Our apartment is at 4 rue Sainte Sulpice, right in the heart of just about everything. Our first day, quietish, local exploration, SIM cards.
Our first night - Le Comptoir: shared pate (of course!) and smoked chicken salad. Vin Blanc and rouge and an Armagnac to help the sleep ... Football excitement. People, constant movement, all colours, shapes, languages (but mainly French). We had fun trying our French: to English speaking people!
Suzanna had a “Paris makes me want take up smoking again - it has this Gauloise appeal” moment - no!

A night at the Opéra Bastille: La Trouvere (the Troubadour). A Verdi Opéra, fairly silly plot but the voices were magnificent. The scenery so simple: a series of square tubes that rose out of the floor to form columns or rose higher with lights in their base as a nighttime scene, and a mirror (not a clear one) across the back so that it looked like a lot of soldiers. That was it. Everyone appreciative of the wonderful voices, and the choruses. Very few people dressed up - jeans, shorts: women generally looked better dressed. All ages of people. Had a glass of Tattinger for the occasion. We left quickly and got a cab - hate to think of the schemozzle if we had waited for all of the curtain calls.
And a very late dinner at our fav - just superb.

Big explore today, Sunday. A market down the road - oh dear, just so many choices: waiting until our return. Then walked and walked, over to Hotel de Ville, the Maria’s, and did more than our 10,000 steps (a lot as we haven’t been able to ramp it up before we left) - bought 5 pairs of shoes for Suzanna from a fav place that has previously had our custom: yes, excessive but well priced when you average them out at 20 euro a pair.

In the late afternoon we walked back to Shakespeare and Co - an iconic bookshop near Notre Dame. Sunday’s at 4 they have poetry readings ... and what the woman who runs it calls “a tea party”. In a small room lined with poetry books of all sorts, she mixed a lemon cordial (too hot for tea) and told stories. A dozen of us sat and some read their own or someone else’s poetry. An American woman had written a poem about her husband’s giving up his red Alpha sports car after the arrival of their first child - a love poem. He said later a photograph of the car with the poem is on the wall at home. There were young people, Americans, late teens just finished high school - great to see an interest

James quoted Ozymandias, his rendition so moving. He will read one of his own next time. He’s writing a lot, stimulated by so much.

Today, last day before ‘the big trip’. Pedicure, manicure and hair cut for me. James found some beautiful knives.

The photos are things that took our fancy, in no particular order. The dot on the map our apartment. The restaurant our favourite (for now!).