Doggie Passport? Mais oui!

Yes, I said it... doggie passport. As of yesterday, Chloe is the proud owner of an EU Pet Passport. And no, her picture is not in it but there is a spot for one should you want to attach it. Tomorrow we begin our vacation to Switzerland and Northern Italy. We're driving so this should be interesting. Before we left, we purchased a Gamin, which is one of those navigation devices you use in your car. Since we have owned it we notice that sometimes it gets confused. In areas that we are somewhat familiar with, it's not really a problem. But here it will be different. So we're going to print the google directions and use the Gamin (my question is: why did we get the Gamin if we have to print directions? Who do we trust if there is a difference of opinion?). I'm pretty sure we're just asking for trouble. Let's be honest, when we decided to get our dog a passport, we were asking for trouble. I'll be sure to let you know how things pan out, provided the Gamin doesn't lead us astray and have us turn left in 50 feet, right into a lake.

A vacation will be nice since we are all tired and a little fragile. We aren't used to so much walking and so many stairs. The girls don't like walking, and have decided they hate the metro but will tolerate the bus. It's all just going to take a little getting used to, I think. And even though we're adjusted to the time change now, it stays light until about 10:30 so it's hard to sleep much earlier. Noa had a spill off her scooter yesterday but was quickly attended to by someone who was quicker than me and then a shop keeper came out of his store to ask if we needed antiseptic (maybe the French aren't so bad?). She's fine, just a couple of scraped elbows.

Lili and I picked up their school supplies yesterday to the tune of about $400. There are pens and pencils, colored pens, markers, glue sticks, erasers, rulers, several writing journals, page protectors, hundreds of folders (or what seems like anyways), books, workbooks and even an Oxford dictionary (english only, not a small one either). Everything must be labeled with their full name, down to the last pencil... everything! It will be nice for school to start so the kids can meet some people and get out of each other's face for a bit. Well, I must go pack now... cool in La Suisse, hot in Italia... what to bring?...a bientot!

Water slides and School Supplies

Sorry I haven't written in awhile, it has been busy here!!! On thursday, we went to Aqua Boulevard! That's the water park I was telling you about in an earlier blog! The water slides are so cool, the one's I went on were called Aqua Pouf, Aqua Splash, Aqua Makazi,and there was another one that I forgot, oh, and there was Aqua Looping( that was scary, it practically stopped my heart!)! There is also a wave generator, so you can body surf! In other words, it was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't really been keeping track of the days and what day I did what, so I'm just going to tell you what we did. We got sushi, it was o.k, mom and dad said they thought it was frozen! We just got a new couch today! It is really cool, and I picked it! It also turns into a bed,and the bed is really soft! If you're coming to visit, you are lucky you get to sleep there! Ummmm, not much else is going on here. Right now, I'm getting ready to go to the car rental shop with dad, so until next blog!

Lili(an) Belle in PARIS!

PS: We also had to go shopping for school supplies, and let me tell you, the list is super (emphasis on "super") long, plus, you have to have your name on every little thing. Paris is starting to get rough. Oy vey!

Paris: The Good, The Bad, and The Normal!

What's up? Nothing is going on here except for furniture shopping. I mean, really? BO-RING! Yesterday, we had to go furniture shopping (or looking) and the whole time mom was all," Oh, do you like this with this... blah blah blah" All me and Noa could do was sit in the chairs, couches and beds. Believe me, I have spent more than enough time with Noa since we got here, whenever we're walking she says," Oh! (insert color here) one, no punch-backs!" I can't believe I introduced that game to her! That was pretty much it for yesterday, so I'll go back to Monday. The morning started out, as usual, with me reading then Noa taking my book away, and a lot of threatening to kick, slap, kill each other etc. Then we went to look at an awesome water park, it was the coolest thing I've seen since the Santa Monica Pier! There's water slides, wave makers, plain pools, a beach area, and a gym! It is near a mall type thing, and Noa and I got scooters! I don't really have any thing else to report here, so until next time!

Lili(an) Belle in PARIS

Camping in Paris

The charm of living in an apartment without any furniture is starting to wear thin a mere 5 days after landing. Much faster than I'd anticipated. It turns out, however, that I don't like to live like a struggling college student. If you didn't know better, you would think that it would be fairly easy to furnish an apartment in a place like Paris, with thousands of stores to choose from. There are a few things though that make it quite difficult. #1. Not having a car. Not having a car means you have to carry everything back to your place...by foot...on public transport...with your kids in tow because they have no place else to go and who are literally threatening to kill eachother because they have spent too much time together since the end of school in June and have moved twice in the span of 2.5 months. #2. Getting things delivered takes a very long time in France. I'm not sure why this is and no one I've spoken to has a reasonable explanation but that's how it is around here bubbe. We did order a table and chairs yesterday and with any luck they will arrive by the end of August. After hearing how long other things would take, we considered that reasonable. Sounds crazy, right? But when in France...For your entertainment, I've attached a few photos of said apartment. I've used Ethan as a measuring tool so you can tell the actual size of the kitchen. Notice also that there are no cabinets in the kitchen. The little round circle on the right is some kind of substitute for a washing machine, and no, we don't have a dryer. Not that I'm complaining! I know, it's Paris, I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm just telling it how it is.

Hi. Yesterday was so much fun! We went on a picnic at the park we showed you pics of last time! We ate our food and then Noa, Dad, and I went to check out the hot air balloon, it was so cool! I wanted to go on it, but Noa claimed she was afraid of heights, so we had to walk back to mom and her friends to drop her off with them. Then, Dad, and I got tickets and went on. It was so cool! You could see practically everything, our apartment, the Eifle Tower, my school, Les Invalides, Le Pantheon, and the Luxembourg Jardins. Sadly, I didn't have a camera at the time, so I will go back with a camera, and take pictures to put on the blog. After the balloon, Noa and I ran in the fountains, they were FREEZING. We were so cold because we didn't have bathing suits or a change of clothes (or towels, for that matter). We got ice cream ( kiwi for me, mango for Noa, and blueberry for dad). Afterwards, we went home, then we went to a bird market in the center, it was awesome, there were birds ( of course), mice, hamsters, bunnies, even a chinchilla! We walked along the Seine, then went back home. We rested up until we went to dinner at a couscous restaurant. That was it for yesterday, I'll write again tomorrow!

Lili(an) Belle in PARIS

Our first Paris Pics!

Parc Citroen

So far, Paris has been an adventure. My mom told you about Chloe, so I'll write about Paris.

The apartment is beautiful, I was planning on doing a virtual tour, but mom couldn't get it on to the blog, We'll try to put it up on youtube and when we do, we'll send the link. I won't give to much away, but the furniture that's in here is pretty darn cool ( it's unfurnished, so I'll probably do another tour when it is furnished) and it's big for an apartment. About what we've been doing.... Well, yesterday we got here, explored, then we went out to go to lunch, the city is kind of cool, but as my mom said, there is a lot of shopping, but food shopping, sooo, I'm kind of disappointed.

There is a park across the street, but it's for little kids, so I just sit next to mom, and push Noa on the carousel. There is another park around the block, but it's not the kind with a playground. There are fountains that you can run through and the gardens are amazing! There is a part of the park where there are different color themed gardens, there is Jardin Blue, Jardin Vert, Jardin Rouge, Jardin Orange. There were more gardens, but I only wrote about these. You can also see the Eifle Tower from there and a few spots from the city. These are some of the pics I took. That's abut all there is to tell, so until next blog!

Lili(an) Belle in PARIS!

Faux Paw

Oy vey! Yes, we have arrived safely in Paris but I must rewind the tape a bit to tell you about our adventure at Newark airport. Let me start by saying that I have always been more worried about Chloe's trip than our own. It's very difficult to get information on brining your pet abroad and there are different rules for different countries and different airlines for your pet to immigrate to another country. So I did the best I could. We get to the airport and give Chloe her doggie downers right before we get out of the car. When we get to the counter the man in charge starts asking a series of questions: Do you have the proper crate? Yes. Do you have her rabies vaccination papers? Yes. Does she have her microchip? Yes. Has she been tranquilized? Yes. Wait...what? Yes, she has been tranquilized. I'm sorry but she can't go on this flight if she's been tranquilized. Oh Crap! So major a panic occurred: Can someone pick her up? Do we not go until tomorrow? Do we go and have her shipped later? Can we make her throw up? We offered to sign wavers, to leave and come back in and lie, anything to get her on the flight with us! (BTW, no one EVER mentioned this to me! Apparently, it is stated on the Continental web site on their check list page but when I asked them about the check list on the phone they said not to bother with the check list, it doesn't apply to international travel. So silly me, I listened to them and never looked at it.) To their credit they were looking out for her safety and said that they'd lost too many animal that way. Many phone calls later and finally a visit by the supervisor, they agreed to let her stay in the kennel at the airport (and waive the kenneling fee) They would ship her the next day on the same flight, we would just have to go back to the airport to get her. So we said our aurevoirs and left her there. The next day Ethan called the airport in Paris to see if he could pick her up around noon and they said of course, they could keep her all day, pas de probleme! Well, when he got there at noon (his friend Dan Antoine took him in his car, thankfully, otherwise he never would have found the holding area, which is not exactly at the airport but some industrial park a mile or 2 away) they were closed for lunch. Usually, they are not closed for lunch they explained but today they were. Ethan and D.A. went to IKEA for a while, had some meatballs and lingonberry juice, shopped and went back to get Chloe at 3pm. Ethan said the crate was all taped up so she probably wasn't let out since she left the US, until he got there at 3pm, la pauvre! Finally they arrived home at 5. Chloe is slightly traumatized (wouldn't be the first time) but I think she'll recover. I'll write more about our settling in in the next blog but for now I'll say that the apartment is nice (fairly large for Paris) and in a quiet neighborhood with lots of good shopping (food shopping, much to Lili's chagrin). Next post: L'apartement!

You Know What Stinks?

Hi everyone. I was just thinking about how much I am going to miss everyone (I also am not very excited about boarding the plane tommorow). I have also heard from my mom (who is trying to refresh my memory) that there are a lot of different smells, good and bad. But otherwise, I am really excited!!!! I want to see our appartment, and my dad said he would buy us skateboards!
Anyways, I really wish you could all visit, and hopefully you will! Please comment to let me know what you think (so far it's not really about anything, but I want to hear your comments about life in Paris!) Thanks! :) :) :) :)


Lili(an) Belle In PARIS! (almost)!

Chloe in Paris: The Pre-Game

Poor Chloe! For all of you out there who are concerned about the well being of our dog Chloe and how she is handling the stress of the move, rest assured she is fine. With great anticipation she is looking forward to all the wonderful smells she is sure to encounter in her
new life abroad. She is nervous but very excited and can't wait to see her new digs! She has been working on her french and has already picked up a few key phrases, like: 'Ou sont les toilettes?' and 'Pourquoi je ne peux pas pisser sur l'herb?' and 'Je ne comprends pas' and 'C'est impossible!' But seriously, I really should be packing right now and I only wrote this post because I was trying to figure out how to publish photos and pourquoi pas. However, everything written in this post, to the best of my knowledge, is true. Stay tuned for more episodes of 'Chloe in Paris'.

Carne asada on the grill is the smell for right now. Beautifully charred beef, perfectly seasoned by Trader Joe's. Wrapped up in a tortilla with some black beans, salsa, avocado and a squeeze of lime. This is something we won't have the pleasure of smelling for a very long time. In 3 days we are moving from Connecticut to Paris for one full year. They don't have Mexican food in Paris (nothing acceptable anyways) and they don't have barbecues (except for Korean and that's just not the same thing). As you might imagine, things are insane at our house but I have promised friends and family that I would blog about our upcoming adventure (something I have never done before) and I thought I would try to get a head start. Some of you may be wondering about the name of the blog, What's that smell?. If you've ever been to Paris, you probably know what we are referring to. But the word smell gets a bad rap. Smells don't always have to be bad. Certainly, when you're in Paris you may encounter some bad smells (we'll explore that topic further in future blog posts, I'm sure) but there are also some incredibly good smells, like a freshly baked baguette. And then, of course, there are smells that seem quite off putting at first sniff but by the time you leave Paris you have learned to appreciate them, perhaps even like them. That's right, I'm talking about the cheese shop (more on that later too). Anyways, What's that smell? will most likely not contain any useful information, it's just a way for us to share our experiences abroad (olfactory and otherwise) with people we care about at home. I hope you enjoy reading it and if you do, please leave a comment, we're always interested in hearing about your smelly life.