First day

The first 24 hours of any holiday is always an important marker. It feels like an indicator of how the rest of the trip will go. If the first day is bad then the rest of the time will be spent trying to make up for the wasted opportunity, for the bad choices and the mistakes made. Today has been no exception.

When we arrived yesterday we stepped out of Gare Du Nord full of excitement and anticipation. The queue for taxis was a mile long so we walked across Paris, pulling our cases behind us, their wheels picking up golden leaves and detritus as we walked. And walked. We walked past boulangeries, patisseries and old ladies. We passed over cobbles, cement and tarmac. We sidestepped potholes and steered round dog shit. After 30 minutes we were in the familiar territory of the Marais. After another 15 minutes we were outside our apartment shaking hands with the rental guide.

The wooden stairs to the apartment curled round and upwards, each centuries old step a slightly different shape to its predecessor, the wood with a sheen that only a million footsteps can bring. We carried our cases up, treading carefully and wishing we had packed more lightly. Once inside the flat Anatole, our guide, showed us round, opened cupboards and checked the hob. We signed the paperwork and he left us alone to explore.



It wasn’t long before we headed out to our favourite bar – Au Petit Fer A Cheval. It’s become something of a cliché now, the seats outside under the heaters generally full of American tourists rather than local French. But it’s still one of the best spots in Paris to watch people go by. David, an older American who now lives in Paris, was sat beside me and fully intended to have me as his wingman while he watched the pretty girls, asking me if I preferred legs or asses. Through his white wine haze he told me repeatedly that he had never cheated on his wife of 21 years. She lives in Marrakech while he stays in Paris but he’s never cheated. No. Never. We talked and drank and I helped him light his cigarettes, his hands too shaky for the lighter. He told me about the time he had slept with a girl; he was 57 and she was 21 and he thought it was bad, that men that age shouldn’t sleep with young girls. He didn’t mention his wife, the one he had never been unfaithful to, and I didn’t press him, deciding instead to let him ramble. When he tried to pierce an olive with a cocktail stick but simply couldn’t he seemed to decide he’d had enough to drink. We had finished our pichet too so Mr Manbag and I headed on to eat.



The restaurant is a favourite of ours, discovered many years ago and getting a visit every time we come to Paris. It’s a small dining room which does a few foods very well, though the low light is not conducive to parting a roasted chicken from its bones; this Mr Manbag knows from a previous occasion. I won’t go into the food in detail; I’m not a food writer and so I don’t think I could do the seared sesame tuna or the salmon with beurre blanc justice. We ate, we drank, we listened into the conversations from the adjacent tables. To my right an elderly American couple (from Ohio but now with a house in the south of France) and a middle aged American couple (where he was loud and slightly shrill and she didn’t say a word) talked about the dangers of paragliding. To our left the French table talked about English actors, or rather listed English actors that they liked; “Albert Finney! Michael Caine! Alec Guinness! John Giegud” causing Mr Manbag to mutter “terrible ham” before they moved on to “Bob ‘Oskins”. This for us is entertainment, an extension of people watching.

When we walked out we headed to the Seine instead of straight home. The lights on the bridges do not make for great photos but they make a very pretty sight for us tourists. We weren’t sure where we were, having come out without a map, but still we crossed over to one of the islands, walked along and crossed back over another bridge and headed north, back to the apartment. We photographed signs and old doorways with their gods and monsters carved in stone. We walked hand in hand and dawdled in the lamplit streets, a fug of wine upon our tired brains. We stood on street corners and kissed gently, in love in the city of love. And we made it back to our apartment, to climb into bed and fall into a drunken slumber.

With this as a first day I have high hopes for the rest of the holiday.