kebab and couture

Can you imagine anything more lovely than sipping scalding tea, eating small tangy Clementine oranges alternated by stolen bites of a sumptuous café éclair or a densely chocolatey-tarte aux chocolat, listening to Mozart playing in the background as you spend your sunny solitary Saturday afternoon reading a comforting novel?

Did I mention that this charming afternoon is taking place at 115 Avenue de Clichy, 5^th floor chez Jean-David Levy et Lauren Van Kempen?

This makes it all the more perfect.

Finally, after 6 months of apartment searching and then waiting we have arrived in our blissful Parisian apartment. 30 square meters (300 square ft?), a teeny-tiny one-bedroom with a galley kitchen and lots of personality (mainly in the form of our rather camping-esque bathroom) I couldn’t be more thrilled.

When our landlady finally said that the apartment was ready for us… …I jumped up and down with glee. Two days later, fingers sore from using steel wool and a variety of cleaning products, plus a wrecked back from humping 100-pound suitcases up our 5 flights of stairs, the realization that we could feel the metro passing underneath our building, compacted with our shower which distinctly resembles a telephone booth was enough to dampen my enthusiasm a tiny bit.

Having escaped the deathly solitude of the 16^th arrondisement we are situated in the cusp of a brilliantly chic area and the land of halal butcher shops, kebab stands, cheap shoes and the Walmart’s of Paris. Welcome to the 17^th arrondisment. A stones throw away from Montmartre and literally 5 flights away from a kebab restaurant (our neighbor…did I mention that?), but hey it’s not everyday that you can buy a pair of shoes and a lemon tart for the same price.

However, turn the corner and you are in the bourgeois-bohème chic-ity-chic center of the 17^th…this we call Batignolles or in lay-men’s terms, “Price-yyy!” Or to get a little earthy, “that’s where all the white people be at”.

In this dichotomous world we live in, we have already established rituals…Rue des moines is the big market street where we buy our Sunday chicken and go to market, to market to buy our groceries just like the faux-bourgeios we are, and Rue Legendre is where we go Sunday nights to buy our pizza’s from Domino’s Pizza just like the American I am…

All that being said…Bienvenue…wilkommen, welcome and won’t you be my neighbor? We have a very supple floor just begging to be slept upon…so buy your plane tickets and start using the stair-master.