The first thing I realised when I arrived in Paris, is that it's important to be able to survive without much sleep. It doesn't help that we're both insomniacs and spent our first few nights listening to the myriad different noises we can hear from our room, which is on a courtyard above two restaurants. You know you're not in West London any more when you can here gutteral french expletives in the early hours of the morning, as the plongeurs meet for a cigarette break by the bins.
The old french floorboards mean that we are also on intimate terms with our upstairs neighbour -we’re talking audible peeing (male- we suspect there is a female in residence too but she must pee silently), intermittent scraping and trotting across the floorboards, squeaking in the bathtub and worst of all: incessant snooze alarm in the mornings. Still, when you're alone in a foreign city it can be reassuring to hear normal life going on around you- even if you're not quite part of it yet.
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