Pierre

And so our Paris sojourn drew to a close...

We returned to our favourite boulangerie for our breakfast pastries and the really nice woman in there recognised us. I think our French-speaking confidence has improved immensely over the past few days (although Spokes has always been braver than I have) and everyone we've met in shops, restaurants and galleries or asked directions from in the street has been so friendly and helpful (with the exception of the grumpy staff in a certain salon de thé... But maybe they were just having a bad day!). We've loved the place, the people, our little "appartement romantique" and the weather and although vegetarian food has remained hard to come by we've loved the baguettes - and we made sure to buy plenty for our journey home!

A brief side note. One thing we've noticed about Paris is that it has more pharmacies per capita than anywhere else we can think of. There seems to be one on every street, sometimes more than one! What can it mean?

Having breakfasted on our balcony for the final time (no further news of the man on the roof...), we tidied, packed and awaited the arrival of landlord Pierre to whom we chatted about our holiday highlights before bidding him a fond farewell and making our way back to the Gare du Nord where we discovered a whole street of Indian restaurants many of which were vegetarian (rather like Drummond Street at Euston) but don't feature in the guidebooks we had... Doh!!

The journey home was uneventful and although it's nice to be back in many ways, I think we'll pine for Paris for some time to come...

"...the roar of cars
And the lulling of the café bars
The sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine
Lord, I don't know if I'll ever be back again."

I think I will though!