sounds of Paris

I've been thinking about some of the sounds of Paris... some I will miss -- others, definitely not.

• Rumblings of the Metro underneath our apartment
• The chimes preceding a Metro announcement we can sometimes hear through the windows
• Pigeons (cooing? Is that what pigeons do?) waking me too early in the morning
• Many different languages we hear tourists speaking
• Voice lessons given by someone in an apartment behind us (group lessons on Saturdays!)
• Piano concertos played by, I assume, the same music teacher
• French children calling me "Madame"
• Max & Lucas playing their make-believe games for hours on end
• Endless ambulances (Eva calls them bee-bahs, and is still a little scared of them)
• The washer at the end of its cycle, which sounds as if it may be ushering in the end of the world
• Raucous laughter from the cafe just below
• Nouvelle Star (French version of American Idol)
• Fans in nearly every room, doing their best to keep us cool
• Musicians in the Metro tunnels, and on the trains themselves (I will miss the woman who plays the violin at the Concorde station on Sundays!)
  
• The loud screech of opening the cupboard door, or the fridge door too far
• Water cycling into the pipes outside our bedroom door (I don't understand this, as the radiators are definitely not on!)
• Marc's key in the door
• Eva singing endless renditions of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"
• Hundreds of children's voices laughing and playing at recess
• No cell phone, and the regular phone not even ringing once a day
• The tiny click indicating that we can open one of the two doors into our building