Quatre-vingt-neuf

Since all my outlets for travel stories have closed down for the foreseeable future, I have more time on my hands than can be sensibly filled by my trusty laptop and its small pal the iPhone. So, like many people, I've been looking to use some of this lockdown to catch up with a few of the jobs that have been sitting quietly in corners, waiting patiently. For years.

Accordingly, I have finally put up, under the letterbox at the gate (yes, foreigners, that's how we do mail here in Enzed - trusted to be safe, unsupervised and unlocked, out on the street) the decorative ceramic numbers I bought five years ago in Paris. Agreed, that is a long time to have them sitting on top of the bookshelf, being regularly dusted (not). Anyway, I found some wood to set them into, carved out the inset space, stained it, glued the pieces in (hours of happy fun subsequently, picking dried glue off my fingers), grouted, and then screwed it to the fence under the letterbox. Job done (but no photo because my workmanship bears less scrutiny these days).

And all the time, I was remembering that Saturday afternoon trip on the Metro to the architecturally extravagant BHV - Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville - where I browsed happily round the basement DIY section, choosing the numbers. It's a department store, established in 1852, that I now wish I had explored more thoroughly but (all together now) I was short on time. So I just bought 89c with appropriate forget-me-not surrounds, and went upstairs again to emerge in the busy square in front of the Town Hall, in all its even more elaborate glory. I wandered past it to the banks of the Seine, and along to l'Île St Louis where people were picnicking on rugs by the river drinking champagne from glass flutes; and a dog was having a swim. At the tip of the island I got the classic view of Notre Dame on l'Île de la Cité - of course, now it looks sadly so different, after that terrible fire - and then crossed the Pont St-Louis to battle with the crowds thronging the square in front of the cathedral. That's where all French roads are measured from, did you know?

And then I took the Metro back to my hotel to meet up with the rest of my group - or tried to, anyway. I had to have several goes at finding it, and in the end was enormously grateful to Letitia who was in charge of us, who had very sensibly drawn our attention that morning to the features of the hotel's exterior. Truly, I would probably have wandered for hours if she hadn't. And then we all assembled in the foyer to be taken to our ship, Avalon's Tapestry II, for a glorious 8-day glide along the Seine to Normandy, and back. It was a lovely, lovely cruise, in every way - one of the best. Hopefully, I'll remember that, every time I see 89c.