We made our way downstairs 10 minutes before our shuttle arrived, not thinking we had time for breakfast. We were corrected by the desk manager (“In Italy there is ALWAYS time for a cappuccino!”) and sat down for a quick breakfast before getting onto the shuttle. The flight from Milan to Paris is not long, and we soon found ourselves navigating the French train/metro system to get to my great-aunt’s apartment on the Ile-St.-Louis.
Arriving in Paris from Italy was the reverse of arriving in Rome from Germany. It was twenty degrees colder, grey, and drizzly. Brrr! The train/metro ride was fairly long, but we were soon lugging our bags across the Seine to get to the apartment. We had the keys to the apartment, but what we did not have was the front gate entry code. We couldn’t figure out who to call, and weren’t sure what to do next until a kindly neighbor who lived across the street let us in. (Why she knew the code was a mystery to us, but we thought it best not to ask and just be thankful she did.)
We greeted the landlady of the building with flowers and let her know we were there, and hauled our bags up four flights of steep, windy flights of stairs before letting us into Rosamonde’s charming artist “garret”. It was very “La Boheme-esque”. We took a walk around the neighborhood and bought some bread, cheese and wine for dinner at a local grocery store, and some lovely dessert at a local bakery, including a crepe. Thus started Eric’s Paris-long crepe fixation, echoing our” gelato-at-two” Italian fixation. From this day forward, Eric had to have at least one crepe per day.
