Summer is ready when you are

It turns out that trains to Paris are only sophisticated when they’re not cancelled and when you don’t end up doing a Tour de Netherlands to try and score an international train with some space to take you to Brussels before begging a ride on yet another train to France. Well, I suppose all good things are worth fighting for and Paris certainly made up for the difficulties in getting there.

Our hard work was rewarded by a glorious show of greenery. All the trees there are already proudly displaying their full leaves whereas here they’ve just begun to show their heads. Can’t blame them really what with our yo-yo weather.

So I walked the length and breadth of the city taking it all in between munching on scrummy French food and Kirs galore.  Musée d’Orsay became my favourite museum in the world. Not just because of their impressive collection of art or even the stunning building but the fact that ‘kids’ up to thirty years old get a reduced rate. It’s been years since I’ve been in an age category that benefited me – I felt like Le Spring Chicken and bounced about the museum in my newly discovered youth.

Saturday night saw me on my own in the big city as my travelling companion developed a questionable attachment to the hotel room. It’s notable how often I’ve needed to rely on my own company recently – a syndrome of singledom I suppose. Having thus lost my interpreter and considering that French waiters don’t really believe I’m vegetarian and seem hell bent on hiding little surprise cubes of pig under salad leaves I thought it safer to have a more liquid evening meal. This of course led to a most …. interesting series of events. Armed with only a map and a whole lot of Dutch Courage I marched about town trying to find the friendliest locals in the cosiest pubs. It’s amazing how social one can be armed with gallons of beer and the realisation that you don’t live there and never have to see anyone again. I kept on returning to the bar to order more drinks under the pretence of perfecting how to do it in French. This also made the irritating tasks of direction and map reading close to impossible. Strategies such as to keep walking in a straight line (easier said than done at 4am) with the hope that the hotel would miraculaously appear proved not to be the wisest. I will be eternally grateful to the taxi driver who took pity on me and brought me safely back to the hotel in the wee small hours.

The humungous hangover on Sunday morning was softened wonderfully by a lazy brunch with the most charming of everyone I had met the evening before. Strolling around Paris with him in the glorious sunshine was the perfect close to the weekend. I am definitely ready for Summer.