The other tower in Paris

We arrived in Paris after an incredibly fast journey. We paid £59 and arrived two hours and fifteen minutes after leaving London. Compare this to my journey from Brighton to London on Monday morning when I paid over £50 and took nearly 2 hrs to go 50 miles!

We booked an apartment through a website called airbnb. People in various places round the world rent out rooms in their homes, or sometimes their whole home, to travellers. It's quite informal and based on a fair degree of trust. The French woman who owned the apartment was travelling to London with her English husband at the same time we were travelling to Paris, so she arranged for her friend to meet and greet us.

The apartment was fabulous and had lots of great features like this tower of books. Madeleine the owner had left all her stuff there, and a bottle of wine for us along with some suggestions for excellent things to do in the local neighbourhood. It turned out we had very similar tastes in books and music too. It was a real home from home and a fraction of the price of a typical shoebox sized Parisian hotel room.