Paris and Toulouse-Lautrec

Still slightly out of sync with the rest of Rouen, we were up and on our way to the station at a not particularly early hour but the town itself - or its café bars, at least - were not yet awake. Thankfully we came across a little place right next to the station. 

Having a found a table, I went up to the counter to order only to be told "Sit down! You are in France now. Welcome!" And so I did and we were served with coffee and croissants, which was just perfect, and set us up nicely for the trip to Paris, through the French countryside. 

Once back, we retraced our steps almost all the way back to the Gare du Nord, where the Minx had found us a lovely little hotel where we left our bags and set off on foot to the Grand Palais to see the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition. Our tickets were for five-thirty and we had a little time to spare, so we stopped nearby, at a bar called Sanseveria, for drinks and a plate of meats and cheeses, which was just what we needed.

The exhibition itself was great. Several rooms of paintings, tracing the career of Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa. I would have loved to be able to see the paintings through the Minx's eyes but I did enjoy lots of them, particularly the well-known theatre posters. One of my extras gives an insight into the technique used to create one of his best known pictures. 

We didn't fancy the long walk back to the hotel, not least because it was cold (as it has been all weekend), so we grabbed an Uber from the Grand Palais to the Gard du Nord and found a nearby restaurant, where we had drinks in the shelter that extended onto the pavement and then ate inside. It was a perfectly Parisian end to our day.

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No scales
Reading: 'The Sound Of Tomorrow' by Mark Brend