I made it!

Well, here I am - and if I’m honest, I’m ever so slightly amazed that it’s all gone so smoothly.

The bit I was dreading - arriving at Gare de Nord, was fine, in fact it was little different to arriving at Waterloo. I found the exit where the taxi rank is, queued for ten minutes, showed the taxi driver the address of my hotel on the booking form and that was that! A fairly long taxi ride across the city cost the equivalent of about £10, so I wasn’t fleeced.

The hotel is lovely - I will post some pictures when I get home. This morning I got up and didn’t really have much of a plan what to do. I have to keep reminding myself that the emphasis on these few days is to write, not to be run around like a demented tourist - but it’s hard! I needed to aim for SOMEWHERE. I wanted to go to the Musee D’Orsay, as mentioned often in Eric Maisel’s book, but it’s closed on Mondays. So instead, I braved the metro (I’d bought an advance five day pass from Railbookers which saved a lot of worry) and here I am at the Louvre. How exciting!! It’s a huge complex and so my first stop was a cafe to have breakfast - then I will look around the Louvre and come back to writing. Breakfast is a large coffee and croissants. What else?! I fired up my laptop, planning to write my journal offline, but there is free wi-fi here so I’m taking the opportunity to blog ‘live’.

Hmmm. Time for a second cup of coffee and a look at chapter 2 of my novel perhaps?