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I arrived home on  schedule on Saturday evening.

My trial of Vietnam Airlines was a success. They were on time and their service was good. I donot think the service was quite as good as some of the European Airlines I have flown with in the past few years, but the price difference ( My business class  fare was about 2./3 the next cheapest reasonable airline) was significant.   The timing of their  return flights from Europe  leave you with a day in Hanoi. I was met at the airport, taken to a hotel, fed ( very average food) ( b, l and d) and taken on a tour of Hanoi by a delightful young lady who quickly came up with an alternative when I told her I did not want to go to the mainsites - I have seen HCM's mausoleum etc . We spent a very pleasant few hours wandering around the Museum of Ethnology. This housed many exhibitions of various ethnic groups living in Vietnam and in the grounds examples of many different houses. The guide offered to take a photo of me climbing the steps of the house below. I declined the photo but did climb the steps. You can just see 2 people underneath the house to give you an idea of scale. It is a Bahnar communal house.

Last day in Paris

Last day for this trip.

I just wandered  the streets around here. I had a few errands. I sat for an hour over my coffee and croissant, then an hour over my beef bouguignon,  then an hour over my cup of tea and little pastry.

Tomorrow I leave in the morning for the airport. 

Odds and ends in the 7th.

This morning I went by train to Neuilly, a suburb just outside the Periferique to the west of central Paris.  I walked around a bit then caught a bus to the Champs de Mars, another of the big open spaces in Paris. I walked aound for  a bit, then walked along Rue de Grenelle to see if I could decide where the elegant hedgehog lived. I stopped for a bit in a cafe in Rue Cler, a street full of cafes and nice food shops, a bit like rue Montorgueil. I walked on to an old Lutheran church that had a nice little garden that I had read about. Trouble was the gate was locked.

I continued along rue de Grenelle  and then stopped a little way off it at a shop called Dreyolle. I have never been anywhere like it. It is a taxidermy shop. My favourite was a lion, for 32,000 Euros. They get dead animals from zoos and other places, stuff them and sell them.  There were all sorts of things for sale. There was a giraffe for 20,000, down to some ants for E5. I saw people buying butterflies and beetles. No red-back spiders for sale.

 I walked  to a place for lunch. I wasnot going to have desert but realised I had had no icecream this trip. A few weekends ago, when it first warmed up, before it got cold again a few days ago, all the cafes had their icecream freezers out on the pavement and were doing a brisk trade in icecream cones. I could not go home without havig some icecream.

I walked home by a rather more circuitous route than I had planned, but did not care.

Bon Dimanche and windy, rainy Monday

About 12 years ago when I was in Italy on my own I first heard ocassionally , in the back streets, and mainly the elderly, wishing each other ' buon domenica' i.e good Sunday. - both as a greeting and a parting. How nice, I thought, OK, maybe in our secular society a bit out-dated but so what. I have never heard it in Frnace.

Yesterday, as I was leaving the bar after sitting over my coffee and a croissant for an hour, the lady wished me 'Bon dimanche'.  I was delighteed and tried to explain that I had heard it in Italy ( she and her husband know I sometime use Italian words instead of French. He certaily understands Italian, I have heard him talking to other customers in Italian)  I think they undertand.

Next I knew  when  I gave the guy who stands near my front door  a coin, as I usually do each day, he wished me 'bon dimanche' .

In the evening I went to an organ recital in a church 1 km away. The big church was  almost  packed.  For 45 min I just sat and listened to the music.

Today was very very windy and intermittently rainy.  I think the wind rattled my brain. I could not settle to much so didnot try.  I did explore the route I would take to get to the train station to get to the airport on Thursday. The reverse of my arrival will not work because there was an up escalator from the below ground train line to the ground, but there is no down escalator. I did find  a pokey lift which rattled and wheezed, but it worked. Plan B is not attractive. 

Saturday - doing very little...

...of interest to anyone.

I walked to the wool shop where I bought the 109 small balls, all different colours , several weeks ago.  I have decided what I will make and need more of 1 colour. Then I wandered up and down Montorgueil Street - known for its cafes and food shops, chose somewhere for lunch, ate and came back here.

Tomorrow, who knows, but I will not bore anyone if I have no details.

Pompidou centre

On my third attempt at visiting this building I went in.  I decided last night to buy a ticket on line to save time in the queue, but the system got confused with where I was from and wanted me to pay in English pounds and would not let me pay in Euros. Never mind.  It was a cold drizzly day which may have put some people off. I did not wait long and what is more impressive, I was quite calm and not agitated in the queue. The holiday must be doing me some good.

The blurb claims that they have the largest collection of modern ( 1905 to 1965) art in Europe which may be true.  I enjoyed seeing many of my favourite painters. There were several interesting Chagalls, a Pollock which had some recognisable forms in it and several Mondrians.  Plus others. The blurb also claims to have the largest collection of contemporary art ( 1960's to prsent) .  A cynic might say that is because no one else wants it. Most of the stuff I did not get at all.  Why watch a video in a small room of someone wrapping fishing line around their nose? There was one interesting installation in a room made up of  a sort of large net at head height  made out of hundreds and hundreds of personal headphones. There were interesting shadows on the floor. As you moved around, there was an eerie sound. But why?

It was an easy decision to stop for lunch. I dined in style in the fancy restaurant at the top of the building with a lovely view over Paris. Mainly because I was there and I could not be bothered finding my way downstairs to the other place. It was a no alcohol and no desert day!   My salmon, one of the cheaper dishes, was delicious.

There is currently an exhibition of Vasarely's work. I did not recognise his name, but recognised some of the works. He makes all sorts of graphic patterns with different colours.  I enjoyed looking at them, but some , mainly the circular ones, bothered me  - disturbed my vision and made me feel vaguely queasy, so I didnot stay long.

Because I knew that the yarn  I bought  several weeks ago would not fit into my suitcase, I bought another bag.  So I had no qualms today about buying myself a jigsaw - a stylised map of Paris. Not the brand I saw before that was hand made of wood with a price which reflected the craftmanship.

I was going to walk to another area to potter but decided I could not be bothered and made my way back to my apartment , without reference  to a map, just waking in the rough direction and making a few corrections - not all the streets are in a rectangular grid.

I forgot - The Pompidou centre is new - built in the 1970's it was quite contraversial because it built as an inside-out bulding. Its structural system, mechanical systems, and circulation stuff are exposed on the outside of the building. All the pipes are colour coded = green for plumbing, blue for climate control etc. Renzo Piano was one of the team that designed it.  You got good views from the escalator on the outside of the building.