Impressions: 22 1/2 hours in Paris

Journey:

A building with the words "wine and beer" painted in large letters on the side.

Double decker passenger trains.

Rail side graffetti.

Arrival:

Crates of carefully arranged colourful fruit outside shop doors.

Elaborate carvings above doors and windows.

Collars placed just so, on elegantly dressed French men and women.

A pile of woven scarfs in a department store.

Bolts of liberty fabrics for 27 Euro per metre.

Nearby, a shop with sewing machines and a log cabin quilt in Kaffe Fasset colours on the wall: at the back three women sit, talking or sewing.

(Rue de Castellane, near Galeries Lafayette and Printemps.)

Evening:

White unicorns, one with a scorpion on its back.

A white wrap, possibly knitted from Kidsilk Haze, or Tilli Thomas.

White stoles being brought to the tables, for cold ladies to drape elegantly around their shoulders.

Chocolate Asiette with deep red sauce.

Morning:

Fresh pineapple in the fruit salad, as sweet as if it had been just been plucked from the tree.

"Je voudrai une savon, si vous plait."

The handbag I yearn for, in the window of a shop which is shut on Sundays.

Touristy t-shirts and thank-you chocolates to take home.

Departure:

Anxiously waiting for our luggage to be brought to the pavement outside the hotel.

Foreign place names in a foreign language carved in the facade of Gare de Nord.

Brown-grassed railway cuttings, made colourful with the red stems of leafless bushes.