School with a View

And I thought my workspace was impressive....

We go to an Open House at the girls' school, because Pippa is performing with her class in a circus-themed medley of songs.



While there, we tour the classrooms, just to see the girls's desks and art-work on the walls. We've done this before, of course, last year and this past fall. But they are in new classrooms, because there was a recent renovation to add in an elevator (for accessibility purposes) to the school. Gigi is now on the top floor, the 5ème etage (6th floor by US counting). We can never forget this as she often complains about how she walks a minimum 40 flights of stairs per school day (up 5 floors, down 5 for 1st recess, up 5, down 5 for lunch & second recess, up 5, down 5 for 3rd recess, up 5, down 5 at the end of the day).

The school must be well-placed, because the next-door neighbor is French telecom billionaire Xavier Niel. He bought the old hospital museum complex for around 50 million. Euros. In dollars, it would have been a steal. He's selling off some portions of the 4,000 square meter complex (that's near 40,000 sq. ft) into smaller million, two million euro apartments along the quai, facing the Seine. His own portion, seen in part on the right in the photo below, will have a nice private garden and end up about 1,000 sq m. It's not our apartment on Ile Saint Louis, of course, but still -- not too shabby.

 

And neither is Gigi's new classroom. A converted old attic space, it has the most stunning views of any place I've seen in Paris, slightly edging out an apartment we decided not to take in favor of our current lovely abode.

 

This is the actual view sitting at her desk. From the various windows -- not to mention the balcony just outside -- you can get a clear view over the Paris rooftops of the Pantheon, the Montparnasse Tower, and a tower of the Sorbonne. That's just on one side. On the other side, we have a crystal clear view of Notre Dame, with Sacré Couer in the distance (hard to see in the photo, but easy in real life), alongside the dome of Sainte Chapelle. I feel like the school should charge admission to tourists for this view. I am, frankly, very jealous.

  

And if you look carefully from the balcony, there's a view of the Eiffel Tower. A distant view.

Along with the awe-inspiring view over monuments and rooftops, the school also brings in a flashy science demonstration for the Open House.

But before you go thinking their school has it all, please take note of these two computers we find in the classrooms -- the only ones we see. Anthony points out that they still have floppy disc drives. The Bay Area this ain't.

 

The Noble Floor

Well, it was only a matter of time till I would mention Baron Haussmann (George Eugène Haussmann), the baron who restructured the entire city of Paris in the 19th century under Napoléon III, giving it both the layout and the look that we have all come to think of as the "true" Paris. I myself have never read any book on Paris that doesn't mention him and was kind of hoping to give the baron a rest.

But today, we have reason to think about architecture, and life on the noble floor -- l'étage noble, that is. Walking around Paris, you will quickly notice that the typical structure of a building is small balconies on the 4th and 5th floors, with a bigger one on the 6th floor. But the biggest and grandest of all is on the 3rd floor, l'étage noble. The reason for this dates back even before the baron's time: The entry level was where the carriages would have pulled in to let you off. One floor up was still quite close to the (stinking) ground level, but the 4th floor and beyond was an unpleasantly long walk, in those days with heavy long clothes and before elevators. So the 3rd floor was the Goldilocks floor: not too high, not too low, and just right.

 

Once the baron more or less codified this style of building, which housed varying socio-economic levels under one roof, l'étage noble earned its name and its reputation for housing the wealthier citizens. The highest floors may have better views, but they are risky, since elevators were only introduced in Paris in the 1870s, and even today in 2012 are still generally tiny, retrofitted, and, as we know from an early experience, highly unreliable. (Photo below: our family of four small people completely stuffs the typical French apartment elevator.)

Hence, the compromise on the 6th floor of a big balcony with a view but one that is not-quite-as-big-and not-quite-as-easy-to-reach as l'étage noble. The highest floor -- small dormer windows in the
7th floor, usually -- are the maid's quarters, now often transformed into high-priced but still-small student rooms or studios or added by staircase to the 6th floor "penthouses."

We don't normally think much about the fact that we live on l'étage noble, until today, when we notice a rather large crowd gathering on the bridge and street outside our window. We head out to our balcony, which wraps around the building to get a good view, and are met by the unexpected scene of a Venetian-themed carnaval procession slowly meandering its way toward us. We seem to be the only people looking at this spectacle from above. It's the sort of happy accident we loved while traveling in India: an unexpected delight.

But let's face it: If ever there were somebody who's a plebeian at heart, it's me. I am bursting to go down to ground level, and finally I cannot contain myself, and I rub (read: bonk) elbows with the masses (read: photographers) for these photos. I've read a critique of this Venice-themed carnaval as being too contrived and "inauthentic," but essentially I just don't care. It's colorful and celebratory, and I'm simply not cynical enough to say anything negative. For us, it is so much fun to look out our window and discover this parade!

P cannot resist running into her bedroom to dress up in her own purple princess costume, and her French friend who lives in the neighborhood shows up in a princess costume as well. They may be first graders, and officially out of their princess phase (and in the case of P, deep into her fairy phase), but if this is not the perfect opportunity to parade around the streets in a foofy royal robe, what would be? Clearly, it's not just the children, because these adults can't resist the temptation to play dress up, either.

Ups and Downs

Today, we are finally able to find an open patisserie.  G is like a kid in a candy store, or rather, like a kid in a pastry store.  After much hemming and hawing, she finally chooses a cream puff, but only after we assure her that it will be real cream, and not too sweet, since she is very sophisticated in her dislike of goopy, fake whipped cream products. 

                                (note from G): Back in SF the cream was too sweet for me
 and I did not trust it but now I trust it more.

Rather shockingly, P -- who is the biggest treat eater in our house (well, next to Anthony, who depletes desserts by half and then denies it) -- decides after 6 months of build-up and 3 days of intense pastry-hunting that she wants....a can of orange juice from the grocery store next door.  I find myself in an odd argument where I am trying to convince her to buy something sugary, but she insists her treat will be better because it is orange juice.  In a can.  Evidently, we deprive our children of packaged soft drinks. 

At the Jardin des Tuileries, they are having their annual summer fete, and this means we get to pay 12 euros per adult, and 8 per child, to ride the famous ferris wheel.  The view is priceless, as long as you don't translate 40 euros into dollars.  If you do, then the view is worth approximately $60.  The girls quickly deplete our cash, and most of our retirement savings, in order to go on various rides.  Anthony and I run into somebody we both knew at Princeton here; I have been in the country for about 48 hours so this is twice as long as it took me the last time I was in Paris to run into a friend.

      (note from G): Today at the Louvre, there was a carnival so of course we went

to the carnival and went on: 1 Ferris wheel, 1 round of bungy jumping,

1 water floom and 2 fun houses they were all super fun!!

But certainly, the most memorable part of the day is the very beginning, when G & P spend breakfast clean-up time running up and down the stairs and playing with the elevator, until P comes back up alone and solemnly informs us, "G is stuck in the elevator."  Stuck between floors, G finally gets to fulfill every child's fantasy of pushing the emergency call button.  She is remarkably calm and cheerful, and speaks with the call-button lady in French, nice as can be.  I am waiting at the bottom for the repair guy till Anthony comes down and tells me an elderly lady on the 4th floor (that's floor 5 to you and me) is waiting for the elevator.  I run up to apologize to her in French, only to find out she is not waiting to descend, but rather to chew out a French-speaker for letting our children play in the elevator, which is a no-no.  For obvious reasons.  Well, sure.  We know that now.  In mid scolding, she looks down and says in shock, "Mais Madame!  Vous avez les pieds nus!", "But Madame!  You are bare-footed!"  I point to my outfit and say, "Well, that's because I'm still in my pajamas.  I haven't dressed yet."  She shakes her head in disgust, then turns around and heads back into her apartment.  I had felt pretty guilty about my children breaking the elevator, so I'm quite pleased to find out that it is actually a minor offense when compared to slovenly dressing. 

                    (note from G):   I’m in Paris on a little street in a tiny apartment. Me and Phoebe

                                                               were playing in the elevator so much that I broke the elevator plus I got stuck in it and had to call for help!

 
The elevator is still broken later this afternoon, when we have to move 10 large pieces of luggage from our 6th floor apartment (that's 5th floor to the French) to a friend's office on the opposite side of the city.  Why?  Because it's the only place we could find to store it while we go off for a 2 week vacation to Croatia.  So now that our own children broke the elevator, and we have to haul it down by hand, it's that old lady who gets the last laugh.

Arrival in Paris

Walk nearly to the Eiffel Tower on our first day, only to get so overcome by jet-lag that we have to drag ourselves back to the little rental apartment on the French 5th floor (that's 6th floor to you and me).  The girls can barely walk back.  Then while Anthony and I try to take a nap, the girls are hit with a bizarre second wind and spend the entire hour running up and down the six flights of stairs and trying out the miniature elevator which, it turns out, is pretty typical of these old, retro-fitted French buildings.  After doing enough stairs to train a soccer player, and doing it so loudly that there is no hope of us actually napping, we all give up and go to the grocery store where P (our 6 year old) almost instantly falls asleep on Anthony's shoulder.  It is about 5pm (or 17h, as they say...), so we have to wake her up most cruelly in time to eat, at which point G (the 7-almost-8 year old) falls asleep at the table.  Tomorrow will be better...