Safety Last

Thierry, the of this owner of this apartment, is in Sri Lanka at the moment so his brother Lucas (who looks all of 10 years old) is managing the place in his absence. When Lucas met us on Saturday to collect the rent and show us how the washer/dryer worked, he said, "The one thing you must never do is double lock this outter door. The key doesn't work all that well and it is very tricky to open from the inside." We looked at the door and the lock system. We nodded our heads.

Not only does Thierry own this apartment, he also owns the suite above us. The two apartments share the outter door. The outter door we are not supposed to double-lock. The one that is tricky to unlock from the inside. Yeah, that one. (Can you see where I'm going with this?)

We got up early today because we wanted to hike up Notre Dame Cathedral. I grabbed my camera and opened our inner apartment door. Joe had the keys in his hand and tried to unlock the outer door. Nothin' doin'. Try as we might we could not turn the key in the lock. We looked at the door jamb and saw about 5 deadbolts firmly in place.

We were locked in! The people above us obviously did not get the memo about not double-locking the outter door!

I said to Joe, "Now is NOT the time for either of us to have any sort of medical emergency! It would take the fire-fighters 3 hours to use the 'jaws of life' on this door!"

Joe quickly ran to the phone and roused Lucas out of bed to tell him of our dilemma. Lucas came flying over on his motorbike with a master key (that worked) and released us from our prison.

We thanked him and started to make our way down the narrow stairs.

We called back over our shoulders, "Hey, Lucas! You better tell the upstairs neighbours not to do that again!"

"I will leave them a note!" he promised.

We got to Notre Dame late and as a result ended up having to wait over an hour in the line-up. The view was spectacular and it was fun being up with the gargoyles again. When we arrived back home we saw that Lucas had run a strip of duct tape over the deadbolts to prevent anyone from double- locking the door again.

This is France. Safety last.


- Posted from France by Nancy

Location:Rue du Petit Pont,Paris,France