The Paris Apt. Search, Part Deux

Tonight I'm looking forward to an evening of grad school applications (yay?) and quesadillas (YAY!) after spending the day checking out rooms in apartments with roommates, accompanied by one of my lovely and patient friends. We met up early this morning near Place d'Italie to check out a room a middle-aged woman was renting out -- cheap, but too strange to live with an old woman, I decided. But we discovered immediately after that Place d'Italie also is home to an amazing boulangerie. For lunch we split a chocolate-pistachio snail pastry (like a giant pinwheel of dough, but they call it a snail) and a puff of bread stuffed with chocolate-banana filling and sucked down café crèmes in a café at Place d'It to ward off the intense cold that has lately sunk into Paris, making warm socks and millions of layers imperative.

We hung out a little at Maison Bric-a-Brac, then headed to our next destination -- the 14th. To look at an apartment near Parc Montsouris. We stepped off the metro, and I fell in love. The 14th is beautiful. It's well maintained, with tall, elegant buildings and tons of shopping and cafés and Parc Montsouris itself, which is in Cléo de 5 à 7, aka FAVORITE MOVIE EVER. The area is gorgeous. And even if I don't get the room I looked at, I plan to keep looking at places in the 14th. It reminds me of the 17th -- beautiful, quintessentially Parisian, with everything you might want (including... wait for it... a SEPHORA!) within walking distance, and it feels like Paris, it feels like a city, but with none of the touristy atmosphere you find in central Paris. It manages to be beautiful and real at the same time. I love it.

I also saw a room in an apartment in the 9th this week, totally gorgeous and cheap (and close to Montmartre, and on a wonderful busy boulevard), and it occurred to me that sharing an apartment means two things: 1) CHEAPER, and 2) PRETTY. The apartments I've seen so far have all been really nice. I guess that's what splitting rent will do for you. Also, WASHING MACHINES. And OVENS. Whoa.

The search continues. I'm headed back to the 14th to see a different apartment tomorrow, then the 12th on Monday, and eventually the 15th and Montmartre, appointments with current habitants pending. I feel a lot better since I decided to move. As much as I hate to admit it, amenities kind of matter to me. But the more important part is having someone around to say hello to, someone who will notice should I be kidnapped or mysteriously disappear. I have all of Paris to wander on my own. I don't need an apartment -- even a very small apartment -- all to myself.