Lunch with friends from Hobart, Monday, 30 November

Today was great fun as friends from Hobart were in Paris and we arranged to meet them for lunch. Unfortunately this clashed with a long-awaited hair appointment for Virginia. So she went to the Coiffeur to see if he could fit her in a bit later. Ah, the Gallic charm. "But Madame, how could you possibly expect that I could wait any longer to see you?" And so a slightly later appointment was negotiated and a somewhat flustered Virginia made sure he received a hearty tip!

Before her hair appointment, however, we made our way down to the Sorbonne to meet our friends in front of the Pantheon which is next to the law school. One was here to give a paper at a conference held at the law school and the other had just given one in Turkey.

It was a bit of a shock to speak to someone in English as most of our conversations have been either in French on Virginia's part or in a polyglot version of something that is usually referred to as "Franglais" on mine (but it generally works). I must confess I am feeling a bit more confident as time passes. Today I went into a Tabac and purchased stamps for a postcard to Australia by air mail and a stamp for a letter to a friend in France. In addition, between us, we figured out how to extend our Navigo cards for another month. This is slightly disconcerting when you pop 56 euros into a machine and wait - and wait. Fortunately it worked. And speaking of waiting on machines, one of the longest waits is when you are taking money out of the local ATMs. This is agonizingly long and you go through a series of emotions one of the strongest of which is despair that you will never get your money or see your card again. After a while, when the screen says "patientez" there is a series of clicking noises and very slowly your card reappears. After grabbing it enthusiastically, you "patientez" some more through another series of clicks and then very slowly, and with great reluctance, the machine eases your money out. We always have the feeling that if we don't grab it quickly enough the machine will swallow it back up without a second thought.

As noted, the law school of the Sorbonne is next door to the Pantheon and while that is one of those amazing constructions that the French seem to do so well, just down the street from it is a beautiful, old-fashioned pharmacy. It is these little treasures that seem to us to have as much, if not more, appeal than the bigger, better known sites.