prière de ne pas déranger
Images from our trip to France in 2000:
The trip was the graduation gift from my parents to Paul and a few of his closest friends when they graduated high school, but my dad (and I) had been wanting to revisit the country for a long time, so the whole family ended up going in addition to Paul’s buddies. It had been six years since we had returned from our second stint there, and we wanted to see old friends and experience the feel of the place again. We flew into Paris, spent a few days there, and then took the train to Nice, where we planned to spend the next 10 days or so, the remainder of our vacation.
Our rather large party stayed in a friends’ large city apartment while said friends were away on vacation. It was rife with classic old-world details like the marble staircase spiraling around the “cage” elevator, complete with a wrought iron door that had to be pulled to just so before it would ascend. The doors to the flats all wore their latches on the exterior of the wood, and the latches themselves all had handles, not knobs, and seemed much too large for the mechanism they contained. Walls were plaster painted Mediterranean colors, pinks and yellows with the tint of terracotta. Ceilings were invariably high, with many-paned doors that stretched close to the ceiling and opened onto small balconies with flower boxes dangling on the edge.
As was the case with most European households I’ve experienced, the quality of the kitchen appliances was almost universally dismal. The microwave was marginal, the refrigerator minuscule, and the dishwasher was terribly overtaxed by the presence of such a large group in an apartment not accustomed to a crowd. What this meant was that much of the dishwashing had to be done by hand, and we rotated dish duty and meal preparation among the members of the group.
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