Digs in Paris

While Digs operates solely in New York, we have many friends and clients outside New York who are very good to us who we try to see periodically (so they don’t forget about us).

Paris Accomplishments

Dan and I took a quick trip to Paris in early October without our kids. Our goals: visit friends, see the city, learn about Paris architecture and real estate, eat great food and sleep. We accomplished all of this and then some.

• I played match maker with someone I met in Paris who lives in New York City (could Digs be expanding into the matchmaking business?).
• I went for a jog around Tuileries Garden. Unfortunately, this only happened once, as I chose to fulfil the goal of sleeping above exercising.
• I discovered that Barry’s Bootcamp is in Paris! No, I didn’t go – my French is horrible, and I would have had no idea what they were saying.
• We made friends with a lovely couple who lives in Chicago. We randomly sat next to them at dinner our first night in Paris and chatted them up (such social butterflies we are). Then they bumped into us the next day sitting outside at a café having a glass of wine with friends. At that point, we knew it was bashert (Yiddish for “meant to be”), and we invited them to join us. We exchanged some texts the next couple of days and then ran into them again at the airport when we were flying home and realized we forgot our passports at the hotel! It’s true, we almost didn’t make it back to New York, and it was all my fault (according to Dan).
• Best of all, we left Paris with two great referrals! Thank you Marina and Stephane!

While in Paris, we met with some newly minted real estate investors (who just bought their first investment property in Paris), saw some beautiful homes, and learned about the Paris real estate market. Homes in Paris are, not surprisingly, quite pricey, but on a price per square foot basis, you can still generally get more for your money there than in New York City. Paris is an old and beautiful city that has been magnificently maintained. Many homes are grand, with very high ceilings, tall windows, and gorgeous details. Some have been covered over the years and savvy real estate owners are stripping those layers away to reveal some truly beautiful masterpieces.

One thing we did not do was brave the electric scooters. I totally thought we would try them, but, since we didn’t know our way around, it would have been quite challenging to be on a scooter, weaving through Paris traffic with crazy French drivers, looking at our iPhones to figure out where to turn!

New Digs Clients

We also met with friends who live in London who have now enlisted us to help them with their New York City real estate investment search. Their main requirement: “a large Soho loft or something that looks like Paris.” After spending time in various Paris apartments, restaurants and museums, walking the cobble stone streets and gawking at the architecture, we know exactly what these clients want.

Pure Beauty Down Just About Every Street

We lucked out, and the weather was beautiful the whole time we were there, so we were able to walk the streets all day and night and take in the city. Every block seemed to be more beautiful than the next. Here are some of our favorite photos:

Paris Food

The food in Paris is amazing. We had the best baguettes with butter, croissants, onion soup (interestingly, made with comte instead of gruyere), and steak tartare. Best croissants were at Sebastien Gaudard. Best steak tartare was at Clown Bar (yes, it had figs in it!). Best wine was everywhere. Thanks to Laela for doing excellent wine selecting. Best butter – also everywhere.

Airport Adventures

Best service was at Le Meurice where the concierge quickly got our passports from our safe, ordered a driver, and had them delivered to Charles de Gaulle airport with about four minutes to spare before we would not have been able to board our plane. Along those same lines of amazing service, I must say, if we had been in a NYC airport in this situation, we never would have got on our plane. The lovely manager at American Airlines got us provisionally checked in with a photo of our passports and escorted us through passport control and security all the way to our gate. On the way through security, we had to part with a gift to the grandparents for watching the kids – chocolate hazelnut spread, caramel spread and hazelnut praline spread from Edwart Chocolatier. Who knew those were considered liquid and had to be less than 3 ounces to go in your carry-on?!? We were sad to say good-bye to it, but happy to give it to the person who was helping us cut all the long lines, so we didn’t miss our flight.

So, after a bit of drama, we made it back to New York, back to our kids and servicing our clients. We love Paris, and we know we will be back again soon.

 

****************

Digs Realty is a residential real estate brokerage in NYC that provides full service at a discount. The Digs Mission: Saving you money without compromising service. We give our home buyers up to 67% of our commission and charge our sellers up to 4% less than traditional brokerages.