The Apartment

Лихой толпой Ляховецкие кочуют по Ницце. Yesterday we moved to another apartment (we couldn't find a single rental to cover our entire stay). The new place is also on the Promenade, about half a mile closer to the center of town. The distance not large enough to justify a cab or even a bus, so we had to carry all our belonging ourselves. Our attempts to mount our luggage on the bikes the donkey style didn't exactly work but got us quite exhausted.

The night before the move, we did some laundry in the apartment washing machine - an ancient Bosch with some creaking knobs. The machine huffed and puffed and finally, well after midnight it came to stop. But it kept the door locked. An experimentation with all permutations of knob positions took about an hour and didn't deliver any results. Another hour killed searching for the manual on the Internet proved equally fruitless. I need to add here, that we traveled "light" this time, meaning that we took much less cloth than usual, thinking that we would just "do laundry". In other words, the evil washing machine had inside most of our wardrobe. Out of time and options, I started to contemplate a cross-town trek for emergency cloth shopping half naked, when the machine suddenly decided to unlock itself. Later, I found out that the machine has some built-in safety timer that unlocks the door a few minutes after it is turned off. Apparently, every time I moved the knob, the timer got reset, so the more I touched it the longer it kept our stuff. Wicked. The joyous reunification with our thoroughly washed belongings was quickly subdued by the thought that we now have to carry 15 pounds of wet cloth to the new place.

But the move was worth it. The new apartment was even bigger and more beautiful than previous. A wrap-around terrace big enough to host a party, huge rooms, high ceilings, numerous bathrooms, air conditioning and a new washing machine. Ah, la bella vita!
After our hostess left, excitingly, we explored the rooms, the aged but well made solid wood furniture, various paintings and vases, old fashioned bathroom appliances, cavernous closets and utility spaces. Then we remembered that we left Leon outside in the sun guarding the bikes (our hostess said that bikes in the flat are no-no, so we waited until she leaves to sneak them in). This time we had only six flights of stairs, though high ceilings more than compensated for the difference.