We went to our apartment in Versailles following our welcome Tea. The electricity was off in the building because a hot water heater blew up, but, the manager and his team have been working on it. The garage was pitch black as we were looking for a parking space underneath the building where Jerry could park. The elevator was not working.
The three of us lugged the 4 - 50 lb heavy baggage up to the second floor in the dark Let me correct that. The guys lugged the 4 heavy bags and I tried to carry smaller bags from Carolyn that included some bedding and linens all at once along with a smaller roller carry-on. Jerry had his phone lighting the way. On one trip a young Frenchman - another messenger of mercy, lit the way with his phone from behind and came to my pathetic rescue and carried the 40 pounder. I'm such a weakling. Merci!
Our 1 1/2 hr nap came immediately after Jerry went back to his family. I had only slept 1 hr. on the plane. Russell got a little more. Our journey had begun the day before leaving for the airport at 9am. I laid my head down after being up for 33 hrs. minus my nap.
Carolyn, Jerry's wife, came at 3:30 pm. to take us grocery shopping. 260 euros later (350.00 USD) we are now well stocked for some time! Since we don't have a car we wanted to get as much as possible for the month.
Today, being Wednesday, we met with them again to get more direction on our work which I will fill you in later and then we set up our Nav-I-go monthly bus and train passes . Thursday we'll be off to get a French banking account and then over to IKEA to finish getting the things we need for the apartment. It's a very nice apartment and we are soooo thankful to those two for the work they have done to get us a lovely place to lay our heads.
The Chateau de Versailles is on the way down the street to our apartment complex, only a 15 min. walk. Buses were scattered in the parking lot and tourists were outside walking around when we first drove by. It's an amazing place! This is the palace of the Sun King, Louis XIV. They have beautiful gardens out back with it's very huge and fortress like facade from the front. I'll take a picture someday to include here.
We awoke at 4:30am yesterday - managing to stay up until 10pm the previous night, pushing ourselves to put things away like food and clothes and organize our little pieces of pottery and art around to make it homey.
The oven is so tiny one can put one item in there. The tiny dishwasher is right below the oven! Amazingly cute. Perfect for us. Our nearby train station is called "le Gare de Chantier" which is a hop, skip and a jump from our apartment. Le Gare is the train station. No we didn't go to the Boulangerie (to get our morning baguette today) too tired and we had some leftover from last night. But we do have our chocolate du Pain. No, chocolate is not a pain. Pain (pronounced Pah - shwa "a" sound) is the word for Bread and it's like a croissant with little bits of chocolate in them. Cheap too. :0) Just remember I will be walking a lot and already loaded up with ibuprofen to get used to the walking and stairs. The elevator still does not work but we have electric in our apartments and yet no hot water. There is lighting in the hallways and circular stairwells now. I'm so thankful we are only on the 2nd floor.
Thank you to Carolyn for the coffee maker. I'll add pictures later when I start taking them. We need to show our apartment complex. This jet lag takes the energy and brain cells away to try to remember to do some of these things. This is my 5th trip to this wonderful city. God is good and we are looking forward to meeting our neighbors and getting into community life here after acclimating. We rarely hear people talking in this apartment building. I would like to go over to them to see if their water heaters are working yet. Maybe today!
Carol
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