The Apartment

Our current apartment is one of my favorite apartments I have lived in. It has all the hallmarks of a "French" apartment, in the eyes of an American.

The front hallway has fabulous tiles. I don't know their history, but I love them.

We have three marble fireplaces. They are in working condition, but we haven't had the chimneys swept so I use large white taper candles to get the same cozy feeling as a fire.

Every door in the apartment, including the closet doors, closes with a skeleton key. The key generally just sits in each door, but I've always wondered what would happen if we lost one of the keys...

All of our windows have shutters. One of my favorite parts of winter is closing the shutters every evening, and opening them every morning. It's a sense of security, of warmth in the evening, and a gives a rhythm to each morning. Shutters, as I have learned, need to be opened in a certain order, or the overlapping doesn't work correctly and you are left with a shutter that isn't latched and bangs against the wall all day.

It sometimes impresses me to think that this apartment is as old as my country, which is a bit humbling.