We're finally here!

After a long plane ride (Emmett was, overall, quite cooperative, aside from fighting sleep for about an hour); a brief stop in Amsterdam to visit the Van Gogh Museum (where Emmett experienced terror for the first time...of grass (as in 'lawn', not weed); and a temporarily (we hope) lost stroller at Charles de Gaulle, we made it to our apartment safely.

Our address is Chez Banfield 22 rue Oberkampf, Paris 75011.

The apartment is quite large for Parisian standards, and we never imagined we'd be able to find an affordable apartment as big as this. There are two bedrooms, a separate dining room, a living room, and a kitchen a good deal larger than a postage stamp. The ceilings are high and ornately decorated with crown molding, making the apartment feel even more expansive. Everything is furnished, thankfully.

The downside? We're finding that the professor is quite a packrat (even more than us!) and has a deep aversion to throwing things away. She also left us an 8-pages of single-spaced instructions about the apartment, so we're constantly [nervously] consulting those pieces of paper. We don't take it personally, but we do ask ourselves, "why does she rent her apartment if she is so nit-picky about her things?" But we shouldn't complain and I'm sure things will feel more familiar the longer we're here.

We arrived at around 9:50 pm on Monday night (Paris time). The next morning, David stopped at our neighborhood mini-grocery store and picked up some essentials (water, milk, cheese, prosciutto) and then the three of us walked a short distance to the farmers' market on Bl. Richard Lenoir. We browsed and picked up some beautiful glistening salmon filets, organic produce and eggs for Emmett's baby food, salad ingredients, strawberries, and some mozzarella di bufala. Here we are enjoying our first homemade dinner (Emmett is playing with a stem of basil -- JBY, I know you're laughing!)


We're slowly adjusting to the time change. I have a feeling each day will just get better. Emmett's adjusting to the apartment, too. Here he is playing with a gift he received moments before we left for SFO from his Auntie Kathy and Uncle John.