The day we left Spain there was a train strike planned and we were advised to go all the way to Avignon, otherwise we would be stuck in a little Spanish border town for an indefinite time. Consequently we arrived so late there were no hotels open and we had to spend the rest of the night in the open. We checked into a hotel first thing in the morning. It looked like a nice cheap place in a great location but the room was very hot and we found there were bed-bugs. When we complained the manager didn't seem at all surprised and gave us a different room.
However, Avignon was wonderful. We were there for the annual Fete de la Musique, and went to many superb concerts both indoors and outdoors. We also had an excellent buffet lunch in a hotel built in an old cloister.
When we got back to Paris we found that we had been given the wrong information about when our tenant would be leaving, so we went to stay at Wan Hua's holiday apartment in Mers les Bains for about a week.
Eventually we settled into our apartment. Our first visitors, a family from Honfleur, arrived the next day and we had to have coffee on the floor as we had no furniture yet. We soon bought up enough furniture to live comfortably, with the help of Holly, an American lady who has an office downstairs for a company which brings young people from the US for cultural experiences in France. We had a visit from our Vietnamese friends from Australia, invited the couple upstairs for a meal, had dinners with my French relatives, and even had visitors to stay for a couple of days - George and Monique, from Riom - despite the fact that the apartment only has two rooms. We were too busy enjoying Paris to have time for journal writing, but I did find time to write about one of our cultural experiences, when we took part in the Opera des Rues, and about my experience in putting together a wardrobe. And I wrote a song about Paris Plage, the amazing beach that appears along the Seine in the Summer.
Three months in Paris is not enough to scratch the surface. A lifetime in Paris would not be enough. We hope to return many times in the future, preferably during Melbourne's winter.