We’ve had an interesting day, starting early so that we could leave the house by 0700h to catch the Eurostar to Paris. We had booked the first class, not actually called first class, and one of the perks was that our ticket included breakfast. We had cereal before leaving home, but after a fairly long time on the train to St Pancras International we joined long lines of people to go through security and then through passport control.

The train journey took about 3.5 hours, I think. There was a time change, of course, going back one hour, so we are only 6 hours behind Beijing time, also Perth time.

The breakfast included fruit juice, coffee, a small roll, butter, jam and a croissant or two. The coffee cups were small, but they kept returning for fill ups. We felt rather spoilt.

Getting from the station to our hotel was quite a business. Fortunately it has been mild weather today and we didn’t get too frazzled. Our hotel is quite small and sweet. Modern and a bit quirky.

We have supermarkets nearby and bought some salad and a sandwich to share before having a nap. We went out at about 1900hrs, the sun was still high and after checking out some local restaurants, many Chinese, one Japanese, and quite a few Italian we eventually saw a French restaurant.

We took the metro to the centre of the city. It was very busy along the river and we thought most of the people we saw were locals enjoying the long evening. By the time we were back in our own area the sun was much lower and was no longer glaring. We chose a small Chinese restaurant for tea, mostly because we could point to food to choose and because we could eat in an upstairs room.

Once again I am writing this entry whilst feeling very tired. None of the images have been processed. But I am not sure how much time I’ll have tomorrow and it’s best to get something written whilst it’s fresh.