The new flat!

On Saturday we packed up our stuff in a much more budget and haphazard manner than the first time round, and moved to our new flat. It feels really good to be somewhere more permanent. The flat has a separate bedroom and a living room with a built in kitchen, which is apparently an "American style" kitchen. The furniture is bits and bobs; there is a big desk in the bedroom and a lovely long table in the sitting room. It's a cosy place. There is a bath which is very short and squat - it's like sitting in a tiny unbubbly jacuzzi.

Our building is on a paved pedestrian road. At one end is a lively square with lots of bars and cafes, and at the other there is a sheer drop, with two stone stairways going down to the busy rue Monge. The flat is at the back of a courtyard, and is amazingly quiet. You can't hear anything here - on the weekend I kept having a feeling of being in Mum's house in Plett, and couldn't work out why. But last night I really noticed the quiet, and think that's the connection. Richard said he'd been thinking of his grandmother's house in the countryside for the same reason.

On Sunday we went for a walk in our local park, the Jardin des Plantes. It has a feel of Holland Park in bits, and there's a menagerie. We didn't want to pay this time, but peeking through the bushes we could see a big owl, some wallabies and some kind of antelope. There is also a Natural History Museum, which is currently showing an exhibition of 'cetaces incroyables', with the poster showing a huge whale, which I'm excited to see.

We wandered around and came to a lovely 'menagerie' merry-go-round, with a fairly weird selection of animals. Probably not understanding the French sign meant we missed some obvious link between: a gorilla, a triceratops, a horned tortoise, an ostrich, a dodo and an elephant. Anyone know what they have in common? The ride was pretty popular with the kids. One little boy of about four was super to watch - he claimed the triceratops straight away, with the help of his mum to get on. Once on, he sat loftily surveying the scene with an expression truly suggestive of a triceratops-riding master. Every time he made the circuit he waved to his mum as if he'd never seen her before - she was wearing a cardigan which looked just like the triceratops' skin.