One experience I'm not eager to repeat is catching the Eurostar underneath the Channel. It was very claustrophobic and reminded me horribly of being inside the Great Pyramid where you wonder whether all the re-breathed oxygen is ever going to be enough to go round.
The Beauvoir Hotel in Paris, which of course I selected on the basis of its name, didn't turn out to be at all bad, in spite of its situation at the bleaker end of the Boulevard St Michel. It sits right above Port Royal on the RER, which took me everywhere I wanted to go, including directly from the Gare du Nord and much more easily than if I'd used the Metro.
It's also very close to the Catacombes, a place I've considered visiting for years but never quite wanted to enough. This might be as close as I ever get.
The Beauvoir didn't seem to have any definable connection with Simone de, although I did wonder if the peculiar sausage roll pillow might be a leftover from some pre-war sleeping arrangement. Other than that the Beavoir also had CNN so I gulped down a bit more of the credit crunch.
Being in Paris is always the same for me, whichever boulevard or avenue I happen to be on. The trees are the only thing that make it different. At the moment the trees are Autumnal, although the day temperature was not particularly cold, especially encased in the splendid Milanese fur.
On Sunday I had lunch with various people I've got to know over the years at St George's (rue August Vacquerie, handily close to Charles de Gaulle Etoille and the Arc de Triomphe). Turning up intermittently has made me into a regular in some way and generally triggers off the same 'Australian' jokes I've now been hearing from our English cousins since the 70s. These jokes generally turn upon our collective single-figure IQ and frightful vowels. It's tempting to go along with all this in deference to the great Sir Les and Dame Edna, but I did refuse to repeat a joke about bison, pointing out that I personally do know how to pronounce the word 'basin'.
It was good to return to the Tuscan sun but not to my Florentine cough. The choice has been stark - being cold and damp, or coughing non-stop. On consideration coughing has my vote. And I'm hoping to shed it back into the pollution it came from. But it didn't stop me from eating lots more extremely good food, listening to a gypsy band, or walking up the steps to San Mineato, the monastery which overlooks Florence and from which I was able to take some parting shots:
And the walk back into the Centre, which took surprisingly little time, brought us along the banks of the Arno. I finally crossed the Ponte Vecchio, and visited Santa Croce, the two things I didn't want not to have done.
So now it's back to 'Terminus' for an extended visit and then to my own large warm house where I hope finally to vanquish my cough.
