We were happy in Paris. But we weren’t happy in our Paris Loft.

When we first got to Paris, we stayed in Le Marais at Hotel Jobo. The neighborhood was fun for walking around with a lot of small shops and Saint-Paul Saint-Louis Church across rue Saint-Antoine as a local landmark we could point to if we got lost. The hotel had leopard print carpet with pink wallpaper and small but precisely designed bathrooms. The kind of place Hitchcock would have filmed a murder scene.

We should have stayed. But I got it in my head I could find a loft in the neighborhood. So I got on Airbnb. I searched a couple options and settled on a loft with a stone wall. It looked good in pictures. Both the picture I’m showing you and the picture I saw online when I picked the loft as our next destination.

It was on the ground floor of a courtyard. Once you got inside the blue door concealing the courtyard, you had to open doors like the doors of a locker in the hallway of high school, just to get to the front door of the loft. There was no view. It was cold inside. The stone wall made it feel even colder. It was tall but not wide. There was a steep stairway down to the bathroom, where we ran a space heater, since hot air rises, and another steep stairway up to the air mattress in the loft. I wouldn’t call it a love nest, besides the fact we were in it. We kept each other warm but little else. Hitchcock would have fired the location scout.

We became regulars at the corner bar. We stopped there on the way out. We stopped there on the way back. We made 3 attempts at climbing the steps to the bell tower at Notre Dame. But we never got there early enough before it sold out. We learned how to navigate the subway system. We took the subway to Montmartre. We took the subway to Chaussée d’Antin. We took the subway back to Le Marais. We waited in line to stand in an old building to look at crowds who were looking at famous art. We waited in line to stand in another old building to blink oddly at stained glass windows. We waited in line to stand in another old building which used to be a train station to look at crowds who were supposed to be looking at famous art but were too busy looking at the giant clock at the center of the old train station. We drank coffee. We drank wine. We drank more coffee. We drank more wine. We did pretty much everything we could think of to not have to spend any time which wasn’t sleeping time inside our Paris Loft.  Hitchcock would have thrown himself in the Seine.

Sometimes a picture isn’t worth a thousand words. Sometimes it’s worth staying at Hotel Jobo.