Friday.

Today, again, I felt off colour so, after talking to Noel briefly, ( using mobile data)  I went for breakfast at the same place as yesterday. Then wandered through more back streets, seeing more quirky things, to the main covered markets . I wandered around the stalls, buying bits and pieces that should do me a few days, or not, it was less than a kilometre away. I had time to fill before the tourist bureau opened at 10 ( most of the shops opening time). I went into a cafe and was pleased that the sentence in French came out of my mouth sufficiently OK to be understood  - I would like  a coffee please, but first may I use your toilet.? Or maybe it was my silver hair and faint look of desperation amongst the wrinkles that was understod.

Again i got Tomiko at the tourist bureau. A 1 in 4 chance. I booked on an English speaking tour for tomorrow afternoon and got some bus timetables. Next stop was a wool shop. The lady had no other customers and we talked a lot about all sorts of things. I have not decided what to make. Then it was lunch time. I had no clear plan but just walked back to my apartment and then decided to just have 1 course next door at Cinq.  I was greeted with a hand shake, as I had observed 2 days ago was the custom for people who were repeats. That was nice. I just had 1 course, no desert, no wine, very restrained of me. 

When i got back from lunch I discovered that both my phone and tablet could connect to the internet.  So I could catch up on stuff.

For afternoon  tea I have just had a piece of fougass that I bought  at the markets earlier. It is a local thing, a cross between flat bread and pastry with a smear of meat paste like stuff in the middle. Or other fillings are possible.  And a biscuit that I bought somewhere else in the market. Dinner shortly will be a quiche like thing and a little dome shaped bit of something that comes from a nearby town, but I have forgotten the name. 

Thursday 30 March

It is now Friday afternoon and I am struggling to remember what happened yesterday. 

When i was in Paris, it was my custom , and that of many others, to go to a corner bar for  my morning cup of coffee and a croissant. On Wednesday i had problems.  Yesterday i went to the bar about 5 doors away. Again they had coffee but no croissants. I had coffee and then went to a place about 500m away that had been suggested to me. It was run by 2 women and felt more like a tearoom than a local bar, but clearly, I decided while watching the people come and go, served the same purpose. Lots of glass, nice tables, fresh flowers, locals greeting locals and others. The lunch menu lunch looks interesting too. The coffee and croissant were  good. Then I went back to my apartment. My 3 kids ( and the odd grandchild or 3) and me often get together on Thursday night on Zoom. I had not spoken to Wendy since she finished about 3 1/2 weeks of army boot camp.

I have felt for the last day or so that i have been coming down with a cold ( quite common for me when i go away on holiday). I was not feeling great when i set off looking for lunch. I went to a street with lots of restaurants.  The first 2 were over full. No thanks. The third's menu outside looked fancier than i had planned but i thought why not?  It was almost full, but quiet. In a sort of  cave like room with exposed light coloured brick walls. I had the set menu. Like the day before, there were lots of unfamiliar terms . The first course was a sort of savoury creme brulee, then the second was a piece of a sting ray. Quite nice. Slightly funny texture. Then i had a mini bombe Alaska. A hollow hemisphere of meringue filled with berries topped with a matching dome of icecream. All quite small , the size of a small apple.

The main thing I wanted to do in the day was go to the Cathedral of Saint Pierre. It is a lovely Gothic building. The inside was interesting. The buttresses formed the dividers between the side chapels. There was a huge ornate set of organ pipes. I might go to the main church service on easter day . Hopefully they will use the organ. There are not many obvious tourists around . There were 2 couples in the church when I was there ( it is only open to visitors in the afternoon) and they were all French. 

. 

I spent a lot of time through the day sifting through the information I had got from the tourism bureau and trying to sort out why I couldnot get onto the internet with my tablet but could sometimes with my phone. Dinner was rice crackers and an avocado hummus mixture. Very nice.

Wednesday . Random people

Today's  aim was to have a wander , go to the tourist bureau, finish the ends of yesterday and vaguely outline my  weeks)  About half achieved. The great thing is that I have had a smile on my face and the right attitude, well most of the day , right up to a few hours or so ago when for some reason I could not post the blog entry about the rest of Tuesday properly. I had to type it on my tablet, emai it  to myself, published it on my phone, where it appears to have worked, but it doesnot appear on my tablet as being published, so who knows.

There is a bar/Cafe about 5 doors away from me. It supposedly opens at 7.0 each day. Not this morning.  There is no thing else obvious near me. I looked at Google maps and decided I could not be bothered and just walked in the general direction of some shops along a mainish, but not too big, road.  This is unusual for me. I don't do ' random' very well.  I past several butchers, quite a few pastry shops selling delicious looking croissants but not the corner local French bar style. Quite a few fruit and veg shops. Finally I found a bar, with some tables inide and out and 2 men talking to the barman. I went in but saw no sign of croissants. I asked and then followed a lovely conversation that started with the fact that my eyes were watering from the cold, I was not crying ( they were lovely and quickly got the hang of talking slowly to me.)  . They said I should go to a pastry shop, I said i wanted a coffee with my croissant. After a quick interchange between the 3 of them which I could not follow, the barman told me to go and buy a croissant and bring it back and eat it there with my coffee. Which I did. I watched the news ( I can usually get the gist of the subtitles. I have no TV)  replied bonjour to several locals who came in and greeted me. Then I can back here. I got almost back to my apartment door and I stopped to say goodmorning to a guy who was opening the door to a restaurant 2 doors away from my apartment. I had looked at the menu while I was waiting for the guy who met me yesterday afternoon to let me into the apartment. The guy was quite chatty and I asked him some questions about some of the food. 

Soon after, i set off after to walk through the old town ( the usual narrow, twisty cobbled streets, but not as high a proportion aimed at tourists as is often the case). In I the direction of the tourist bureau. I stopped to look at a lovely display of little sweet cakes and was just taking a photo of an inscription in the window. It said " le gout du sucre sans les inconvenients"  ( I cannot be bothered with accents) . The taste of sugar without the inconvenience .  As I was taking the photo a lady came up and started opening the door. She was the owner. We had a lovely chat about sugar for 5 minutes or so. Again, I found enough words in my brain to communicate. . I pottered on, got to the tourist bureau and spent a while getting information about all sorts of things from a lovely  Japonese lady. At the end of the conversation we did talk about where I ahd been in Japan. I ambled back here, again going through the middle of the old town. I stopped and looked at a  beautifully  scuptured chocolate koala in a  chocolate shops window. I was surrounded by Easter rabbits. Why a koala?  Along came a similar aged  to me local and saw the koala and smiled. We were still talking 15 or 20 minutes later.She ahd been to Australia but never seen a real kangaroo or koala.  My level of French was fairly equal to her English I think  so we got on quite OK. Like the men in the bar and the koala lady,  she said complementary things to me about me trying to speak and practising  French.  So, without trying, that was the forth  time I 'talked'  to someone ., excluding Tamiko. By the time I got home it was time for me to go to the restaurant  2 doors away. I was only going to have 2 courses, but I ended up having 4 courses of delicious food. When I went in I was ushered to a table by a pleasant young man. I talked briefly to him and the other wait staff and they asked fairly early where I was from . Apparently the guy I spoke to in the morning was the chef and he had said I might come in ( I don't actually remember saying that I would today but I certainly said I wanted to try there one day). But they all wanted to know where I came from.  I asked all sorts of questions during and after my meal. 

I have been in my apartment  since, pottering.

Some notes to self  based on events of this morning:

Walk on the right side of the footpath, not the left as is my custom.

When crossing a road look left,right, left , not right,left, right.

When walking down a one way street, do not assume cyclists follow the one way directive.

If a cyclist is approaching on a footpath, do not instinctively move left, move right, otherwise  cyclist may get very wobbly trying to avoid a head on collision.

Beware trams, they are almost silent as they slow down and easily blend in with the background. 

When walking along cobbled streets, if I need to look at phone directions stop, don't try cobblestones without looking.

Take more careful note of the morning temperatures not just the maximum. Look at the  morning temps and decide if thermals are required ( they certainly would have helped this morning.

 It is now 6.45 and I havenot started my planning . Too bad.

rest of Tuesday

So... somehow in transit in Frankfurt we had to go through at least

 2 bag checks. My memory is a bit hazy. We went in and out of several terminals!  My super dooper new light weight bag  is rigid when it is  full but a bit floppy when open . One half has a zippered mesh covering enclosing the contents , the other just an elastic strap, hence big things eg rolled shirts and trouser in the open section.When I was hurriedly trying to get my liquids out ( no time before had they wanted liquids out, but I had always taken then out, this time i had not) I got bumped and the unzipped section where the liquids were was sort of uppended and some contents- some small things -  were scattered everywhere,  as in 'smalls'. Maybe that is an English term, but you get my drift. I remember thinking that   I was too tired to care but them telling myself to get over it because I had 2 more flights to go. 

So next was Paris. Again I had to change terminals,   but the signs were excellent and easy to follow and the train between the terminals was fun. Finding the right gate was OK, but I had to walk a long way, again, not a problem, but they changed the gate number at the last minute and I had to walk more - back the way I ahd come.  Never mind. But I didn't want the extra. We waited, waited for ages in a small space. Only seats for about 2/3 of the people. Then it was announced that montpellier airport was still shut but they hoped it would be open in time for us to get to MPL that night. Great, I thought. That day the transport unions in france were striking. The guy from Paris told me about it the previous day. Apparently there had been trouble  in MPL early in the day and the previous AIR france  plane to MPL , in the morning, had been cancelled when the airport was closed. About an hour later it was announced that MPl was open and the flight would board. The flight was completely  ful and they  asked for volunteers to put their cabin bags into the hold. I doubted my ability to manage putting my case into the overhead locker if at the same time I had to try and make space for it .beside, I figured they wouldnot loose it.  So i decided to volunteer my bag. (An aside - I was pleased that up to then I had had no difficulty putting my bag into the overhead locker. It only weighed  6.8kg. A couple of times I nearly came undone  when someone came to help, put their arm up and hand onto the bag and I almost lost my balance. )   -   I also thought that those bags put on last would come off first. So when the bags started to come out , and they were definitely  larger than cabin bags I started thinking - does a strike of transport workers include taxi drivers .? . Will they know the plane is chokers.?  Then my bag came. No other cabin bags with it. Maybe I might get there tonight?   So i went outside with my bag. Saw the taxi rank. Saw about 10 people near the rank chatting. Thought , Oh dear, not a taxi for me.. Got closer to the people. Asked , in English, no hope of getting any French out,  said " Is there a queue or anything. " Go right ahead " said one of them. For once in my life i didn't say Are you sure? I just quickly went to the nearest Taxi, threw my bag in the boot just as the driver was getting out and breathed a sigh of relief. I had managed , using my new esimm to message the owner's partner ( as instructed) that I was delayed, then later that I was boarding, then later that I had arrived. He arrived at the apartment soon after I did, showed me around. Soon after he left I went to the big supermarket around the corner. The apartment is lovely, small, but with lots of pot plants and a small balcony ◇ 2nd floor) overlooking a sort of un used ( i think) lane way.  It is lovely  in the sun in the afternoon.

Good sleep but not long enough.

Got here, very tired but happy.

The trip started off well, but got worse as the terminals got bigger  and the officials got more aggressive and then strike issues in France. It could have been a lot worse.

Sunday's  bus trip to Sydney was straight forward, bit of a walk, pleasant dinner, good sleep.  I had planned to go for a longish  walk on Monday morning around the nearby parks and  Wolli creek, but it was raining. I was at the airport when check in opened, I walked straight up to the counter, then straight through all the security stuff.  8 hour flight to Singapore was OK. Seat an older one with only 3 positions. Straight up, flat and half  way in between. There are some seats that have far more ways of making you comfortable. I was trying to stay awake. A few hours in Singapore lounge from 12.20 is to 2.ish was made bearable when I got talking to the lady  sitting next to me from the  sunshine coast. As soon as I got onto the plane to Frankfurt at about 3am I went straight to 'bed'. Skipped dinner, but all night my stomach wasn't happy during and I slept only in dribs and draws ( funny expression,  where dies it come from?) . Near the end of that leg, I got talking to the guy next to me who was from Paris but had been through  Frankfurt many times. He also was booked on the same flight as me to Paris.  I thought , if he knows the way, why not walk  with him. Why do more than necessary when i still ahd 2 flights to go. He clearly thought it was the gentleman thing to do, show me the way. Trouble was, the way he knew was blocked off and there was very little signage to where we wanted to go. It turned out that he didn't know which way to go and I was quicker and more observant picking up signs than he was.  This made for a few interesting  moments!  We stopped and asked a few people whose directions were wrong. We walked far, far further than we needed to, but it was OK. But then we were bussed to the smaller plane for the trip to Paris, but had to stand or sit in the bus, sardine stlye, for a long time while something was still being done to the plane.  I had to go from  1terminal to another in Charles de Gaul,  and went in a little train that went fast, stopped suddenly and did not appear to have a driver. Quite fun. But I was getting  tired.  At some point during our trek around Frankfurt airport we went out and then had to go back in through the whole bag check thing again. The officials were strcter than some,   people , including me, were getting frazzled, then the machine stopped with our bags and another man's waiting to go through but we had walked through the body check place and they, very crossly,  wouldnot less us back in . Some of the staff carried our trays , all muddled, to the neighbouring machine........ I am now happy and in my lovely little apartment  and need to go to bed. I will  fill in the dots tomorrow. 

To be continued 

19 sleeps to go

 This is a trial post to make sure it still works. I am getting excited. In 19 sleeps I will start my next journey to France.