Paris, 18th of May

I woke up the next morning in the hotel bed on my side with my arm resting over Gemma. I pulled it back quickly in panic, visions of misconstrued advances rocketing around my barely conscious brain. We were sleeping in the same bed, fair enough, but that was all part of our cheap-as-you-can-legally-get trip ethic.
It was our first night travelling, and the last thing I wanted was for her to wake up to find her purely platonic bed partner hugging her with a rather prominent morning glory. After something like that, the other two and a half months might not go too smoothly.

Down the tightly winding wooden hotel staircase, a huddle of rabid and growling Americans were occupying the place where the shower used to be, so in the interest of Transatlantic relations, I decided to opt out of the morning’s communal ablutions. Gemma and I made do with a brief and demurely-looking-the-other-way wash in the sink in our room, which supplied a neverending stream of...of..brown fluid...and checked out.

Wandering around a morning Paris fully loaded up with our backpacks, we called Olivier – our local contact - from an open booth in the midst of the stormy bustle of Rue de Rivoli. We would pick up the keys to our very own city pad in the evening, it was an absolutely glorious day, and we were at large in Paris.

We caught the metro to Place de la République, and emerged blinking into the sunshine at the black-cobbled former site of the Bastille like the comedy tourist pack horses that we were.
The battle lines were drawn - it was our sightseeing enthusiasm versus the backpacks. Another quick metro trip to Place de la Concorde, and we walked (admittedly slowly) up and down the Champs-Élysées, our natty army green and grape red backpacks lending a certain je ne sais quoi to the fashion parade. It took a very long time for our shoulders to intervene and declare a 1-1 score draw, so we compromised by collapsing somewhere scenic.

Jardin des Tuileries – Tuileries Gardens.

18th May 1999 Tuesday, 1710hrs. Gorgeous Weather.
I write seated incredibly relaxedly drinking in the scene in front of me. We have arranged to pick up the keys for the flat this evening, but in the meantime we are hindered by our bags. However, even just walking we’ve still managed to see l’Arc de Triomphe, le Champs Elysees, Place de la Bastille, Place de la Concorde, and we’re currently seated in Le Jardin Tuileries, facing le Louvre. Not bad, considering! Tomorrow, when we’ve got the flat, we’ll do the museums – Louvre, D’Orsay, l’Orangerie (maybe). Judging by the size of the Louvre, we’ll be lost pretty quickly.

At this point I think I was a bit confused by mixing French and English together, as can be seen by the exaggerated and nervous over use of ‘le’.

We sat with our feet up on our bags next to a large round pool with a dormant fountain, sitting in metal chairs which were dotted around the maze-like grey gravel paths under the trees.

The chairs were very, very comfortable. They tilted you backwards slightly to a perfectly relaxed angle and suggested through your derríere that a sunny May day in Paris was the perfect time to doze off, or at least not move for a long, long time...so we didn’t.
I read and doodled and wandered off to see the breath-stoppingly expensive shops around the Tuileries. They sold shimmering gold-lined jars of exquisite condiments, designer clothing, and postcards. I ambled through a few art-deco arcades, soaking up the glorious Frenchness of everything, and returned to Gemma for a couple more hours’ Sitting.

Gemma had explained her hobby. She’d been at it for a long time, apparently, and was quite accomplished. Sitting was a hobby that could be practised in any location at any time of the day or night, and was almost always pleasurable. I gave it a try. We Sat in the Tuileries for hours, soaking up the sun and the magnificent view, wiling away the time to the picking up of our flat keys in one of the nicest ways I could think of.

In a way, having waited so long to travel, and having had an absolutely manic day’s travelling the day before, to stop, and to sit, and to just be in a place that was at once beautiful, peaceful, and extremely French, was taking pleasure in our own nonchalance. Like rushing to meet someone, and then as you reach the last corner slowing from a breakneck sprint into a casual walk to arrive looking as cool as you can manage. Yes, there was an enormous and beautiful city surrounding us, yes we had come all this way to see it, but we were damn well going to Sit.

Olivier and his flatmates were very friendly. They chatted with us about our trip, where we wanted to go, and a huge swathe of other linguistically challenging conversational topics, including Olivier’s recently finished military service, where he had had the good fortune to be a chauffeur – in Paris.
Gemma and I gave up on trying to speak French inside of thirty seconds. We learned that Hervé – the owner of our flat, was off in Tanzania, but sent his regards and wished us good luck on our trip. I still didn’t really believe that this guy was going to give us his flat for as long as we wanted despite being on another continent, but I wasn’t about to argue. We thanked the stubbly yet dashingly handsome Olivier for the Kronenbourg and dug out the directions to Herve’s flat.

It was out of the bounds of the underground metro system, and we took the Suburban-serving RER train out West of the city centre. The flat was in a large old brown stone building next to a grey church in Nanterre Ville, with a sharp, dark, twisting wooden staircase. The flat itself had pale wooden polished floors, white walls, a small open kitchen and shelves of books and French science fiction comics. An arcing white pine lattice, like the support for a city bridge, spanned across the ceiling, but we were especially impressed with the fact that there was only one remote control; for everything. The TV, stereo and apartment lights were all controlled by this little marvel. The idea was obviously so that you could lie, reading in bed, and when you wanted to sleep, all you had to do was push a button on the remote. In reality there was a short hunt for it, and once we had to give up and use the tiny switch on the wall, but it was still impressive.
We weren’t the first to visit in Herve’s absence; a couple of souvenir trinkets and notes to him lined the shelves.

The first evening, we had a good pry through all the cupboards and shelves, watched impossibly fast-talking French TV, and listened to a couple of French CDs that Olivier had lent us. It was the first time I had heard Air’s Moon Safari album, and we cooked pasta and showered and grooved around the flat to it. All in all, we’d fallen on our feet, and I felt very relaxed and at ease. As I dozed off on Hervé’s futon, I mused it over. Considering we’d been in Paris for less than 24 hours, it was very odd to feel so…at home.