Maintaining Cool

An early start to catch the bus to Cannes for our direct train to Paris, non-stop from Marseilles. It left on time and arrived on time, super comfortable, very fast, with beautiful scenery almost the entire way. It helps I suppose when the emptiness of rural France allows you to build a high speed line avoiding almost every town along the way. The Metro didn't prove so seamless, just trying to navigate our way to the right line, but we got there in the end and were soon at Belleville where E had booked us a lovely little apartment. The owners seemed more troubled by the heat (36 deg today) than we were and couldn't have been more profuse in their apologies for the weather. At least the fan was of a more industrial size than the one we had in our previous apartment. It's not so much the daytime highs but the fact that it stays in the very high twenties through the night.

We went to the local park to catch a view of the Eiffel Tower, only the second I've ever had. I've never properly visited Paris. Once, en route to do the Pyrenean Raid on my bike, we had an evening stopover on the outskirts of the city, but I never got to go out because I was as sick as a dog. I saw the tower on the horizon from our motel and that was it. Obviously, I took shots of the view but I found this shot much more interesting, a few yards from the viewpoint. He's French and she's from Brazil. They met in London. They were lovely.