Paris: part one

Am writing this quite slowly because this is a French computer keyboard and also there is a woman waiting – hovering – as she wants to use one of the two keyboards in the plush lounge of this gorgeous hotel.

Good, she has gone. I mean, it is not good manners to hover. By the way, cannot find the apostrophe key hence this will all sound a bit formal.

I have had a wonderful day today. I should start at the beginning of the trip but hey, I can always fill in more detail later. (Keep mixing up the a and q keys as they are in odd places as fqr qs qn English hyphen speqking journqlist/writer goes!)

Anyway, when I arrived hier, it was COLD. Yes COLD. Like the kind of cold where you see your breath in the air, feel your fingers lose sensation and wonder why the hell you did not bring your long red woollen coat. Three degrees I think. Inz met me 20 mins or so after I arrived off the Eurostar at Gare du Nord and guided me and my heavy case to my hotel, which, it turns out is better than I could have hoped for and has really satisfied the many needs of this clean freak who values spotlessness, cleanliness and comfort in a hotel to an extreme degree. Oh, and I was upgraded to an executive suite. Mon Dieu! The view from my room is great. You get the Eiffel Tower in all its glory (and indeed it is glorious when all lit up at night; plus it gets all sparkly like a fireworks night sparkler sporadically, not sure why, but it is stunning). If you click on the one below, you'll get an idea of what I mean.

View from hotel, night, Paris © Mellifluous Dark, all rights reserved

So anyway, after a brief visit to the flat that belongs to Inz for the time being (she's moving home soon), we had a meal at Comptoir, where Moroccan and French food is successfully fused. It was wonderful to see and catch up with Inz. However, after an early start to the day, poor sleep the night before plus the travelling process, I was deeply tired, and needed to get back to my hotel to relax, as I could barely speak (or eat) by the time we had our dessert. I was so fatigued that I wasn't convinced I could return to the hotel seule without getting lost or mugged, but it was OK bar my nervousness. The joy of standing under a hot shower and washing away that travel dirt feeling (in a sparkly-clean marble bathroom) was immense. I then phoned S for a long chat filled with details of life in Paris and London, and sank into the comfortable pillows.

As I closed the shutter and curtains before getting into bed, I wished for no repeat of rain (not unexpectedly) today. More rain and the same degree of coldness would have rendered my trip somewhat dreary, which is not what you expect from Paris.

In any case, despite my medication and underlying exhaustion, I did not sleep very well and also lost two hours due to the BST and EST time changes, can you believe, and some inconsiderate twunt decided to do plenty of door slamming at 5.30am (EST). I was extremely grateful that I had packed my earplugs and, from about 3am, slept fairly well (bar the door slamming) until 10.08am after waking from a dream in which I had slept in until a day-wasting 3.23pm. I was so happy at the sunny/ non rainy view and the decent hour at which I had woken that I (literally) jumped up and down with joy as I watched the glinting rooftops and Eiffel Tower through the window:

View from hotel, morning © Mellifluous Dark, all rights reserved

After a lovely brunch (plenty of choice for breakfast, hot and cold, which you could get until a very civilised noon!), I took the Metro to Abbesses and walked around Montmartre for a couple of hours. Beautiful. I felt as though I had walked to the top of the world (all those stairs!) and felt as though I was indeed on top of le monde as I sat in the sunshine and soaked up and breathed in Paris. OK, so there were plenty of tourists but I'd been here many times before (this was my seventh – or eighth? – visit) and this experience was not about trying to get the entire Sacre Coeur into a camera frame, but rather centred on watching what went on around the massive white church.

View from Montmartre, Paris © Mellifluous Dark, all rights reserved

I now think I have sufficient perspective on the city that allows me to say I have favourite parts of Paris. So, I looked for the unusual angles and corners of what is one of my preferred areas of Paris (Montmartre) before having a strange three-cheese panini thing (too stodgy) and hot choc (mediocre) lunch, then mooching some more (the area around Notre Dame and the Seine):

Park, outside Notre Dame, Paris © Mellifluous Dark, all rights reserved

Above is the park just by Notre Dame. It was early in the day and had an air of serenity. Below, a greyish view of Notre Dame as the sun faded later that afternoon. Annoyingly, I have many superior photos but they were taken as portraits and only upload sideways despite me re-saving them after rotating them on screen. Hmph.

Notre Dame and the River Seine, Paris © Mellifluous Dark, all rights reserved

Later today, I met Inz and her French friend, V, in Le Marais (another of my most-loved bits of the city) during the late afternoon. We walked, talked and had a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours. I bought a few bits pour moi (naughty, naughty; tomorrow is meant to be shopping day...), and some extremely posh balsamic vinegar for S, who will hopefully liken it to honey. "Eet ees like caramellll..." said the sales assistant. The shop from which the posh balsamic bottles are from is exquisite in terms of its olive-y selection and price. I had no idea so many things could be made from olives. Inz and V ended up buying bottles, too, so lovely was the taste.

Finally, we sat in a café – well, outside a café – and drank thick, dark hot chocolates as we discussed the French presidential elections, British politics and the quality of hot chocolate before saying goodbye with two-cheeked kisses.

To be continued...