Sheesh! What a weekend for my friends in New York and on the East Coast! Matt was supposed to fly to New York for a week yesterday, and just had to change his flight - clearly - in a way, it's nice to see New York taking all these precautions for once. And in another way, why does there always have to be a hurricane/blizzard/heat wave in New York that makes travel and life difficult? Its enough to make you wonder why 10 million people were foolish enough to call this place home. This year has really been a bad weather year for that city.
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| Sunset from our Paris apartment |
So, yes! This weekend is the official last vacation weekend in Paris before "La Rentree", the back to school/back to work time that will pick up next week and really be in effect by what for us would be Labor Day. Sigh. I will miss quiet Paris. It's nice to have the shops open again, but I'm not looking forward to everything getting crowded...
A POOL IN THE MALL
Since I came back to France from the US, I've had to REINVEST myself in living in Paris - I like it here, you know, but it was just so great to be back in a country I UNDERSTAND, surrounded by my friends and family. So being back here in France, I'm trying to forget about the fact that there are no good burritos here and get into the things that do make Paris kind of great. Every time this city starts to wear on you, I find there's something new that you can find here that's kind of awesome.
This week .... Paris's public pools!
So I'm now in MONTH 7 of this pregnancy, which I can't believe, and as some of you know this pregnancy for me has been basically ANNOYING. Not super difficult, and the baby is healthy and doing well, but I've had lots of pregnancy aches and pains that have been slowing me down and generally making me uncomfortable. First, there was all the sickness of the first four months, and now I'm really starting to slow down physically, having some back pain and general joint pain that's preventing me from walking long distances. There are so many things in pregnancy that - were you not pregnant - you'd be running to the doctor for, but basically during pregnancy they're like "Oh yes, stabbing pains in in your back and hips? That's just pregnancy, ha ha, if you're not bleeding or having contractions you'll just have to tough it out - oh, and no pain medicine either, kay?" Hooray!
But what I CAN do, and what I've been trying to do as much as possible, is swim. Yay for swimming, the huge pregnant ladies godsend - you're weightless, your back doesn't hurt, you're stretching without realizing it - it is awesome. Me and my maternity swimsuit have been enjoying swimming several times a week.
AND, Paris has amazing public pools - something like 27 of them around the city. So far I have only been to one, but it's a good one to talk about, because it is in Les Halles, the giant subterranean mall in the center of Paris.
Yes, so Les Halles, as some of you know, was the central food market of Paris from about time of thethe city's founding in 1100AD to the middle of the 20th century. Its right smack in center of thethe city, just over the Seine from the Latin Quarter, and is a densely populated collection of narrow streets filled with cafes, shops, and - in at least one area still - prostitutes, a nice urban mix. However, in the 1970s, the market area of Les Halles was transformed into a giant subterranean mall and transit hub - kind of like an underground Times Square. Most Parisians freaking HATE the Forum Des Halles - its crowded, full of teenagers, and its a MALL for gods sake. Plus, to add insult to injury, they're now expanding it to make a whole new above ground section - apparently as a transit hub it was TOO successful, and the city needs to expand it to combat overcrowding - so, they're in the middle of a giant construction project that will build several stories onto the existing structure and double it in size. Quelle Horreur!
But me, I LOVE Forum Des Halles. Now, I recognize that part of the reason I love it has to do with when I go - usually in the morning and early afternoon on weekdays, when its relatively empty - and I promise you, if you can go in these off hours, it has some true delights that no American mall would have. Like so many French things, there's rampant cultural and economic protectionism going on in this mall. For the French, its not just about commerce - its really about Commerce AND Community.
I first started coming to Les Halles last winter because of UGC Cine-Cite, the giant 23 screen movie theater in the mall that basically shows everything, and usually has 2 morning shows, one in the 9AM and one in the 11AM hour. For me, this is the perfect time to see a movie, since a lot of times the work I need to do doesn't start until the later afternoon, once New Yorkers have reached their offices. Now, whenever I would go to the movies, I would see this giant atrium with a swimming pool right across from the theaters. "How weird, why is there a swimming pool in this mall??" was my first thought. "Who would go swimming there?" Then, later, as I got more and more pregnant, I thought "... Wait, could I go swimming there?"
And indeed I can, and very easily - you just pay 4 Euros and you get access to an Olympic-size pool, plus very basic but completely functional locker & shower areas. I guess this is the same in New York for their public pools, but for some reason the Parisian ones feel prettier and cleaner. Also, when I'm done swimming, I can just walk across the "street" (mall street? Alley?) and go to a movie. It is awesome.
Leave it to the Parisians to want a public pool in the mall. Also at Les Halles is the Forum Des Images and Bibliotheque de Cinema, the big non-profit film organizations, as well as a Centre D'Animation, a public recreation center where you can take everything from judo to computer programming classes. Would this ever happen in America? I really think not. Some developer would be like "A pool? You could put 17 Claire's Jewelry boutiques in that space!" and that would be that.
ENDLESS DECISIONS ABOUT BABY STUFF, OR WHY ARE PEOPLE SO INSANE ABOUT CLOTH DIAPERS?
Okay, yes, the other thing that's been going on is Matt and I trying to make decisions on all BABY STUFF we need to buy. Well, really, we don't need to buy that much initially, I've realized - as my friend Anne said to me, if you're breastfeeding, all you need for thethe first few weeks is a car seat and diapers. But even getting these things together is a massive confusing headache of choices!
DIAPERS: Okay, lets take diapers for instance (and actually, Matt has gotten so fed up with diaper debate that he warned a friend of ours NOT to bring it up at dinner thethe other night. Yes, like took her aside and was like "Listen, whatever you do, don't bring up cloth diapers, okay?") Of course she slipped. But yes, who knew that diapers could be such an all consuming research project? I am totally over it.
It all started when I began considering doing cloth diapers rather than disposable. Why did I think this was a good idea? Well, basically because I found out it is MUCH CHEAPER to cloth diaper. Like $500 for cloth compared to $3000 for disposables, to take a child from birth to toilet training. I'll say it, I don't really care about the environmental issues. But the money, I care about.
So I started looking into it - and quickly found that Paris has no diaper service. Nope - not a one. Bizarre, right, for a city this size? But I guess like everything else in Paris, people are slow to change - women I guess do all cloth diapers in their own washing machines and then hang them dry. How this doesn't turn into three years of having drying cloth diapers all over your apartment I don't know, but anyway.
However, people here - I guess particularly the British mothers living here that I've met through this Anglophone parenting network - are INSANE about cloth diapers. They have a Cloth diaper LENDING LIBRARY for god's sake. I don't know what that means either - I guess you get to borrow diapers to see which kind your kid likes? But the idea of a Cloth Diaper Lending Library is kind of gross to me.
I understand it, though, because there are a lot of choices - A LOT of choices. Prefold, pocket diapers, all in one, snaps vs velcro, its a LOT. It's not your mother's cloth diaper anymore - and in fact, when I couldn't research it anymore and actually gave the project to my mom, she couldn't believe you could no longer find just a basic cloth diaper with a safety pin. In fact -and those of you who know my mom will find htis funny (this is a woman who has already made a spreadsheet for all the baby's clothing needs in the first year) - she ALSO got totally overwhelmed by the amount of choices and info, and it made her ANGRY. She was like "This is ridiculous, young parents don't have time to research all of this!" Anyway, we still don't know what we will end up doing, but I'm taking suggestions of brands that worked for people in the past. I'm not planning on 100% cloth diapering, but I'm gonna try a little bit of each and see what ends up being workable.
BREAST FEEDING - And I apologize in advance to the men on this list who have no kids - yes, I'm gonna talk about breast feeding. I realized when I was in New York that there was often a big difference between my guy friends who had kids and those who didn't - the guys with kids were totally blasé about all the physical stuff surrounding birth, and my guy friend without kids were like "Please, don't talk about your cervix, okay?" So, sorry in advance to those dudes -
I did figure out finally how to get a free breast pump here in Paris - but its gonna seem totally weird to most of you in the US. Basically, here in France the health care system will reimburse you for your breast pump, but only if you RENT IT. You have to get a prescription from your doctor in your baby's name, and then you can go to the pharmacie and rent a breast pump from them for up to a year. There are also DELIVERY SERVICES in Paris that will deliver a pump to your door same-day (this, and they can't get it together for a diaper service?). Obviously, you buy all the personal parts that attach the pump yourself, and they sterilize the pump between uses - but it was still surprising to me. But worth it since buying one yourself here costs around 350 Euros/ $500 (!), about 2x the price in the US.
MATERNITY/NURSING BRAS - This one I was really worried about, actually, because as most of you know, I am not a small-breasted person (like the majority of French women), and pregnancy has only made this WORSE. I went to try and get fitted for a nursing bra in New York, though, and the woman at Town Shop was like "It's too early, you have no idea how big you're gonna get when your milk comes in". So great. I was stuck trying to find an even bigger than usual bra here in Paris, where I'm lucky if they have a D-cup at most stores.
BUT, I shouldn't have been too worried - there are a couple of places here that specialize in maternity wear, and at least at the one closest to my house, I was only in the MIDDLE of the size chart for these. Whew! It also enabled me to find my European bra size, which I'd been avoiding - A totally different measurement than your American one, for those of you who are wondering, that requires a bit of trial and error - its not only that the measurements are in centimeters. You may be interested to know that the French word for "cup size" is "Bonnet", which makes me think of Little House on the Prairie.
Anyway, though - I may still end up ordering these things online, because the shop I went to near me was a totally weird/unique Parisian creation - Basically, one guy in a storefront with his inventory all around him, bringing you selections of bras - no browsing, no choosing for yourself, no ambiance - just kind of a messy room filled with bras and order forms. And this was one of premier Maternity Wear stores in thethe city! Bizarro. I guess if you want a pool in your mall, you have to also put up with bizarre little shops that manage to stay in business through the government's benevolence .... or something.
Anyway .... I think that's it for the moment... I hope everyone gets through the hurricane safely, and we're sending you all lots of love from Paris!
Till next week,
Claire
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