PARISLONDONPARIS...

I've been in Paris almost a week now and I'm still not quite settled. Here in body - the rest is all over the place. I wasn't well when I arrived and needed to find a doctor, which I was only able to do eventually with the help of friends. (Thank you!) So that was a bit scary. I was always able to navigate anything in Paris before, even without speaking decent French. I suddenly felt very foreign.

Like some kind of euro homing pigeon I keep accidentally going into places that turn out to be Italian, like this sweet cafe/bookshop in rue Charlot, Marcovaldo. I actually said "thank you, grazie, uh, merci" when the girl brought my coffee over. Confusion.

I've got a whole load of restaurants bookmarked, but as is always the case - the places that you read about from afar getting raved about on food blogs, don't always turn out to be the best places to go when you get on the ground. The couple of times I've tried to eat at restaurants I had bookmarked that weren't recommended to me personally, I've had really bad experiences. CAFE DES MUSEES I'M LOOKING AT YOU. I'm hoping to keep the bad restaurant experiences neatly to just this week, so that I can then enjoy the rest of them thereafter.

But I HAVE had some very fun times already, and you'll hear about those soon.

Backtracking slightly, here's what's going on in London this February, for HiP Paris.