Returns to Doha and home.

Monday 11th Long haul travel part 1:

We woke to a Paris heatwave breaking thunderstorm and rain. Outside our hostel window the lightning crackled in sheets around the Eiffel Tower and the thunder rattled on for much of the early morning.

For Joy and me it was a mad run through the rain to the Metro and the journey to the airport. That mad dash had consequences for us much later in the day when we got back to Doha. We had thought that our tour was ending on a high note - for when we went through the final boarding gate there was a slight delay as the clerk ripped our economy tickets up and reissued us with Business class tickets from Paris to Dubai. The Business class travel has a lot to recommend it - especially the food choice and being able to stretch out and relax for the 7 hour flight. Back to the key saga. Joy had taken care of the key-ring with the apartment key for the trip. She insisted that she would take greater care than I would.

However, a woman’s handbag is not always the most secure compared to a trouser pocket or bum bag especially when she carries a fold away umbrella in the same bag and leaves all articles in the same cavity. Needless to say when Joy pulled her umbrella out of the handbag the key ring got pulled out as well. So somewhere in Paris there is a keyring with a Brass cat, a Ford car key and the key to our Doha apartment lying around waiting for someone to return it!

The result was that when we arrived at our apartment at 3.00am there was no way we could get into the flat. An urgent phone call to Steve O’Neill at 4.00am, just as the first prayer call echoed over Doha, rescued us from the humidity and heat of the Doha morning 38C and climbing to a mid day 49C. Our heartfelt thanks to Steve and Lynley for going out of their way at such an ungodly hour to help out a couple of careless and key-less travellers.

We spent the day repacking our bags, juggling the weight distribution, washing our clothes from two weeks in France, updating the blog, dropping photos onto facebook, and exhausting our hala card credit with phone calls to the family and booking the taxi for our early morning red-eye trip to the airport and the beginning of our long haul to New Zealand and a new direction for another year now that our Qatar contract opportunities have finished.

Part 2: The Red-Eye Special.... enough said.

Walking in a "World Class City" - Paris by the Seine

Sunday 11th July

Our final day in France, apart from Monday morning which will be spent getting to the airport and getting ticketed to Doha and doesn’t count, which was an excuse to not go shopping as there were no shops open and not to head off on expeditions to famous ruins, castles, stately homes or visiting famous dead people but simply relaxing and wandering along the Seine admiring the view, stopping for an occasional drink at a cafe, watching people walk by and enjoy the day.

The idea of simply relaxing into the day is quite refreshing, particularly when one is living in any “world class city” (be it Doha, Paris, Vienna, London, Amsterdam...), so I find it quite amusing to read the NZ newspapers on line to see some of the punters for the mayor of the “Super City that is the new Auckland “ proclaiming that if Auckland is to become, under their leadership, a “World class city” it will require 7 days a week trading, “party centrals” on the wharves and lots of pubs and clubs doing 20 hour service but with no decent public transport system or incentive for people use that which exists. While real world class cities, in Paris, as in London, one can move rapidly and easily around the city on a well organised public transport that takes one to the centre of a bustling, cultural centre compared to the wind swept sterility of Auckland’s CBD. As well, it is refreshing to find that the shops do close for at least one day of the week and that family groups can enjoy the streets, the waterways and cultural amenities without worrying about completing a weekend shift.

Anyway, we headed into central Paris and emerged into a relatively tourist free plaza at the Opera as 9.30 seemed to be too early for anyone to emerge from the coolness of their hotels on an already balmy Paris morning. We meandered down the Avenue d’ Opera towards the Louvre where the tourist queues were already forming to get to see the Mona Lisa and made our way along the riverbank towards Notre Dame and St. Germaine where street artists and riverside cafes welcome the browsing passerby.

We dropped down from road level to stroll along the tow path beside the Seine where illusions of pleasure dissipated in the cloying mushroom smell of stale urine left over from the Parisienne Saturday night. We found the next set of steps and climbed back to street level where we could amble without the aromas.

Once on street level I was accosted by a beggar with a great scam. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a gold ring roll past, a young woman, the scammer, picked it up and turned to me “Is this yours?” “No.” “It is gold. Is’nt it?” “Yes it has a hallmark.” “Could you take it to
the police?” “O.K.” “Could you give me money for a coco cola?”
So 2 Euros later I possess a hall-marked bronze wedding ring and the scammer has moved on down the road.

Joy and I keep walking along the road with Joy telling me I’m a mug to be taken in by such a ploy....etc...etc. when suddenly another gold wedding ring drops in front of me. This time very clumsily done by another younger, less experienced scammer. Her clumsiness was clear as one couldn’t help but see her drop the ring and then pick it up. Her direct approach received the response: “You’re too late someone else has pulled that stunt.” To which I was greeted with a stream of invective and a squint worthy of anyone “wishing the evils” on the target of the abuse.

We stopped for a coffee and a beer at a cafe and sat and ate ham sandwiches and drank in the sights for half an hour or so before strolling back along the side streets, past tourist stalls selling all sorts of gimcrackery and discounted hand-bags, to the Place d’la Opera and the metro back to the hostel. Tomorrow- Doha and then the long haul to N.Z.

Saturday in Paris

Saturday 10th July:

Paris in a summer heatwave is an experience for any tourist especially as the air sits hot and oppressive on the streets, in the restaurants and the hostel rooms waiting for that never coming breeze.

We had our first night of a Paris summer evening last night, spending it, drenched in sweat, in our hostel room to the sounds of excited German school children on a holiday trip chattering the evening away along the corridor where the only semblance of a breeze existed.

We eventually drifted off to wake to another heat wave warning, blue skied day.

Today was market day. Joy had read about Paris’ largest flea market - Marche aux Puces de St. Ouen at Porte de Clignancourt - with 2500 stalls selling everything you didn’t know you wanted from shesha pipes, not so discreetly sold in Bob Marley coloured wrapping paper with none of the arabic flavoured tobacco we smelt and saw in Doha, to ethnic clothing from all parts of the old French empire, to leather gear for any purpose and cell phones that have their carrier locks broken along with antiques to furnish your apartment in any period you could wish from Louis XVI through to 1920’s art noveaux and 1940-50s kitsch.

We headed off there and spent the morning roaming the streets and alley-ways that make up the market where I ended up buying a solid leather satchel and a pair of shoes for 75 euros. Like I said I didn’t know I wanted them until I saw them.

Sufficiently shopped out we headed towards Mont Matre and the tourist art trap that is the old village above Pigalle and Blanche, the music-hall area made famous by Toulouse LaTrouec in the late 19th century.

We wove our way through the crowds, evading scissor wielding portrait cutters, waiters huckstering for trade and rapid portraitists, admiring the commercial audacity of the place along with the history that the area is known for then headed back down the hill to Abbesses and the bustle of the seedy shopping centre that runs along the foot of the hill. Finding little of interest, we Metro stop jumped across the city back to the Hostel and the pleasure of a bottle of St Germain Merlot, a roundel of brie, salami and a selection of fruit.

This brings me to a question: “Why is it that at home, in N.Z., the fruit we buy is hard, small in size, lacking in juices and aroma?” For every nectarine, apricot or peach Joy and I have eaten here is large, edibly soft, seemingly dripping with juices and aromatically inviting. I can only presume that N.Z. picks its fruit early to allow it to ripen while being shipped thus leaving the N.Z. consumer little choice but to buy the small, juiceless, aromatically lacking, hard export rejects.

However, it is hard to beat the sheer luxury of eating and drinking while watching the passing parade and enjoying the scenery of Paris.

Paris Return

Friday 9th July - Paris

Back to Paris for three more days before the long haul trip to winter.
We booked into the Youth Hostel Leo Lagrange in Clichy for the remainder of our time in France so trained from Rouen to Paris in the morning and arrived to a 32c Paris afternoon and a two hour wait till we could dump our bags in our room, shower and prepare ourselves to spend the evening wandering the streets of the city.

In our travels we’ve used Youth Hostels in many parts of the world, usually with a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure. Our worst experience being Brisbane which had the feeling of being run down even while it was being renovated while our most pleasant have been in England and Austria. The French hostels we’ve used this time around have been variable. From the well run, well maintained and managed Rouen F.U.A.J.I. to the well worn, rough around the edges but well managed d’Artagnan FUAJI to the Brisbane equivalent in the Leo Lagrange FUAJI. Here the lift wasn’t working which meant hauling our bags up seven flights of stairs, the showers offered luke-warm water and the rooms had a distinct institutional air about them. (perhaps the Brisbane management had swapped hostels?). Anyway it is only for three nights.

There are lots of possibilities for us to contemplate doing this evening - sit and sip wine in a sidewalk cafe, walk through the neon lit streets of Mont Matre, amble down the Champs Elysees, wander through the Tuileries or do we take in a cemetery to gaze at famous dead people? Ah.. such are the choices we have as tourists.

Joy has decided that we discover a flea-market in de Clignancourt on Saturday morning which will probably bring us back via Mont Matre depending on the state of the feet and the heat of the day. As Paris doesn’t do air conditioning to the degree that Doha does this means that rooms are only as cool as the breeze may dictate. The hostel lounge area is probably a mild 28c compared to the outside temperature of 32c. Back in Doha the air con would have been set at 19c or, as one of the staff at ABHSS favoured - 16c! I can only conclude we’ve been spoilt and are now suffering for that.

One of our colleagues asked what the reaction was in France when their team got knocked out of the FIFAWC and the reaction to the final between Spain and Holland. As far as I can tell from the papers and TV is that on the news front it appeared that an octopus was more intelligent than the sports pundits, the money speculators and other gamblers when it came to picking the outcome of the soccer world cup. The humour of this has had some mention of French TV before the cameras switch to the more important sports news - the Tour d’France and then to the usual list of bombings and tensions in Pakistan and Afghanistan before switching to domestic politics and issues.

There seems to be a more balanced perspective between issues and sport compared to the hysteria generated by the media in the UK and, from my reading of the online N.Z. Herald where sport appears to have taken precedence over substance... all I can see consuming NZ news appears to be “where will the P.M. and the Minister for Rugby hold a massive “piss up” while the RWC is on in Auckland.” Hardly the sort of news coverage one wants to return home to.

Monet's Garden - Giverny

Thursday 8th July
Today was a chance for Joy to experience one more of her desired destinations - Monet’s garden at Giverny.

We took the highly efficient train system to Vernon where we boarded a local bus, driven by a woman who looked as though she was modeling for a fashion magazine - complete in flowing chiffon dress, high heels and jewelry. This dress sense we discovered later appeared to be standard as the woman driving the afternoon bus was just as well dressed but with higher heels!

The bus delivered us to Giverny and Monet’s house and garden where we joined the swarms of other tourists queueing to pay homage to the great impressionist. The environs of the estate were lush with willows and other majestic trees growing along a stream whose waters were dimpled by iridescent blue dragonflies dipping onto the surface. A bust of Monet stood among the trees patiently modeling for the many tourists posing beside him.

We made our way into the village and, after queueing, into the grounds of his house and the fabled gardens and lily pond. The house, which is seemingly only one room wide, runs along the edge of the garden so that every room gets the vista Monet obviously aspired to. The gardens were bustling with colour - purple lavenders, red and white pansies, pink and yellow hollyhocks and roses of different shades of reds. The place was an obvious inspiration for any artist without any other source of model.

The house was full of 19th century Japanese prints with every wall covered in them. These prints and the 19th century fascination with Japan had a big influence on Monet and his fellow Impressionists and judging from the sheer number of prints Monet had become quite a collector over his lifetime.

From here we followed the paths to the Lily pond - the inspiration for Monet’s classic paintings. Here, too, the colours, the interplay of light and shade from the trees and bamboos on the water in the pond, could be seen as Monet probably did as he painted the huge canvases of the water-lilies in his garden.

Joy was obviously inspired as she commented, while taking photographs, that this was the highlight of the trip for her. It will be interesting to see which of her photos of the gardens will appear in her paintings.

We took the opportunity to wander through the Impressionist Museum in the village. Here an American Foundation has assembled a collection of works from the French and American Impressionists who lived and worked in the area until the outbreak of W.W.II.

The gallery was playing host to a couple of groups of school children on a holiday programme - 6 to 10 year olds - who were being given art appreciation lessons by two very enthusiastic and informed art guides. We watched and listened as these children were quick to offer answers to the questions raised by the guides about the pictures they were being shown. There was no hint of boredom of lack of interest evident among them.

From here we walked through the village to the local church yard to view the Monet family grave site then turned and ambled past the local bars and art galleries to the bus and the return to Rouen.

Rouen and the Impressionists

6th July Rouen and beyond.

Checked out of the Hostel by 8.30 and headed off to the rail station for the trip to Rouen. The train was full of tourists heading to Giverny to walk through Monet’s garden and home and pay homage to the Impressionists and to gaze on the scenes that dominated the paintings of his later years. A very vocal Tour Guide, Australian judging from his accent, was organising a group of youthful art students into some sort of order for when they arrived at the station and the walk to the gardens. His loud explanations and descriptions kept our interest until they all spilled out of the carriage at Vernon.

We booked into the very new hostel on the out-skirts of town for three nights. The hostel has a strict no entry between 12.00 pm and 5.00pm policy so we ended up exploring the historic city and relaxing over tea and a beer at a cafe.

Rouen has preserved its medieval architecture which gives the city an atmosphere that has all but disappeared in bigger, more bustling centres.

We wandered the streets and poked around the Cathedral Notre Dame and the environs. The Cathedral was bombed during W.W II and has required extensive renovations in order to restore the building to its former glory. There are still areas around the Cathedral environs being restored today.

The streets are full of timbered 16th century houses, their street levels now shops and restaurants, with window boxes and fretwork decorating the frontages.
The main street is dominated by the Gros-Horloge, a gilded, ornate, large, one handed town clock that juts out over the bustling cobbled street that leads to the Cathedral.
The Cathedral holds the bones of Richard the Lionheart, the Cardinals of Amboise and Louis de Breze ,the husband of Henri II’s mistress Diane De Poiters as well as chapels devoted to local saints who include, among their illustrious group, Joan d’Arc who was tried, convicted and executed here in 1431.

Wednesday 7th July:
The Art Gallery has an exhibition of Impressionist paintings as well as works by Carrivagio and other earlier painters which we went to see on Wednesday as we reasoned we’d not get the opportunity to experience such an exhibition back home in N.Z.

What was noticeable was the number of people, of all ages and backgrounds, who were avidly reading the information boards, exploring each painting, pointing out places they knew and identified and having animated conversations about the works as they moved through the gallery. Perhaps it might have something to do with the accessibility of the exhibition - admission was 9 Euros with reductions available for students and job-seekers as well as local residents. To see such an exhibition in N.Z. would mean an admission price well over $50.00 and probably only exhibited in one city under intense security.

Anyway, the Art Gallery had collected 130 paintings by the Impressionists, sourced from around the world, as an exhibition to celebrate the importance of Rouen in artistic history. On show were paintings by Monet, Gauguin, Pissarro, Corot,Turner, Pinchon and others who had all, at some time, settled and painted scenes of the city and its environs.

We joined the queue and made our way into the already thronged gallery where we were greeted by three enormous canvases that I had only ever read about. The most famous being that of the members of the French Academy of Arts which has portraits of over 100 of the Academy’s members all engaged in animated discussion about Arts. Once past these epic pieces we entered the exhibition itself. We were guided through the development of the Impressionist school from Paul Huet and Corot who had begun to experiment with the effects of light on the motif of the scene to works by Turner and eventually Monet and Pissarro with their canvases exploring the effects of light on the buildings of the city.

Pride of place was given to the series of studies of the facade of the Cathedral that Monet had executed over his time in Rouen. The studies reduced the facade to a vague form with its structure being suggested by the interplay of light and shade depending on the season or time of day Monet had chosen to paint the scene. One could sense the effect such paintings would have had on the classicist school of art more favoured by society at the time when one could see the paintings across a complete wall of the gallery and thus understand what Monet was trying to do.

Joy was particularly taken by a series of paintings of people on the bridges of Rouen on a wet and windy evening in which the mood of the day was shown in the light, shade and reflections the artist had captured on his canvases.

From the Gallery we headed off to explore more of the history of the city. Joy found the execution spot of Joan d’Arc in the square where the Church in Joan’s name has been built. The buildings around the site probably look much as they did when the crowds gathered to watch her execution at the stake in 1431.

From there we poked around the streets, peered into magnificent examples of gothic architecture to marvel at the way the builders had pushed the boundaries of stone masonry to create such tall, airy and light buildings using the most basic of machinery. Nearly all the gothic churches in Rouen are in the process of restoration and reconstruction as the city repairs the ravages of War, of time and nature as the sandstone the churches are built of has weathered and eroded badly over the centuries.

Versailles Lock-out

Monday 5th July:

This was the day to satisfy one of Joy’s dreams - a visit to Versailles and a tour of the rooms. We headed off early so we could get to Versailles and avoid the queues which proved to be pointless as the Palace was closed to the public on Mondays although we were free to wander through the 800 hectares of gardens if we wished. So we missed out on touring the 700 rooms, walking up and down the 67 staircases and gazing at the 6300 paintings, 2100 sculptures and statues, 15000 engravings and 5000 objet d’art that make up the interior. Instead we were offered the chance to count the 2153 windows, 352 chimneys, the 50 fountains and 620 fountain nozzles if we had continued to walk through the gardens.

After gazing at the buildings through the golden gates and acknowledging that we were one of the 2.6 million visitors who wouldn’t make it inside the Palace this year and cursing the fact that 4.3 million others would we walked into the village beside the Palace in search of a coffee only to find that it was closed in sympathy with the Palace.

Back in Paris Joy lost no time in mounting an exploratory assault on Galleries Lafayette while I headed off to explore the streets around the Opera. I stumbled upon the Pinacotheque de Paris and an exhibition of works by Evard Munch so took the opportunity to check out the works of a painter whose reputation seems to have been based on “The Scream” alone.

The exhibition quickly dis-spelled the belief that the tortured work that is “The Scream” was typical of the artist for his work was finely executed and obviously done by a skillful master of the pen.

Tomorrow we will head off to Rouen with the idea of staying there for several days and doing day trips out to the places Joy has ticked off as her “must sees” this trip.

The Louvre and Moulin Rouge

Sunday 4th July:

The day dawned fine and sunny which lifted our spirits considerably after Saturday’s rain so we set off early for central Paris with twin objectives.. taking the Hop On Off bus for a tour of the city’s major sights and a visit to the Louvre. The Louvre, and all of Paris’ museums and Art Galleries, was free being the first Sunday of the month which made the effort more worthwhile.

We hopped on the Tour Bus at The Opera and headed off to see the sights of Paris. The last time Joy and I were here the city was consumed by the Diana & Dodi car crash so the tunnel under the Seine had become a place of pilgrimage with flowers and graffiti decorating the entrance. Now, there is no mention, no sign indicating that the tragedy had happened. History is such a hard mistress!

The Bus took us along the Champs Elysees, which was being dressed for the July 14th parades, to the Arc d’Triumph, past the Grand Palace then through the streets to the Trocadero and the Eiffel Tower. Here we posed for the obligatory photographs for family.

We swept past the Military College and the Army museum and the National Assembly to the Louvre. Here we queued for two hours to get into the building then we mingled with the swarms of people turning, swirling and questing their ways around the museum. Joy & I headed for the second floor and the German, French, Dutch and Flemish paintings then made our way through the Richelieu wing and the exhibition of works from the July Monarchy, Restoration and Renaissance periods and pieces from the Napoleonic era to the the halls of objet d’art from the 5th to 19th century and out into the sunlight under the Pyramid and into the late afternoon Paris traffic.

On board the tour bus again we drove to the Ile de la Cite and stopped outside the Notre Dame Cathedral where the queues stretched across the courtyards and down alley ways as every tourist and Parisienne took advantage of the first Sunday of the month free access to museums and historic places. Joy & I opted for a coffee in a street cafe to watch the streams of tourists swirl by as we had spent several hours in the cathedral when we first visited Paris in 1997. I have a firm resolve to scan my older pictures and mix them into my new album of our trip when we get back to New Zealand and a more settled life again.

Back to the Place d’Opera and the Hostel for a brief rest before meeting up with Noeline and Durhan in Mont Marte for a drink and a late evening show at the Moulin Rouge.

We made our way to Blanche metro to emerge at 8.30 into the bustling red light area that is Pigalle. The streets were already busy with disco goers and hopeful voyeurs all responding to the constant flicker of neon and the blandishments of the door keepers. We, finding that food was more important, headed up the hill towards Mont Marte in search of a restaurant before heading back to Moulin Rouge to meet up with our friends.

We’d reserved tickets for the 11.00pm revue show but, even so, we had to join a queue that stretched along the street, blocking shop fronts, for almost two blocks, waiting for the 9.00pm show to finish and the admission of we punters for the last show of the night.

Once seated at our table, which was so close to the stage that we were constantly whacked with feathers or other costume pieces as the dancers pranced their way onto the stage, we were in a scene reminiscent of a Toulouse Lautrec painting of the interior of the music hall. Here were people seated around tables, clutching glasses of wine, lit by dim red lamps all waiting for the curtains to open and the show to begin.

The show started with an energetic song & dance number which introduced the cast and hinted at the style of costumes and the potential exposure of skin we’d see as the evening progressed.

Seated as close as we were to the stage the illusion of nudity, the element of titillation that such shows are built on, was quickly knocked into subdued reality as every dancer was wearing flesh coloured stockings under every seemingly skimpy outfit. Never the less the show ran through at a fast clip with no let up for the full two hours. The dancers coming on in briefer and, yet more concealing, costumes in a series of items that became tableaux of 19th - 20th century male fantasies - of Eastern princesses in exotic costume, their breasts exposed, being fought over by both Indian Rajahs and English Officer, of Amazonian pirates, their breasts exposed, fighting off and eventually succumbing to the strong, gallant crew of the English / French vessels and of an exotic woman, her breasts exposed, opting to escape the dastardly male throwing herself into a tank full of snakes where she wrestled them into freudian submission to emerge into the welcoming arms of the only honorable man present. This act was followed by a circus of women, their breasts exposed, presented themselves acrobatically to the audience before the grand finale of the be-feathered cast singing and can-canning a farewell to the audience and the illusion of the dance-hall.

The tableaux were interspersed with acts from a juggler, a strong man team in which the man supported the woman in a combination of physical strength and balancing and a ventriloquist whose routine, which Joy reckoned was the high light of the evening, evoked a great deal of laughter.

We parted ways with our friends, who were heading off to explore northern France, and got back to the hostel around 2.00am.

Paris - France 2-12th July 2010

FRANCE - July 2-12th 2010.

With the end of the Qatar contract the staff spread themselves across the world - from Japan to Malaysia to Europe to Africa to Turkey and returns to Australia and New Zealand our friends have packed up a left Qatar.

For some the lack of commitment from Qatar to a further year of the contract has meant a decision to go back to N.Z. For others, like us, it has meant sending out CVs to different employers seeking work on their contracts in other parts of the Middle East. I’ve got an application and the possibility of a job in Oman as a Teacher Trainer and applications out for positions in Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia as well as the fall back position of work in the U.K. All of which will resolve itself mid August as the companies assess their needs and our CVs in the quest to create efficient teams.

In the meantime we are making the most of living in the Middle East to go travelling, something we’d nearly all have to do several years of heavy saving to do so that we could be away from home for an extended period to make the journey worthwhile.

This year Joy and I have headed to France before returning to New Zealand to celebrate, belatedly, Joy’s birthday with family and friends.

On Friday we flew out of Doha with Lynne and Brian Thomas who were on their way to Italy and on to Paris in what seemed to be an endless trip across North Africa and across Italy and Germany. Seven and a bit hours and yet it felt longer than our more regular 23 hour jaunts to and from N.Z.!!

We were last in France in 1997-98 when we did our first OE. Our trip, this time, is meant to take us to explore Northern France after seeing some of the sights of Paris we didn’t get to in our first visit.

We arrived, tired and jaded, early evening but had to wait for some time until our pre-hired shuttle arrived to take us to the D’Artagnan Youth Hostel and our first night in Paris. Once booked in we flaked out in what felt to be a hotter night than any we’d experienced in Doha.

Saturday 3rd July:
The next day Joy and I headed off to take in the sights of Paris. This proved to be optimistic as when we emerged from the Metro Paris was under water as the clouds burst to welcome us desert dwellers to the more temperate climate of Europe. This put a dampener on our plans to tour Paris by open topped bus and led us to Joy’s favourite fall back position - visit a shopping mall. Thus we ended up in the La Fayette Department Store by the Opera House.

After poking around the different floors of this huge souq for three hours or more we ventured out into the rain soaked streets with the semi-formed idea of going towards the Seine and the Louvre area on a window shopping punctuated stroll only to put that idea on the instant back burner when we met up with two of our Cognition colleagues, Noeline and Dhuran, who were ambling through the bargain hunting crowds outside the store looking for an electronics store to solve their iphone roaming access problems.

As Dhuran exclaimed the odds on us meeting up in Paris without any pre-arranged decision must be incredibly long as we’re staying in different parts of the city and had no indication of each other’s plans on the day.

We ended up having coffee in a sidewalk cafe and, because I was having the same i phone issue, heading off together to seek a solution to our problems which a visit to the Apple store by the Opera very soon resolved for us.

We parted ways with the understanding that we’d meet up on Sunday near the Louvre and plan a night out at the Moulin Rouge or Folle Berges before we all moved on to tour different parts of France.

While Joy darted in and out of shops all decorated with huge SALE signs I sat on the steps of the Opera House or leaned against walls taking photographs of tourists doing touristy things like photographing each other against monuments or hunting for bargains.

We still have to plan how we fit in visits to Versailles and Fountainbleu before heading to Northern France and back to Paris by the 11th.