Today I start my travels from Paris through Provence and the Cote d’Azur to Venice. It’s a bit exciting!
I’m sitting in my tiny room on the fourth (top) floor of a building in Paris watching the sun rise over the buildings to my left. The stairs lean in towards the middle and walking down them last night felt like I was about to be pulled into a vortex of the Dr Who kind. In the middle of the staircase there is generally a void – there certainly would have been when the building was built – now there is a little cabinet that you enter through an ordinary door and it whisks you up or down the building. Except not to the fourth floor – it only goes as far as the third. Lugging my bag up the one extra flight made me very thankful that the lift was there at all.
I had crepes for dinner last night at Les Embruns. I ordered La Campagnarde and moments later what looked like a brown paper bag with lumps in it appeared in front of me. It was square and the corners hung over the edge of the plate. It was a restaurant specialising in buckwheat pancakes, and the filling was inside – I discovered upon reaching the centre that the lumps were in fact mushrooms. On my bill there is one thing that took me a moment to work out. 1 The and it cost 3.20 Euro. Ah, tea. I’m getting used to drinking it black.
I stayed awake till 9:30 then lay down and fell instantly asleep. It was after 7 when I woke up this morning. I’m ready to face the day now: a fast train to Avignon.
First class all the way!
Musings from the cold 