Best part of France

Unfortunately, most American tourists only get to see Paris, thereby missing IMO some of the most beautiful parts of France. A few weeks ago, Marie-Eve and I were able to go back down to Avignon for the weekend to see her mom and our friends Aziz and Audrey, who are living nearby Aix-en-Provence.
Ah, there is so much green, it hurts my city eyes!!

Nothing this pretty in the big urban jungle.

View from the new apartment

Well, our stay in Vincennes, the bourgeois suburb of Paris, is over. The owner of the apartment was planning on coming back in the summer so we had to look for a new apartment. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a sweet deal through the H-France network (a French historian's network) like we did with our Vincennes apartment. So we had to deal with the traditional French system, which is just horribly unbearable. In fact, I think we had to furnish more papers and documents to rent a tiny ass 26m2 apartment then we did to buy our townhome in Florida. Well, after a bunch of visitations and pain-in-the-ass dealings with sharks who wanted 1 fucking year of security deposit, we found a nice apartment in the 19th arrondissement, near the Buttes-Chaumont park. (Pictures of the park will come in the next entry.)

The apartment is well-decorated and in a very calm area, while still closer to central Paris. Unfortunately, it is a bit expensive, but nothing in Paris is cheap. The 820 euro/month rent is roughly $1,100 with today's horrible exchange rate!!!!

One additional plus is that we have a wonderful view of Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on Montmarte.