My Apartment

Many of you have been curious about where I'm staying this summer--thus, the topic is getting its very own post. The post is a little cheesy, because I took pictures of myself to illustrate scale. You've been warned. Anyway, back to the apartment: this was one of the more economical apartments that I found, despite the fact that it is located in a rather ritzy neighborhood. Below, you can see a map of where it is in the city:



Notice that it is very near a large park, the Bois de Boulogne, where I walked around Lac Superior (which is much smaller than its name suggests) yesterday. On a Saturday afternoon, it was as beautiful and charming and full of happy Parisian couples and families as the expanse of green on the map suggests.

Here is a picture of the street on which I am living:



There is a metro stop just down the block, along with many different kinds of shops and restaurants.

How, you might ask, did you find an apartment with relatively cheap rent in such a fancy neighborhood, Amanda? Well, my apartment is on the sixth floor, and it is comically small. Here's where the blog post gets a little hokey. I tried to take pictures of the apartment without me in them, but they just didn't convey what a tiny space it is.

I do have room to practice yoga (with only small modifications to some postures). For those of you who knew my apartment in Ithaca, it is as if the bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom were all compressed into the second, smaller bedroom of my Hasbrouck apartment. To give you an idea of the dimensions: right now, my computer is plugged into the wall, and I am working on the sofa/bed across the room. When said sofa/bed is rolled out into a bed, it takes up almost the entire apartment not occupied by the “kitchen” and bathroom!

I’m glad that I have much more space during the school year, but this will work just fine for my two months here.

Below, the camera is located over the sofa/bed, and I'm a few feet away in the "kitchen." The wooden shelf behind me folds up into a small counter, where I can eat when I unfold the stool to the left of the stovetop.



And below, the camera is located by the window, and I'm holding a Marie Claire that is telling how to get a corps d'ete (a summer body...thank goodness for Marie Claire, I might have forgotten and packed my winter body for a summer in Paris! At least summer bodies no longer require corsets! Thank you, Paul Poiret! Thank you, Marie Claire!). In both of these pictures, you can see a blue towel, which is hanging off of the door of the unsurprisingly tiny bathroom.



And finally, here is what I see if I sit on the sofa/bed. As you can see, I've already been enjoying French TV, both cheesy dramas and the news. And this blog is evidence of the many wifi options that I have from my sixth floor perch!