Last day in Paris

Tuesday, August 31, 2010 Day 62

Our last day in Paris! We spent the morning polishing the apartment. We weren’t sure how clean the landlady expected the place to be, but I wanted to leave it respectable, so we worked hard scrubbing the shower and floors and cleaning out the refrigerator.

Roger also calculated the utilities. The landlady had told us a couple of times that “it’s complex” when she talked about calculating the electricity and gas. Little did we know! First, at the behest of the landlady, Roger had written down the meter readings the day we moved in, but he only wrote down the last three digits. For the electricity, that was fine, but for the gas, the last three digits are only the decimal places. He didn’t realize it at the time, and kept struggling and couldn’t come up with a reasonable number. When he finally discovered his error, he finally was able to calculate the amount of gas and electricity used. It turns out that the meters are only read twice a year in Paris. Customers are only billed every two months. The landlady sent us the June bill, which showed the May reading. From that he had to extrapolate the June reading then had to calculate our use, then add an amount for the fixed fee for each month, then add the VAT (value added tax) on the amount used. Okay! But he finally got it done to his satisfaction, and our total utilities (gas and electric) for two months came to almost 92€. We rounded up, as we are staying tonight so that we can catch our 10:20 train down to Montpellier tomorrow.

When the landlady and landlord showed up, they came to discuss the utilities and to refund us our deposit. We got back the entire 500€ without any deductions from them, except, of course the utilities. They accepted Roger’s calculation of the utilities without question or verification of the meter readings or of his calculations, but we sent them the spreadsheet later. Our landlords are interesting – he is the stereotypical academic type, quiet, a little stooped, studious-looking, dressed in a less-than-fastidious manner. He is a professor and a specialist in Japanese religion and thought. He let her do all the talking – I don’t think he speaks very much English. She, on the other hand, is not the typical spouse for him; she is Japanese. She speaks quite tolerable English, although with a rather heavy accent. She is spiffily-dressed and is perfectly coiffed. She is a research worker in the field of “history of ideas, particularly medical thought, concerning Japan.” They have been the ideal landlords – not in our hair at all, but available by email if we needed them.

We spent our last evening in Paris at a restaurant around the corner. The meal was very unusual for a Paris meal – not particularly good. We ordered a pork rib plate for two. The pork was extremely fatty and with almost no flavor. I didn’t eat my share, and even Roger left slices that were mostly fat. It was served with fries and a salad, and the latter was quite good; the fries were very ordinary. We had dessert – Roger had a panna cotta, which is sort of a gelatinized cream with chocolate added, and it came with a small slice of cake with chocolate chips in it. I had warmed mirabelles, which are small late-summer plums, with whipped cream on top. They were quite good. We shared 50cl of wine, which is double what we normally get. We staggered home about 9:30.