First weekend in Paris

Well well, time flies by. I applied to the Le Cordon Bleu Basic Cuisine Intensive somewhere in March this year, and all of a sudden here I am in Paris. First impressions are pretty positive, although I did have  a bit of a rough start with the apartment. The apartment is located in an old building and apparently warped wooden floors (due to humidity) are the thing in Paris. Besides causing a sort of a mini-mountain in the middle of the living room (will try to take a picture of it later), it makes quite hard to lock the entrance door from the outside. However, after some practice I got the hang of it...

If you ignore those problems, the apartment is quite nice! It's a tiny weeny apartment located in the 15th district of Paris, which I found out to be quite a nice area. I live pretty close to the Convention subway station and it's an area with a lot of movement, shops, restaurants and of course: boulangeries (little more will be written about that on my other blog).

Today, I didn't have much to do... so I took a stroll around the area. I went during the morning to the Maire du 15éme, which I believe is sort of a council house for the 15th district, to try to buy a Vélib' card but unfortunately it was closed. Public services on a Sunday, what did I expect? Stockholm has the same kind of public city bikes and I never use it, but I guess that when you live temporarily on a city you try to experience everything. On the way back, decided to take a detour to Le Cordon Bleu and time how much it would take me from home to school: 15 minutes. Not bad!

Went home and cooked some lunch, bought some from Riesling from the Alsace region to cook and go with the food. Pretty nice stuff and CHEAP compared to Sweden, only 4€. I'm kinda of a sucker for sweet things, so Riesling or any other half-dry wine always makes me happy!

After that I took a walk to the Parc Georges Brassens which was full of parents and kids playing and running around. It's been a long time since I've seen this kind of sight, all the parents chatting with each other, felt like a small community. I was lucky enough to spot a old book sale going on outside of the park and managed to buy two vinyl albums: Christopher Cross and Jean Michel Jarre. Good stuff.

The event of day was finding a Max Poilâne bakery out of nowhere - only in Paris you find great bakeries in every corner. Immediately went in and bought half a miche (their famous huge bread).The bread is amazing, but I guess you should expect that from a bakery that uses natural ingredients and bakes according to tradition.

Tomorrow is first day of school, orientation day at 09h30 SHARP, so I guess I'll go and sleep now!