Order Has Been Restored

This is our third coffee pot in 11 years in France.  A pretty good record.  Our last one was past it's prime when it finally stopped working.  Unfortunately the day it decided to stop working was a Sunday when nothing is open.  We made do with a few Nespressos this morning before venturing out for what seemed like a simple errand.

In the US, we jump in the car, probably still in our workout clothes, and go to Target.  We grab one quickly and rush it home.  Done, in under 30 minutes door-to-door.

Not so in Paris.  We got on the bus which took us to the stop, "Hotel de Ville".  A manifestation was getting underway so the police had the whole square in front of the Hotel de Ville closed off with those metal fences.  Hoping for a short errand, we pushed through the gate and crossed the square.  At the other end, a bunch of police had gathered.  The wall is kind of high at that end so we had to jump down.  Ouch.  No permanent damage.

Into BHV, which is under construction on the outside and is being re-arranged on all 6 floors for the Summer.  Nothing is where it used to be!  We found coffee pots on the 3rd floor I think.  Didn't all that stuff used to be on the 4th floor?  And more importantly, why did they move it.  Oh well.  We found a display of coffee pots.  The one feature that we were looking for was not marked on any of the machines.  We like a coffee pot that turns off by itself after awhile in case we forget to turn it off.   We asked a salesman who didn't know so he got another woman who showed us the models that turn off automatically.  All of them are big and cost Euro 100.  Not what we had in mind.  We walked around, saw a few others and decided that BHV might not have the best selection.

Back on the bus.  This time we took the first bus that was headed in the right direction, since we didn't really know where to go.  We got off near the Pont Neuf.  We crossed the street and right there was a huge Darty store. In we went.  We saw a pretty good coffeemaker but the saleswoman told us that it was low quality.  Hard to imagine that happening but we decided to believe her since we'd never heard of the brand before.  The other models were nothing special, back to the bus, back to BHV.

We avoided the square in front of the Hotel de Ville this time and walked around, back to the 3rd floor back to the displays.  They all started looking better since we'd now been on this errand for at least two hours in our semi caffeine-free state.  We finally decided on a model, bought it and left.

Not to be outdone by how logistically hard it was to buy a coffee maker, the bus we were on had a "terminus" (stop where everyone has to get off) that wasn't the end of the line.  We all got off the bus and the electronic sign said that the next bus would be coming in 9 minutes.  I hate it when this happens.  We decided to hike it out.  During this part of the journey, Terry was hit by a woman on a bike who was going too fast.  We got to the 58 bus stop and had a bit of time to wait.  A crazy woman was asking the same question of everyone that was waiting for the bus, we answered in the same way as everyone else and she seemed surprised to be getting the same answer.

The coffee pot has been washed and is ready to brew tomorrow morning.

Laundry, Paris-Style

French washers are very different from US models.  In our limited space, we have one unit that both washes and dries the clothes.  You can wash, dry or wash and dry.  You can also rinse or spin the clothes.  There are many different cycles, many of them take a very long time (more than three hours) but there is also an ECO cycle. 

We are already on our second washer/dryer combo.  They seem to be quite expensive and they break down quickly, probably due to the violent activity that takes place with each wash cycle. 

They also hold very little.  I can do 2.5 kg of wash/dry and it takes more than three hours.  On the "good" side of the equation, it uses very little water unlike a US model.  A small amount of water is heated, goes into the tank, the laundry is spun, rinsed and the water leaves.  This is also good if there's some kind of breakdown.  My US washer had a problem about a year ago and it flooded the entire floor with many, many gallons of water.  If this happened in France, it would flood our neighbor's apartments and cause a lot of damage.

So, with guests coming from the US soon, I've had to warn everyone that doing laundry is time-consuming and noisy.   For large loads I often go to the Laudromat down the street and do it all at once.  It isn't bad at all and it's done in one hour.

A Bit Of Snow

This is the scene that we woke up to this morning.  A bit of snow on the ground. 

It's March, I know, but that's OK. 

It's also very cold outside.  Too cold to go out. 

I re-covered my plants, not with the special stuff I got at BHV earlier in the year but some plastic painting tarps. I'd already taken off and thrown away the covers thinking that the sun would be out soon.

It was supposed to snow yesterday but it didn't.  We've had a steady light snow all day long.