Adventures on rue de Seine: Paris 2023 Diary, Day 1, Part 1
"I can't do a croissant," the sad Airbnb greeter, and other Parisian things
Dear Wanderers,
Good morning from Paris. It’s 5:31 a.m, and I’m sitting at the kitchen table of my airbnb on rue de Seine, sipping one of those tiny coffees from a tiny Nespresso machine. I’m awake because my internal clock isn’t yet set to France time. It’s quiet out except for the sound of the gardien of the neighboring building pulling garbage bins out to the street.
I’m writing in a blur—a very literal blur—because after my husband dropped me at SFO on Saturday I realized I’d left my reading glasses at home. Today I’ll go in search of a pharmacy and try to find a pair of lunettes pour lire.
First things first, in case you’re wondering: no, my place does not have bedbugs. When I was deciding between an airbnb and a hotel, the bed bug fiasco we keep hearing about in the US was somewhat on my mind…although the French fiascos one reads about in the US are often overblown. In fact, I purchased a hard-shell Samsonite carry-on before my trip, naively telling myself that a hardshell would protect my clothes from bedbugs. The Samsonite was a replacement for a well-loved and now rather beat-up carry-on I purchased in 2019 at BenSimon, one of my favorite shops in Paris. Yesterday, while wandering, I was happy to stumble upon BenSimon and realize it’s just down the street.
If you’ve been reading The Wandering Writer for a while, it may interest you to know I found a baguette last night. Only now, after nineteen hours in this city that is easy on the eyes but hard on the psyche, does it occur to me that I have come an awful long way for bread.
But let’s begin at the beginning: I arrived late yesterday morning after an overnight flight from the West Coast. I breezed through passport control so quickly that I wondered if I’d really landed in France, or if the flight had been diverted to some well-oiled Scandinavian country where everything happens on time. Even the taxi line was brief. My driver drove an immaculate car and wore an elegant striped suit, and when I told him the address of my airbnb he didn’t even pretend he couldn’t understand my French, which Parisians are occasionally (ahem) known to do. He repeated it in a reassuring way, in fact, as if to say, “Yes, that is indeed how you say that number and that street. I will take you there.”
He dropped me off at my address just before noon. Check-in was scheduled for 1:00—so I knew I’d have a little time to kill—but after several failed attempts to reach my airbnb host—ironically named GetaKey—and confirm the 1:00 p.m. check-in, they informed me they didn’t have a key, they were trying to locate one, neither the cleaners nor I would be able to get into the apartment for quite some time, they were working on it, and “why don’t you go sit at a cafe for a while.” This is easier said than done when you are carrying luggage around Paris.