When we were issued our long-stay visas, we were explicitly told by the French consulate to make sure they stamped our passports upon arrival, because we'd need to show this stamp at some French office called OFII in order to validate our visas. But we never passed an immigration booth after getting off the plane at Charles de Gaulle's Terminal 1, and once we got into the 1970s "avante-garde" tangle of escalators inside plastic tubes that put you directly in the baggage area, there was no way to go back.
So we walked aimlessly for several minutes until we saw a customs officer and asked him where we could get our passports stamped, and after explaining to him that we had arrived via Iceland, where our passports fortunately had been stamped while they rushed us through immigration, he said that that counted as our French immigration stamp since Iceland is also part of the Schengen Area, which operates like a single state for international travel regarding visas and border controls.
After claiming our ten bags we located a public phone. Fortunately we had some coins from our previous trip and were able to figure out how to use the French pay phone and reach our landlady to let her know we'd arrived, just before being forced to evacuate the terminal because they had discovered an unattended bag in one of the restrooms.
We never got to alert the private van we had reserved of our delay, but since there was no one waiting for us we figured they were gone, so we took a large airport taxi instead. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, and we could not contain our excitement as we drove away from the airport towards the city. After all those months of dreaming and planning, we were finally in Paris! Dianny and I had to catch our breaths when we got off the Périphérique highway and started going through the beautiful city streets. I think those of us who are infatuated with Paris will always go through that sense of thrill and awe as we enter the city.
We beat the landlady to our building, so we hung around while she arrived. Wait—is that a Starbucks? There was an "Opening Soon" sign above the unmistakable green-and-white mermaid logo next to our building. I couldn't believe we had just moved 5000 miles to the city that's famous for its sidewalk cafés to live next to a Starbucks! A true Seattleite might have been excited, since Seattle is where Starbucks was born, but I didn't like their coffee very much. Besides, why would you want to go to Starbucks instead of a local cafe?
Anyway, when the landlady finally arrived, it wasn't hard for her to recognize the family of five with their very conspicuous luggage waiting on the sidewalk by the building entrance. After warm bonjours we went inside and had to make several trips in the small elevator to get all our luggage upstairs. We then spent the next two hours getting to know each other and doing a full inventory of the apartment's contents and condition (something called the état des lieux), which is something one should not have to do after a long overnight transatlantic trip. The apartment was lovely and very well kept, and we were very pleased that there weren't any surprises, since we had only seen it in pictures. The place was really wonderful, comfortable and spacious enough for the five of us.
After that we did a little grocery shopping at the local Monoprix, which we had already scouted on Google maps, so we'd have something to eat the next day. We managed to extend the day till about 10 PM before crashing, but all of us still ended up waking up between 3‑4 AM. After a couple of restless hours everyone fell back asleep and we slept till noon.
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