Getting Settled

We have been in Aix awhile now, but due to jet lag, a nasty cold virus, and catching up on school work, we have been neglecting the blog. I am going to quickly catch up on things here or I fear I may give up on blogging completely. To start, here’s our apartment building:

It is located on the lovely Place Richelme. The ground floor of our apartment building holds two establishments: a bakery and a bar. In the morning, our apartment smells of baking bread. Divine! Here is our view from the kitchen:

In the morning, we look out over the farmer's market from our living room:

Every afternoon, the market is torn down and the stones washed off. The cafés set out tables and chairs:

In the evening, umbrellas and heaters are set up. The area is lively all evening:

Around midnight or 1 a.m., the tables, chairs, umbrellas, and heaters are all put away. The ground is littered with garbage. The ground is swept and hosed off again, ready for the morning farmer's market to be set up. It's amazing this process happens every single day!

Some other views we have include this delightful little coffee shop that roasts it's own beans in the front window and serves a chocolate bar with every cup of coffee. It's one of my favorite places on earth:

Next to La Brûlerie, more restaurants, bars, and apartments: 

And out our living room window, we stare at the most amazing pain au chocolat. FYI, it's easy to make delicious pain au chocolat, just take a giant bar of the best dark chocolate you can find and wrap it in buttery croissant dough. Mmm:

The kids love watching the neighborhood cats:

The apartment is in a great location, but now on to the "colorful" parts. We climb a veritable mountain of stairs to get to the apartment. When we come home with an armful of tired kids and strollers, 80 stairs can really take some of the fun out of the afternoon. The staircase railing is a parent's nightmare. It's low and full of toddler sized holes. Our apartment building entryway is gross. The employees of the bar below us apparently use it as a break room, filling it with smoke and littering it with cigarette butts. This is France, after all. The one appliance we were not willing to do without in our apartment was a washing machine. Our washing machine has a control panel full of incomprehensible icons. Even worse, it will randomly not allow you to select an option, skipping right over it. Or it will stop working. Or it puts holes in the clothes. Or it turns the clothes gray for no obvious reason. It is Monsieur Bacon's nemesis. C'est la vie. There is a laundromat not far from our apartment, so it looks like we'll be schlepping our laundry up and down our many stairs. At least our legs are getting a good workout here.