Nous sommes arrivés

A flight that confuses your sense of night and day, the chaos at Charles de Gaulle and then we were on the shuttle into the city.  Our landlords, Rita and Gerard, are in Lebanon and this year we had to collect the apartment key from the boutique next door, which usually opens at 10h...but not today!  We lingered over our coffees at Cafe des Mousquetaires and waited...and waited.  Sometime after 11h a young man opened the boutique.  In my rusty French I asked if he had the key to the apartment...no, he said, I know nothing about it!  Mon dieu!  A little more conversation, a phone call to his mother, and we had the key.  Meanwhile, our friends André and Marie had appeared, and with bisous and bonjours we knew we had really arrived.

The apartment is just as we remembered:  the green of the courtyard; the curtained windows inviting a peek inside; and the oh, so French red geraniums beginning to appear in the window boxes.  The joy of memories from previous years...we love it here.