Tags
apartments, Aya, Coffee, flowers, Lisa, Montorgueil, Nespresso, rue Montorgueil, Vertuo, views
My nonstop flight to Paris was uneventful, apart from the fact that there was someone in my seat. Normally I’m quite assertive about my window seat, because I like to lean against the wall to try to get some sleep. But this woman was older, heavy, and fully ensconced. Even though she was quite aware that she had upgraded herself, I chose, for reasons that I can’t fully explain, to accept her aisle seat instead. As a result I got no sleep, but I did watch a well-made French movie, Anatomy of a Fall. Arrival was on time, but — as is common at Charles de Gaulle — we had to be shuttled to the terminal, and there was an interminable line for passport control. The upshot was that it took two hours from landing to getting into my taxi. Fortunately, the owners of the apartment were chill and flexible, so we met with no difficulty.
The apartment was clean and exactly as described. In fact I was pleasantly surprised to find that the owners had lived there for several years before outgrowing it, so it was better in several respects than the “Ikea minimum” I had expected. There was a full complement of pans and cooking utensils, extra plates and glasses, fully four bottles of extra virgin olive oil that they and prior renters had left, a fully stocked tool drawer, many spare light bulbs, etc. Unsurprisingly for a rental place, the knives were tragically dull. But I was delighted to find what only happens in a lived-in place: an excellent knife sharpener.
Apart from consumables and some minor repairs the only purchase I needed to make was a non-slip pad for the treacherously slippery tub and a couple of small wastebaskets for the bedrooms. The light-blocking shades are as good as the ones I have at home, which is rarely the case with rentals. Both the courtyard and the street have been quieter than I dared hope for sleeping. The exposed beams are of course beautifully atmospheric. The location, steps away from rue Montorgueil, is terrific.
Language was no issue since the owners are an Italian woman, who greeted me, and her Australian husband. Both are fully fluent in English. They set up a three way WhatsApp group that I’ve messaged a few times with questions. One or both of them have always responded immediately. I did encounter an issue that was a first for me in my dozen years of renting here. The apartment has a coffee maker, as promised in the listing. It was a big new Nespresso Vertuo, which requires a different capsule from the ubiquitous Nespresso original, which most French apartments have, and which I use at home. I was surprised not to find these capsules in the local groceries, so I asked the owners. They suggested Darty — a French version of Best Buy — where Vertuo machines are sold. They indeed had the machine, and a dazzling array of original capsules, but not a single Vertuo capsule. They directed me to a Nespresso “boutique,” of which there are several in Paris. The nearest was on the top floor of a mall in the Saint Lazare train station. They indeed had Vertuo capsules, but the process of purchasing them was remarkable. One tells the greeter what one wants and is referred to a young, enthusiastic salesperson, who gives you an extensive menu of options and offers to counsel you on the pros and cons of each flavor and size of capsule. When one has weighed all this information and selected your purchase the salesperson goes off to the back room for five minutes or so and returns with your order, then processes the purchase. It turns out that the Vertuo hasn’t caught on in France because people here prefer the tiny cups of expresso (not a typo) to the full sized cups or mugs produced by the Vertuo. It does make very good coffee, but we’ll see how often I schedule trips to Saint Lazare to replenish my supply. Although the purchasing process resembles that for expensive perfume the Vertuo capsules aren’t expensive: they cost only about 75 cents each against $1 for the much smaller Nespresso original capsules I buy at home.
I really have no views this year — just walls and windows across a narrow street from the living room and across the courtyard from the bedrooms. But of course I’ve added flowers, and if you position yourself just right you can get some nice photos.