekly print edition that appears on the newsstands every Thursday, and a huge following among local people. According to Le Monde Economique more than half of all residential property in Paris is sold through P/P, and P/P quickly introduced us to Paris prices.
We discovered that an apartment with two bedrooms in one of the lively neighborhoods in the center of town could easily cost $500,000. The price would be almost as high in an "interesting" (seedy) or "elegant," (far away, boring, bourgeois) neighborhood outside of the center. Apartments in the really choice neighborhoods in the center of town, for example around St.-Germain-des-Près, could go for multiples of that figure.
In the middle of our search we decided to call our Boston friends Joan and Jean-François. Jean- François is a Belgian who, like me, has always dreamed of owning a place in Paris; Joan is American and open-minded. "Maybe we'll go in with you," said Jean-François. "I'll be in Paris next month; why don't we look together?" Joan and Jean-François have been our close friends for years, and the decision to join forces with them was not difficult. We happily curtailed our adventures in the apartment trade, and a few weeks later we began our second round of apartment visits, this time with the help of Jean-François.
P/P once again provided us with a shopping list. On our first day we saw a two-bedroom apartment at the bottom of the 15th arrondisement (almost at the Péréphérique--the ring road that surrounds Paris, from which one heads off into the hinterland--miles from the center of town) with a living room that stared blankly out at a faceless, modern apartment building and a kitchen that looked down upon rows of dazzling white crosses in a military cemetery. (Imagine breakfast croissants accompanied by visions of death?) The apartment had low ceilings, cramped spaces and ancient fixtures; it would need a complete rehab and would cost $430,000.
We visited a two-bedroom apartment at the west end of the Blvd. St.-Germain. By craning our necks we could see the Seine, but the tiny rooms had low ceilings, the apartment needed renovation from top to bottom (it had an avocado-green bathtub and a flesh-pink bidet), the building's public spaces were dark and depressing, and the neighborhood was filled with wholesale hardware stores. The owner wanted $450,000.
"Are the prices negotiable?" I asked a friend after seeing a few of these horrors. "These people have got to be smoking dope!"
Our friend shrugged her shoulders. "You can try to negotiate," she said. "But if you watch P/P you’ll see that things don't last long. People seem to think they can get their price, and if the place is nice, they're probably right."
Finally we did visit a serious possibility: a handsome apartment with large French windows that opened out over a small private park. It was on the second floor of a clean and respectable building on the Avenue de Ségur, just across the street from the Ecole Militaire in the fashionable 7th Arrondissement. The owner was selling it because his son, for whom he had splendidly redone it, had suddenly taken a job outside of Paris. It was obvious that it had never been lived in and was as fresh as a spring day. It had a modern kitchen and bath, re-finished hardwood floors, commodious closets and a sunny southern exposure. The price was a reasonable $405,000.
True, the neighborhood was a little dull. (There is hardly any street life in that part of Paris.) But the building was clean and well cared for, the view was pleasant and the place needed zero work, a serious consideration for people who live too far away to supervise an elaborate construction project. (We had already done a fair amount of work on our house in Provence and were hesitant to begin again. From an American point of view, work here seems to be taken rather casually, and personal relationships govern almost everything, including the price of nails and paint.)
Patsy was
right: the Vermont money was burning a hole in my pocket. "Let's just
do it," I said. "It's in move-in condition, the price is right,
the neighborhood is respectable and there's an excellent Saturday
market right around the corner. This is as good as we're likely
to find."
Patsy and Jean-François were not so sure.
"I had hoped for two bedrooms," said Jean-François. "This place has a double living room that might be converted into a second bedroom, but if we were all here together, who would get the second, smaller bedroom? I'd just as soon keep looking."
Patsy was less specific but equally unenthusiastic. "We haven't really seen too many places. I'd like to look some more. It seems expensive and it's kind of far away from everything. . . I just don't know."
"It's a classy neighborhood," I answered. "UNESCO is right across the street and we'll be able to get diplomats for tenants. Think of that pretty little park!"
My arguments were sound, but they
were greeted by a stony silence. Patsy and Jean-François were not
unpleasant, but ultimately and unequivocally, they were not
interested. That was the end of the Avenue de Ségur.
The next possibility was in the 14th Arrondissement, just around the corner from the church at Alésia. On the fifth (top) floor of a nice building with an elevator, facing south, it had two full bedrooms, had recently been renovated, and was on the market for $425,000. The owner was a likeable young guy with an American wife and already had a full-price bid. He hated to ask people to bid above the asking price, but how else could he decide? We shilly-shallied. I liked the 2 bedrooms and the convenient layout, and I loved the idea of being close to the Alésia market, which has a terrific cheese shop, a wonderful butcher and a first-rate fish store, plus flowers and a bakery and a green grocer with rows of glistening, perky vegetables. "Plus it's bright and sunny," said Patsy encouragingly.
But I remained hesitant. "Isn't it a bit far away from the center of things?" I wondered. "It's a 20-minute walk from Montparnasse, and even then you're only at the edge of the kind of places we enjoy. Plus $425,000 seems expensive for what it is and of course we don't know what we'd actually have to pay to get it, because he's already been offered the full price. It could end up costing $435,000, and maybe even more. And with the dollar going down every day… maybe we should keep on looking?"
"Maybe we should keep on looking."
So we saw some that were perfectly reasonable but that had no more charm than a Wal-Mart. We saw several mouse-cages; we saw several that might do under the right circumstances, if only the street were not so noisy, or the price so outlandish, or if there was an elevator, or .…
The
final blow to our confidence was an apartment on the rue Echiquier in
the 9th Arondissement. The apartment was a five-minute walk from
the rue Montorgueil, one of Paris' most famous (and charming) market
streets. The apartment was owned by a young professor who had just
broken up with his girlfriend. It had exposed beams, beautiful
hardwood floors, handsomely proportioned rooms, two bedrooms, tons of
bookcases, many windows, little nooks and crannies, and a
harpsichord. The price was $350,000: a terrific buy for an
apartment that size, that close to the center of town. We
loved the apartment on the rue Echiquier. It was a little off the
beaten path but not too far off the beaten path. It was a little seedy
but not too seedy. It felt cozy and home-like.
It would have been perfect for Patsy and me. Indeed we liked it so much that the young professor practically had to shove us out the door to make way for the next potential buyers. But when we found ourselves out on the street, the cold realities of our situation began to dawn on us. The existence of this charming apartment, which was actually for sale and which we might possibly even be able to afford, meant that we had to end for once and all our fantasies about having an apartment in Paris.
If we were serious about this project, we had to face the concrete reality of a real apartment, with real rooms, a real address--and a huge expenditure of real cash. For the first time, we began to talk seriously about what we might be doing with a Paris apartment. As we contemplated these questions that evening over a bottle of burgundy and an excellent lapin à la moutarde, our thoughts began to come into focus.
Patsy and I loved Paris.
But for a million reasons, we had no desire whatsoever to live there
full time. And we knew that Joan and Jean-François felt the same
way. Our apartment would therefore be a pied-à-terre for all four
of us. Unfortunately, our apartment would have to work as an
investment as well, because none of could afford to sink our modest
resources into a charming, non-productive Parisian résidence
secondaire.
All four of us had all concluded long ago
that residential real estate in Paris was quite reasonably priced in
relation to the international market. We thought, and still
think, that Paris prices will rise dramatically in the next few years.
But a possible long-term capital gain was not enough to justify such a
significant investment. We needed to invest in something that at
least offered the possibility of a more immediate return.
When I had first tried to persuade Patsy that we might use our apartment for occasional rentals to tourists, I had pretty much been inventing an idea out of whole cloth. But during the course of our Parisian wanderings, we had become increasingly persuaded that many visitors to Paris in fact do prefer to stay in apartments. Jean-François showed us ads for Paris apartments on the Internet with heavy bookings, our Paris friends reported no trouble in keeping their apartments rented, and various publications and internet sites demonstrated an apparently lively market in short-term rentals for apartments in or near the center of the city.
As we thought about it, it became clear that an apartment has many advantages over a hotel room for a visiting tourist. Because apartments have kitchens, visitors are not required to eat three meals a day in restaurants. Visitors can therefore save a little money and a fair amount of wear and tear on their palates. Apartments almost by definition have vastly more living space than even the most generous hotel room. Perhaps most importantly, a visitor staying in an apartment has the experience of actually living in Paris. Living in Paris feels very different from and much better than staying in a hotel.
These thoughts brought us face to face with the critical question of the day. Would the apartment on the rue Echiquier be as appealing to short-term visitors as it was to Patsy and me? The Ninth Arrondissement, in Paris terms, is beyond the pale. Even though the rue Echiquier is only a five- or ten-minute walk from the trendy rue Montorgeuil and the rue Tiquetonne, Parisians still feel that the Ninth is on the dark side of the moon. Our reading of the tourist trade was that a central location is even more important to short-term visitors than it is to long-term residents. In short, we feared that Patsy and I might love the rue Echiquier, but that other people might not share our views.
The decisive moment came when we asked a Parisian friend for her opinion. "I've got a friend in the Ninth," she said. "She has a beautiful apartment that she'd like to rent out, but she's had a devil of a time. Tourists just don't want to go there!"
Patsy and I spent a long evening and most of the next day coming to these conclusions. We even called Jean-François to get his opinion, which in fact was the same as our own. Finally, therefore, in spite of the bookcases and the harpsichord and the sympathique young professor, we made our decision. I told the professor that we would not be making a bid.
When I had first tried to persuade Patsy that we might use our apartment for occasional rentals to tourists, I had pretty much been inventing an idea out of whole cloth. But during the course of our Parisian wanderings, we had become increasingly persuaded that many visitors to Paris in fact do prefer to stay in apartments. Jean-François showed us ads for Paris apartments on the Internet with heavy bookings, our Paris friends reported no trouble in keeping their apartments rented, and various publications and internet sites demonstrated an apparently lively market in short-term rentals for apartments in or near the center of the city.
As we thought about it, it became clear that an apartment has many advantages over a hotel room for a visiting tourist. Because apartments have kitchens, visitors are not required to eat three meals a day in restaurants. Visitors can therefore save a little money and a fair amount of wear and tear on their palates. Apartments almost by definition have vastly more living space than even the most generous hotel room. Perhaps most importantly, a visitor staying in an apartment has the experience of actually living in Paris. Living in Paris feels very different from and much better than staying in a hotel.
These thoughts brought us face to face with the critical question of the day. Would the apartment on the rue Echiquier be as appealing to short-term visitors as it was to Patsy and me? The Ninth Arrondissement, in Paris terms, is beyond the pale. Even though the rue Echiquier is only a five- or ten-minute walk from the trendy rue Montorgeuil and the rue Tiquetonne, Parisians still feel that the Ninth is on the dark side of the moon. Our reading of the tourist trade was that a central location is even more important to short-term visitors than it is to long-term residents. In short, we feared that Patsy and I might love the rue Echiquier, but that other people might not share our views.
The decisive moment came when we asked a Parisian friend for her opinion. "I've got a friend in the Ninth," she said. "She has a beautiful apartment that she'd like to rent out, but she's had a devil of a time. Tourists just don't want to go there!"
Patsy and I spent a long evening and most of the next day coming to these conclusions. We even called Jean-François to get his opinion, which in fact was the same as our own. Finally, therefore, in spite of the bookcases and the harpsichord and the sympathique young professor, we made our decision. I told the professor that we would not be making a bid.
That was the best decision we have ever made. On the very next day we saw the apartment of our dreams. And both Patsy and I knew it the instant we walked in the front door.
I was born in Chicago and began taking French
in fourth grade. When I came home from school the first day and told my
mother that I had learned to say "La mere prepare le diner dans la
cuisine" ("The mother prepares dinner in the kitchen"), she gasped with
admiration and gave me a big hug. I learned at an early age that
French, unlike geometry and the other dumb subjects I could never
figure out, was something I could do well. French even provided
me with a certain cachet. Both the teachers and the other kids were
impressed by my ability to imitate the strange sounds that left my
fellow fourth graders choked and gurgling.
By the time I
finished college I was quite fluent. Indeed, my way of escaping
from the miseries of a Midwestern adolescence had been to lock myself
in my room and play Edith Piaf records. I played them again and
again, struggling to understand the words. I knew that if I could only
be there, drinking my aperitif on the terrace of Les Deux-Magots and
talking about existentialism, my life would be transformed.
I
first arrived in Paris on an exquisite June morning just before my 21st
birthday. I fell instantly in love: first, with the girl who had
been my French pen-pal since 7th grade (a feeling most unequivocally
not reciprocated) and then, more constructively, with the city of
Paris. I spent my days wandering the streets, drunk with
excitement. At one point, sitting on the terrace of an outdoor cafe, I
was so staggered to hear everyone speaking French--a language I had
come to think of as my secret, that I wrote a postcard to an
American friend saying "It is not possible to die of happiness,
because I am at this very moment experiencing happiness that
is perfect, total and absolute."
I probably
should have moved to Paris earlier. I considered it many times
and even made a few desultory efforts, but the complications of
job and family always seemed overwhelming. Instead, I went out
with French girls, had French friends, read French books and generally
pestered the people around me with camembert and francophilia.
When I eventually had kids, I made them learn French and bored them and
their friends with French children's records.
And always, when my life was either intensely happy or intensely unhappy, I went to Paris. In one particularly turbulent year I went four times. Patsy and I moved to France five years ago. We thought about settling in Paris, but our Parisian friends were strongly discouraging. "The weather is foul and the air is polluted and the métro is noisy, if it's not on strike. Why live in Paris when you could live in Provence?" We made our decision in favor of Provence and had no regrets. But Paris was always gleaming in the background, and on our frequent visits we invariably had a smashing time.
Our search for an apartment in Paris had covered the city. Then one day we answered an ad for an apartment on rue du Grenier St.-Lazare, a one-block-long street directly behind the Pompidou Center. (Grenier St.-Lazare, which runs perpendicular to the rue Beaubourg, the busy street alongside the Pompidou, is well known to Parisians because it is home to a fine, old-fashioned restaurant called L'Ambassade d'Auvergne.) The owner of the apartment was honest and straightforward from the very start. "Are you very tall?" he asked in our first telephone call.
"Not particularly," I answered. "What's the difference?"
"The apartment does not have high ceilings. If you were very tall, you would not be comfortable here."
"No problem," I answered. "None of us is particularly tall."
"Do you have children?"
"Yes," I answered, "But they are grown and don't live with us. Why do you ask?"
"The apartment is large, but it's really a one-bedroom apartment and would not be suitable for a couple with children. I don't want to mislead you and waste your time or mine."
And always, when my life was either intensely happy or intensely unhappy, I went to Paris. In one particularly turbulent year I went four times. Patsy and I moved to France five years ago. We thought about settling in Paris, but our Parisian friends were strongly discouraging. "The weather is foul and the air is polluted and the métro is noisy, if it's not on strike. Why live in Paris when you could live in Provence?" We made our decision in favor of Provence and had no regrets. But Paris was always gleaming in the background, and on our frequent visits we invariably had a smashing time.
Our search for an apartment in Paris had covered the city. Then one day we answered an ad for an apartment on rue du Grenier St.-Lazare, a one-block-long street directly behind the Pompidou Center. (Grenier St.-Lazare, which runs perpendicular to the rue Beaubourg, the busy street alongside the Pompidou, is well known to Parisians because it is home to a fine, old-fashioned restaurant called L'Ambassade d'Auvergne.) The owner of the apartment was honest and straightforward from the very start. "Are you very tall?" he asked in our first telephone call.
"Not particularly," I answered. "What's the difference?"
"The apartment does not have high ceilings. If you were very tall, you would not be comfortable here."
"No problem," I answered. "None of us is particularly tall."
"Do you have children?"
"Yes," I answered, "But they are grown and don't live with us. Why do you ask?"
"The apartment is large, but it's really a one-bedroom apartment and would not be suitable for a couple with children. I don't want to mislead you and waste your time or mine."
I was
taken aback by his bluntness, but it's hard to fault honesty and
candor. "We'd like to see it," I said. "When would be a good
time?"
The apartment we were visiting was two doors east of L'Ambassade d'Auvergne, at No. 16. We liked it even before seeing it, because it has a modern, comfortable elevator--a rarity in Paris, and a significant asset for an apartment that would regularly be used by people with suitcases.
The apartment we were visiting was two doors east of L'Ambassade d'Auvergne, at No. 16. We liked it even before seeing it, because it has a modern, comfortable elevator--a rarity in Paris, and a significant asset for an apartment that would regularly be used by people with suitcases.
As with all apartments
advertised in Particulier à Particulier, there was no
broker. The owner himself showed us around, and he explained that
he had inherited the apartment from his recently deceased
mother. He added that the entire building, including this
apartment, had been completely renovated in 1996.
The apartment looked immaculately clean and well kept. Had we needed to, we could have moved in without doing a thing. As he had said on the telephone, the ceilings were not high. But what the apartment lacked in height it made up for with space. It was a full 750 square feet, windows in every one of its three different rooms: the living room, the hallway/corridor and the bedroom. It had a modern kitchen, 1-1/2 baths, new parquet flooring, and exposed beams in the living room. It felt sunny and bright.
The price was what the French refer to as correct, that is, a fair price for an apartment that size, in that condition, at that location. The apartment had many advantages, but it also had one serious disadvantage. It had only one bedroom, and our previous searching had been strictly limited to two-bedroom apartments. That night we called Jean-François, the friend in Boston who was going to be our partner in this project. "Here's the problem," I said. "The location is incredible, it needs no work, and the price is OK. But, and this is a big BUT, it has only one bedroom. The four of us most definitely could not stay there together. Patsy and I have talked a lot, and our sense of the market is that a full two bedroom apartment in a location like this could end up costing us well over 500, 000 euros and even at that price we would probably have to do some work. In other words, a second bedroom in the heart of Paris would cost us more than 100,000 euros, or, at the present rate of exchange, almost $120.000. That's a lot of money to pay for a second bedroom. My vote is, let's forget about the second bedroom. If we all decide to come to Paris at the same time, one couple can stay in the apartment and one couple can stay in a hotel down the street that costs $50 a night. A friend of ours says it's as clean and quiet as a church pew."
Jean-François did not hesitate. "I agree," he said. "If you and Patsy think that it’s right, we'll go along with your judgment.”
The next day we began our negotiations, which were not complicated. Like many Paris sellers, the owner already had received a full-price offer; but like the young man near Alésia whose apartment we had previously seen and rejected, he hated the idea of an auction. At his suggestion, we made a bid that was just slightly above the asking price and by the end of the day he had made his decision. Without asking or allowing the other couple to bid higher, he told them that the apartment had been sold. The apartment, miracle of miracles, was ours.
People in real estate say that the three most important elements in buying property are location, location and location. In Paris, that means neighborhood, neighborhood and neighborhood, and our new apartment was in the Marais, one of the liveliest and most interesting neighborhoods in the city. It was, moreover, in the very heart of Tourist Paris: a 10-minute walk from Nôtre Dame and across the street from the Pompidou. I enjoy Tourist Paris, but I had seen most of it many, many years ago. The Paris I wanted to experience now was the Paris I perceived as the real Paris: the little restaurants, the bakeries and cheese shops, the wine sellers, hardware stores and little bookstores where real Parisians did their shopping and eating and relaxing. I wanted to see Paris through the eyes of the person I had waited my entire life to become: a Parisian.
My first foray was fortuitous. A friend had recently told us about a hotel at the corner of the rue St-Martin, half a block from our apartment. Knowing that we would need a key-drop and a reliable neighborhood connection, I stopped by to see if it lived up to his recommendation.
The apartment looked immaculately clean and well kept. Had we needed to, we could have moved in without doing a thing. As he had said on the telephone, the ceilings were not high. But what the apartment lacked in height it made up for with space. It was a full 750 square feet, windows in every one of its three different rooms: the living room, the hallway/corridor and the bedroom. It had a modern kitchen, 1-1/2 baths, new parquet flooring, and exposed beams in the living room. It felt sunny and bright.
The price was what the French refer to as correct, that is, a fair price for an apartment that size, in that condition, at that location. The apartment had many advantages, but it also had one serious disadvantage. It had only one bedroom, and our previous searching had been strictly limited to two-bedroom apartments. That night we called Jean-François, the friend in Boston who was going to be our partner in this project. "Here's the problem," I said. "The location is incredible, it needs no work, and the price is OK. But, and this is a big BUT, it has only one bedroom. The four of us most definitely could not stay there together. Patsy and I have talked a lot, and our sense of the market is that a full two bedroom apartment in a location like this could end up costing us well over 500, 000 euros and even at that price we would probably have to do some work. In other words, a second bedroom in the heart of Paris would cost us more than 100,000 euros, or, at the present rate of exchange, almost $120.000. That's a lot of money to pay for a second bedroom. My vote is, let's forget about the second bedroom. If we all decide to come to Paris at the same time, one couple can stay in the apartment and one couple can stay in a hotel down the street that costs $50 a night. A friend of ours says it's as clean and quiet as a church pew."
Jean-François did not hesitate. "I agree," he said. "If you and Patsy think that it’s right, we'll go along with your judgment.”
The next day we began our negotiations, which were not complicated. Like many Paris sellers, the owner already had received a full-price offer; but like the young man near Alésia whose apartment we had previously seen and rejected, he hated the idea of an auction. At his suggestion, we made a bid that was just slightly above the asking price and by the end of the day he had made his decision. Without asking or allowing the other couple to bid higher, he told them that the apartment had been sold. The apartment, miracle of miracles, was ours.
People in real estate say that the three most important elements in buying property are location, location and location. In Paris, that means neighborhood, neighborhood and neighborhood, and our new apartment was in the Marais, one of the liveliest and most interesting neighborhoods in the city. It was, moreover, in the very heart of Tourist Paris: a 10-minute walk from Nôtre Dame and across the street from the Pompidou. I enjoy Tourist Paris, but I had seen most of it many, many years ago. The Paris I wanted to experience now was the Paris I perceived as the real Paris: the little restaurants, the bakeries and cheese shops, the wine sellers, hardware stores and little bookstores where real Parisians did their shopping and eating and relaxing. I wanted to see Paris through the eyes of the person I had waited my entire life to become: a Parisian.
My first foray was fortuitous. A friend had recently told us about a hotel at the corner of the rue St-Martin, half a block from our apartment. Knowing that we would need a key-drop and a reliable neighborhood connection, I stopped by to see if it lived up to his recommendation.
The Hotel
Duséjour is a mom-and-pop operation run by Joao and Maria Goncales,
Portuguese immigrants who have been welcoming tourists here for 35
years. They live on the top floor. Maria does the cleaning and Joao
does the maintenance. They both speak a little English, a little
Spanish, a little German and even, Joao told me with a happy grin, a
little Japanese, because the hotel is listed in all the tourist guides
(such as Let's Go) that tell young people how to do Paris cleanly and
comfortably on a limited budget.
The Hotel Duséjour is as
clean and shiny as the most expensive four-star hotel in Paris, but its
facilities, like its owners, are considerably more modest and
sympatique. Joao and I were instantly on a first-name
basis. With a laugh and a wave of the hand he agreed to handle
our keys for us, and before the end of the day he had introduced us to
a Portugese lady who could clean and sew, and who even had a husband
who was "handy" with plumbing and electricity. Thus problems No. 1 and
2 were solved with the snap of a finger: we had a place to keep the
keys and a cleaning lady.
It did not take much little longer to solve problem No. 3. We had decided to re-paint the apartment, and Patsy had made a list of approximately 85 cleaning products that would be absolutely essential to complete the task. (My protestations as to the flawless cleanliness of the apartment fell on deaf ears.) Across the street from the Pompidou, right next to my favorite movie theater in Paris (the Beaubourg, Paris' best art theater), is a local branch of Leroy Merlin, a kind of French Home Depot. And at less than a ten-minute walk from the apartment, we re-discovered the legendary BHV, a six-story Paris institution that sells everything from light bulbs to computers, dishes to portable telephones, paint to perfume at prices that attract people from the distant edges of the metropolitan area.
It did not take much little longer to solve problem No. 3. We had decided to re-paint the apartment, and Patsy had made a list of approximately 85 cleaning products that would be absolutely essential to complete the task. (My protestations as to the flawless cleanliness of the apartment fell on deaf ears.) Across the street from the Pompidou, right next to my favorite movie theater in Paris (the Beaubourg, Paris' best art theater), is a local branch of Leroy Merlin, a kind of French Home Depot. And at less than a ten-minute walk from the apartment, we re-discovered the legendary BHV, a six-story Paris institution that sells everything from light bulbs to computers, dishes to portable telephones, paint to perfume at prices that attract people from the distant edges of the metropolitan area.
One evening after a day devoted to the
brushes and mops, we went for a walk. Our plan had been to see
the Place des Vosges at twilight, but we soon happened upon a tiny
movie theater called La Latina that in only 30 minutes was showing the
Frida Kahlo movie. We had missed it in both Vermont and Aix-en-Provence
and so we jumped at our unexpected good fortune. When we came out
of the movie several hours later, we discovered that the theater also
served as a kind of Latino disco that was packed solid with salsa-ing
couples of all ages, sizes and races, dripping sweat, flailing their
arms frenetically all the while grinning from ear to ear. "What a great
city!" I said to Patsy as we happily ambled up the rue du Temple
towards home. "Where else could you find such an incredible
diversity of people all boogying to the same music! Paris is the
greatest!"
A five-minute walk west of our apartment takes us to the rue St.-Denis, a street famous for its whores and porn shops. Two blocks beyond the rue St-Denis is the rue Montorgeuil, a shopping street that, like many similar streets in Paris, is reserved for pedestrians. The rue Montorgueil boasts two excellent cheese shops, two or three places to buy fruit and vegetables, several butchers, a fishmonger, an excellent small hardware store and four or five bakeries. (The big shopping day is Sunday.) Montorgueil also has batches of cafés from which to enjoy the most interesting street scene in Paris. Sitting in one of the cafés of our choice (we now tend to change cafés depending on the sun, the weather, or just on our mood) we have observed old ladies in elegant tenue parisiènne, bra-less young babes with spiky purple hair who are wearing construction boots and filthy t-shirts, bikers, flawlessly groomed young professionals, fat people and thin, derelicts and society matrons, streetwalkers and street people. Everyone mixes and matches on the rue Montorgueil, and everyone wants to see and be seen.
Intersecting Montorgueil is the tiny, trendy rue Tiquetonne. On the west of Montorgueil, Tiquetonne is almost wholly paved with cafés almost wholly filled with the young and the beautiful. Perhaps it is not a Paris rule that you have to be under 25 and elegantly dressed to get a table on the rue Tiquetonne, but to us a high percentage of the crowd looks like models and movie stars.Patsy and I gape as we hurry by; then we head for one of the cafés on the rue Montorgueil where a couple of not-very-glamorous Americans can have a glass of wine without looking like refugees from a homeless shelter.
As we were returning home one day after lunch on the rue Montorgueil, we saw a clipping scotch-taped to the window of a café on the rue Etienne Marcel. The clipping praised the café's food and the vibes and so we decided to check it out. The St. Amour is perhaps the only combination bar-tabac-bistro in Paris. When waiter/boss/owner Eric Lenoir is not waiting tables or joking around with the customers, he is selling Gauloises and Marlborlos across the counter next to the front door. Whatever he is doing, Eric keeps up a steady line of chatter. He teases the lady who doesn't want wine with lunch, flirts with the pretty girl, tells me that his salade composé is really tiny and that we should not share one but order two, agrees with a cigarette customer that the government's taxes are scandalous and urges a group of businessmen to have another bottle of Burgundy. "Really first rate," he says. "And I've got one perfectly chilled; I promise you'll love it."
A five-minute walk west of our apartment takes us to the rue St.-Denis, a street famous for its whores and porn shops. Two blocks beyond the rue St-Denis is the rue Montorgeuil, a shopping street that, like many similar streets in Paris, is reserved for pedestrians. The rue Montorgueil boasts two excellent cheese shops, two or three places to buy fruit and vegetables, several butchers, a fishmonger, an excellent small hardware store and four or five bakeries. (The big shopping day is Sunday.) Montorgueil also has batches of cafés from which to enjoy the most interesting street scene in Paris. Sitting in one of the cafés of our choice (we now tend to change cafés depending on the sun, the weather, or just on our mood) we have observed old ladies in elegant tenue parisiènne, bra-less young babes with spiky purple hair who are wearing construction boots and filthy t-shirts, bikers, flawlessly groomed young professionals, fat people and thin, derelicts and society matrons, streetwalkers and street people. Everyone mixes and matches on the rue Montorgueil, and everyone wants to see and be seen.
Intersecting Montorgueil is the tiny, trendy rue Tiquetonne. On the west of Montorgueil, Tiquetonne is almost wholly paved with cafés almost wholly filled with the young and the beautiful. Perhaps it is not a Paris rule that you have to be under 25 and elegantly dressed to get a table on the rue Tiquetonne, but to us a high percentage of the crowd looks like models and movie stars.Patsy and I gape as we hurry by; then we head for one of the cafés on the rue Montorgueil where a couple of not-very-glamorous Americans can have a glass of wine without looking like refugees from a homeless shelter.
As we were returning home one day after lunch on the rue Montorgueil, we saw a clipping scotch-taped to the window of a café on the rue Etienne Marcel. The clipping praised the café's food and the vibes and so we decided to check it out. The St. Amour is perhaps the only combination bar-tabac-bistro in Paris. When waiter/boss/owner Eric Lenoir is not waiting tables or joking around with the customers, he is selling Gauloises and Marlborlos across the counter next to the front door. Whatever he is doing, Eric keeps up a steady line of chatter. He teases the lady who doesn't want wine with lunch, flirts with the pretty girl, tells me that his salade composé is really tiny and that we should not share one but order two, agrees with a cigarette customer that the government's taxes are scandalous and urges a group of businessmen to have another bottle of Burgundy. "Really first rate," he says. "And I've got one perfectly chilled; I promise you'll love it."
I have a weakness for little places where the owner is sympathique and the food is uncomplicated. I quickly joined in with the friendly joking, and one day after the luncheon crowd had thinned out, Eric brought us his scrapbook. I saw from his clippings that he had formerly run a huge and highly popular restaurant "far away from here," but he told us that the stress was killing him. He eventually gave it all up and bought this tiny place in the middle of Paris where he can serve a maximum of about 40 people and he closes at 8:00, "because I want to." He told us that he loves his new restaurant because he is able to cook precisely what he wants: he takes no orders from anyone and works exclusively for his own pleasure. "Money is not the point," he said, echoing a message Patsy and I have heard a thousand times in France. "I made three times as much in the Loire, but I was on the verge of a heart attack."
The St. Amour is in the heart of Paris's fashion district and most of the luncheon regulars seem to come from the world of couture. One well-dressed woman is the technical director of a major fashion house; a younger, heavy-set woman is a secretary; and one of the larger tables is occupied every day by a group who could be ordinary working-class guys talking about their jobs, except that one of them is an extraordinary young black man who is, at least to our unsophisticated eyes, obviously a model.
If we leave the apartment and walk one short block towards the Seine, the next block parallel to rue du Grenier St.-Lazare is the rue Rambuteau. Like Montorgueil, Rambuteau is mostly devoted to food, but unlike Montorgueil, Rambuteau is not closed to pedestrians and it is resolutely non-trendy. Rambuteau is quite different from Montorgueil, but it is similarly bursting with personality. It has at least a dozen food shops (some quite fancy), it has a dozen cafés, several excellent bakeries and a terrific Chinese take-out. Indeed, the first two blocks of Rambuteau are so filled with interesting-looking cafés and little restaurants that it's difficult to choose one over another.Le Bouldogue, for example, at No. 21 Rambuteau is run by two men in their 50s who have been partners for many years. The food they serve is unpretentious and straightforward: steak au poivre, saumon tartare, pommes dauphinois. But the dishes are always carefully and excellently prepared, and the prices are correct.
On a recent June evening, feeling hot and sticky after a day with the paint pots, we stopped in at Le Bouledogue to try the day's special. That night they were serving a pot au feu en Gelée, beef and vegetables cooked together. Because a proper pot au feu has to simmer for several hours, it is much too complicated to cook at home, especially in the heat of the summer. But our new apartment made it possible for us to step outside, walk into a friendly restaurant and enjoy a delicious, interesting meal, for a modest price.
Le Bouldogue is another of those Paris restaurants where the ambiance is sympathique and clientele is distinctly local. The restaurant is frequented by an eclectic mixture of respectable bourgeois couples, a few gays (the Marais is the center of Paris' gay culture) and young couples out for an evening--tourists are few and far between. When we left, having spent much of the evening talking to the family at the next table (we agreed on French and American politics and disagreed on cigarettes) the owner cordially shook our hands and gave Patsy a bise: "Welcome to the neighborhood," he said with a grin. We felt once again embraced by the warmth of France.
Across the street from Le Bouledogue is a minuscule bookstore called "CK." Collette K, the owner of the bookstore, sits at her tiny desk near the front door and holds court in a place she has established as one of the temples of Literary Paris. Local authors come by to conduct readings or to greet Colette, political or theatrical luminaries pay a call to comment on the events of the day or the latest literary scandal, and ordinary readers come by for advice on the latest books.
I stopped in on a recent afternoon with the modest goal of finding a book for the evening. By the time I left (an hour and a half later) I had bought five books and spoken with a novelist about his views on American politics, French literature, local restaurants and beautiful women. I had conducted a scandalous flirtation with Colette, whose encyclopedic knowledge of French literature is combined with a lively personality and an irresistible charm; and I ratcheted up French/American relations an entire notch by declaring my appreciation for two local authors who, it turned out, were neighborhood residents and regular visitors of the bookstore.
Patsy and I have now spent a total of five or six weeks in out Parisian pied-à-terre. We know half a dozen local restaurants where we can almost qualify as "regulars." We are friends with the lady who owns the cleaners on the corner of the rue St-Martin, the man who owns the wine store on the rue aux Ours, with Collette K at the bookstore, with Jose and Maria at the Hôtel Duséjour, with the cheese mongers on the rue Montorgueil (both of them and several of their employees as well), with the lady who sells charcuterie from the Auvergne, and with a dozen other people who live or work in our neighborhood. All of these people burst into huge grins when we enter their shops or restaurants. All of them are "good business people," which in France means that they go out of their way to be cordial to the customers. Or, as the headwaiter in one local restaurant recently said, "Yes sir, of course we remember you from last year. You ate at that table over there," he nodded correctly towards a table to our left, "And you were very sympathique. We hope you enjoyed yourself this evening and will come back again soon."
Many
Americans believe that Parisians are not friendly and that the French
do not like Americans. Many Americans ask me if I am not fearful and
apprehensive in France, and specifically in Paris, because "they are so
rude. And of course they all hate us because of. …" My experience
is that French people love Americans and that Parisians love us most of
all. They do not love us because we bring money, although they do miss
American tourists now that so many fewer are coming. They love us
because we liberated them in 1944 and that they have never forgotten.
They love us because we are open and democratic and easy going, in a
way that most French people are not. Most of all, they love us because
we are Americans and French people have always loved Americans.
Patsy and I reciprocate this feeling, and we love our apartment in Paris. I lied when I said it would make us rich. In fact, if all goes well, it may provide us with a modest income from time to time but it will not make us rich. However, I told the truth when I said it will allow us to live happily ever after. I have learned from the French that happiness does not come from making lots of money but from doing what you love. For me, the happy ever after began on the day we signed the papers for the rue du Grenier St.-Lazare. It hasn't stopped yet.
Restaurants mentioned in this article and a few others:
Le Bouledogue
20, rue Rambuteau
01 40 27 90 90
Closed Sunday
Le St. Amour
19, rue Etienne Marcel
01 42 33 15 95
Closed Sunday and every day at 8:00 (!); great for lunch
Le Grand Colbert
4, rue de Vivienne
01 42 86 87 88
FAX 01 42 86 82 65
Open 7 days week, most days until midnight. Reservations advised for evenings.
Le Hangar
12, impasse Bethaud
01 42 74 55 44
Patsy and I reciprocate this feeling, and we love our apartment in Paris. I lied when I said it would make us rich. In fact, if all goes well, it may provide us with a modest income from time to time but it will not make us rich. However, I told the truth when I said it will allow us to live happily ever after. I have learned from the French that happiness does not come from making lots of money but from doing what you love. For me, the happy ever after began on the day we signed the papers for the rue du Grenier St.-Lazare. It hasn't stopped yet.
Restaurants mentioned in this article and a few others:
Le Bouledogue
20, rue Rambuteau
01 40 27 90 90
Closed Sunday
Le St. Amour
19, rue Etienne Marcel
01 42 33 15 95
Closed Sunday and every day at 8:00 (!); great for lunch
Le Grand Colbert
4, rue de Vivienne
01 42 86 87 88
FAX 01 42 86 82 65
Open 7 days week, most days until midnight. Reservations advised for evenings.
Le Hangar
12, impasse Bethaud
01 42 74 55 44
Closed
Sunday and Monday. A secret little place, hidden away on a
dead-end street off the rue Beaubourg, directly across from the
Pompidou. Good food at "correct" prices; a local favorite and
with good reason. Reservations advised for evenings.
Le Soleil en Cave
21, rue Rambuteau
01 42 72 26 25
Closed Sunday
This is really a wine bar with a few tables. The menu is limited, with usually one or two main courses per evening--but if one of the specials happens to appeal to you, the cooking is excellent, the prices are modest, the wines are well selected and the welcome is more than cordial. There are two or three tables outside on the narrow little sidewalk; très sympathique.
Le Soleil en Cave
21, rue Rambuteau
01 42 72 26 25
Closed Sunday
This is really a wine bar with a few tables. The menu is limited, with usually one or two main courses per evening--but if one of the specials happens to appeal to you, the cooking is excellent, the prices are modest, the wines are well selected and the welcome is more than cordial. There are two or three tables outside on the narrow little sidewalk; très sympathique.
--
Michael Padnos, who in an earlier life practiced law in Massachusetts, Washington DC and Atlanta, GA, grows olives in Provence and writes on France for various publications. He is working on a book entitled Sunshine and Fresh Garlic: A Tour of the Markets and Food Festivals of Provence. He lives near Aix-en-Provence and eats extremely well.
Michael Padnos, who in an earlier life practiced law in Massachusetts, Washington DC and Atlanta, GA, grows olives in Provence and writes on France for various publications. He is working on a book entitled Sunshine and Fresh Garlic: A Tour of the Markets and Food Festivals of Provence. He lives near Aix-en-Provence and eats extremely well.
