In the autumn, I stayed in Paris and didn't travel around in France. But I figured I should see more than just the capital, so when my boyfriend came to see me for a weekend, we traveled to Lille, a city in northern France, close to the Belgian border. We found this amazing flat in HouseTrip, a website through which private persons can rent their homes to tourists:
One of the top 10 things to see in Lille is the Wazemmes Market every Sunday:
And the old town is very beautiful:
Around the same time, my big brother and his girlfriend came to Paris. I took them for a tour in Montmartre - here's a photo taken from the hill, in front of Sacré Cœur:
Right after the trip to Lille, I moved out of the shared studio where I had been living since November. I guess I never felt like home there... I hated the coulours in the room and listening to my 18-year-old flatmate speak on Skype in Polish for several hours every evening. In addition, as it was a "convent", I had to come home by 10 pm every night. And I got tired of basically sleeping in the kitchen; it was my bed that is on the left hand-side in this photo:
I don't know if my new place seems any better to you, but I feel comfortable in my little room. I can read books on the bed that folds into a sofa, admire the drawings of my niece and nephew, and write new French words on the white board - I love it, I need to get one back home, too. It's way better than writing words in a notebook and never reading them again.
My new home town, Ivry-sur-Seine, a working-glass suburb south-east of Paris, is by no means a luxurious place. It has an industrial past, there are ugly railway depots and river ports, there is trash in the streets, and 38% of the flats comprise of social housing. But somehow I still like this place; it feels like a good place for a small human-being.
Interesting architecture in the centre, and dismantling of market stalls:
Street art in my new residential area:
