To Paris

 St Pancras in London, the Eurostar station. Those c19th iron and glass cathedrals.

Not sure where the tunnel starts or comes up but this is such wonderful farming land and in the north I guess it's the WW1 battleground area. I'll have to research it.

You literally fly over the countryside, we went near to Amiens. The train is amazingly smooth and quiet. You can stand and have a coffee or whatever in the food carriage. It's so clean and sophisticated it really puts our XPT to shame and V-Line too. Bring on the very fast train to eastern Australia!

The Gare du Nord is huge and crowded. My first encounter with Parisian truculence - the little lady in what seemed to be an information booth when asked if there was an information centre said 'non' - of course I should have asked for the Visitors' Centre. C'est la vie...I tackled the Metro and followed the pink line and found myself at Cite - so far so good mais ou est la Notre Dame? Find the dear river and turn left, follow the nose et voila Notre Dame. Walked right past my street but back tracked avec la valise rouge, remembered the magic combination for the front door and in. Then find the key for another door, then another, across the 'courtyard' (this tiny 'alley' nothing like an Italian courtyard that was in my imagination) then up up up avec the bloody valise rouge. Very happy and breathless to be at the top. another magic combination of numbers et voila - home!

My little place,

 The view upon arrival

 The climb to bed

 View out the other window

 Little kitchen

The view at night

So the stairs - a spiralling wooden very narrow and very old staircase up to the sixth floor.

From the top down taken on day 2 

Looking back up to the little door to the hallway to the studio.

So this is my little eyrie for a while. The steps are steep and many but am hoping with all the walking I will balance out the eating!