I really don't have time to write much now (and what I am writing is taking ten times as long because half the letters on the keyboard are in the wrong place!!) but I am in Paris!

I was really quite scared coming out here, it's over six months since I travelled last and over ten years since I last spoke french!! CDG airport was frickin terrifying, it is so so huge and complicated and I had to go on a TRAIN to get to baggage reclaim.. I nearly lost it a couple of times. Then Gare du Nord was almost as scary - it was proper ghetto land and I really did feel a bit unsafe... there were people everywhere that looked like gangsters! Anyway I managed to change successfully onto the metro and made it to Republique and to my hostel.

I have a perfectly functional nice little ensuite room looking out over the street. I successfully navigated checking in and getting the run down of the hostel rules IN FRENCH!! yay me :) Have since spoken it at every possible opportunity and it is like I stopped learning yesterday? I am amazed at how it is all just still in there, at my fingertips, I need to check words every now and then but I can just still speak french, whoo!

Spent the afternoon walking and walking, down to Bastille then along the Seine, through markets and past countless gorgeous Parisian cafes with tables and chairs out in the street and people drinking and smoking and chatting. The shops! I had forgotten about the wonderful traditional array of shops... boulangeries on every street, charcuterie, papeteria, libraria, floristes and of course the cafes.

People walking around carrying baguettes wrapped in paper, everywhere! I kid you not.

I was flagging by 7pm so made tracks to a Carrefour I'd seen earlier in the day to get baguette, fruit & veg for tomorrow 6 unfortunately I am incapable of spending less than an hour in a foreign food shop 6 so much to see! A nice big bio / organic section where I got awesome things such as tofu burgers, chocolate coconut rice cakes and apple crisps.

Then this evening, a stroll up Canal St Martin, and there I fell in love with Paris. The length of the canal banks people of all ages were sitting and talking, drinking wine from bottles and eating Lays crisps, olives and those charcuterie sausages, it was like the biggest most chilled out social place to be. There were people playing guitars, hipsters, indie kids, girls on those awesome cool old vespa mopeds and arching bridges crossing the canal with people sat all up on those rickety steps. Smoking, people still smoke in paris :)

I must stop this here, I am so tired and I plan to be up first thing tomorrow to aim to leave the hostel at 8am, so so much to see and do!