A little French goes a long way

The day of the 2nd try for our Ikea delivery… The elevator still wasn’t fixed; but it's not as if the boxes for the couch, table, and armoire were going to fit in the tiny elevator anyway. They must have some process for getting them up the stairs. Well, we learned when they arrived that they normally pull the individual pieces out of the boxes and need the elevator!!! This heavy stuff, 2 guys, and 6 flights of stairs wasn’t the plan. They looked at trying to reschedule again asking John when the elevator was to be fixed, and John asking one of our neighbors about it. Apparently a part is on order and it could take awhile. And factoring the Ikea schedule in it looked to be a month. Thankfully I was out doing errands during this discussion (in French). But John is imagining us living there for a month without furniture. The delivery guy in charge just said, let’s just do it! They literally felt bad for us and didn’t want to delay things. I was shocked. So they broke the heavy boxes apart and we helped them haul the pieces up 6 flights of stairs. We did give them a good tip to say thank you, but I was touched by the kindness.

As you can imagine, with all the stair climbing, John and I are NOT getting fat here. But we are enjoying the food! On a sunny day, even in the winter, it’s so nice to sit outside at a cafe and enjoy a leisurely lunch. I love that so much!