2nd August 0322hrs, Monday. Ferry, somewhere in the English Channel.

I’ve just carried out my first transaction in pounds and pence for over two and a half months, and felt distinctly odd. Especially conversing freely in English with the lady at the till, and hearing strange voices onboard ship. Not foreign tongues, but different accents of English. Not American English or Canadian English or English from someone who learned it as a foreign language, but Mother Tongue type English. I know it will take me all of a day or two for this to wear off, but for now it is a very eerie feeling.

I’m really looking forward to walking up the path to the front door without anyone expecting me back until tomorrow! (I hope someone’s in – that would just take the piss) I also hope that they don’t take it the wrong way. I’ve missed them so much that to come back to a disgruntled family would probably knock me for six.

The really annoying thing is that despite travelling overnight to arrive in the morning to have to the day to talk and stuff, I’m going to arrive home and have to go to bed, because the evening has been so disjointed )bus from Paris Bagnolet at 2200, stop-off mid-France around 0000, at ferry by 0200....), there has been very little time for sleep. I’ll try when we get back on the coach shortly. Due to the time difference, it’s now 0243hrs. Handy, but tiring! According to memory, the bus arrives in Victoria at 0655hrs. I don’t know why it takes four hours to London from Dover, but that’ll be the main sleeping opportunity of the day.
It hasn’t quite dawned on me yet that I’ll be at home later today. It doesn’t seem to fit in my head.

0650hrs: Victoria Coach Station, London
We arrived here in London about an hour ago, and the first coach to Portsmouth doesn’t leave until 9am, so we’ve a couple of hours to kill yet.
I still haven’t contacted anyone at home to let them know I’m coming! I’m bloody knackered and looking forward to being reunited with my bed.
It’s getting stuffy, I’m sticky and on the far side of dirty. There aren’t any showers here, so I’m going to arrive home smelling.

Mmm, great.

1st August 99 1805hrs, Sunday. Jardin de Tuileries, Paris. Facing the Louvre.

It’s been about two and a half months since we sat here last. It’s a startlingly different scene. The fountain in the pool in front of our seats is on, projecting water 10-15 feet into the air. The sound of it could only have added to the tranquillity of the gardens in May. Now it is the only tranquil sound. The gardens are packed with people. Tourists from around the globe, and the odd Parisian attempting to enjoy a book are sharing the same ground.

It’s so busy that a haze of dust hangs over the gardens, and a huge fun fair with the largest Ferris wheel I’ve ever seen has been erected on the side of the gardens farthest form the river. I prefer it as it was.

1930hrs: Banks of the Seine, facing the Eiffel Tower and the bridge between Avenue Winston Churchill and La Palais des Invalides with the huge winged golden horses. Okay?

I thought I’d liked Paris as much as I could last time. I was wrong. This is more a case of love at second sight. The sun is still quite high in the sky, but it feels like sunset. the shadows are long and the light is golden.

Paris seems to welcome us like an old friend, one that remembers us well. It is good to see somewhere that is known to me from this trip, so that it is familiar, but familiar in a personal way. This Paris belongs to me. When I get home tomorrow everything will be familiar, which, oxymoronically, will seem strange. It won’t be personal familiarity – it’s shared by my family and the people I know, so for that personal quality I silently thank Paris.

I can see now one of the differences between Paris and other European cities. The stark differences between the two Tuileries – the Tuileries of May, and the Tuileries of August, depressed me, but Paris has an enduring quality. Whereas other cities are swamped and weighed down by the feet of the multitudinous tourists, they break over Paris like a wave, present only for a time before flowing away...Afterwards, underneath, is still Paris. It cannot be changed by tourism. It caters for it, but it a few more weeks of high season and the fair will be dismantled and the dust will settle.

Rome was vibrant and steeped in history, it was alive and thriving. Athens was a maze of thundering traffic, with all the culture and identity it needed poised gracefully on a rock against the sky for all to see. Madrid sweltered, but it is justifiably its nation’s capital – there wasn’t one single identifiable mark of the evolution of a global culture (over and above the usual McDonald’s and ‘Coke’ adverts). You could crush Madrid and it would bleed Spain. It is Spain through and through. Rabat was a meeting of two cultures, a melting pot that challenged the senses and intrigued my mind.

Paris seems to know that all it needs to do is to be Paris, and everything can only be well. it is the most self-assured and confident city that I’ve been to. It doesn’t threaten – if you are here, then you are a part of Paris. There are no peddlers, no aggressive beggars and no real malevolence – nothing to cultivate a ‘them and us’ mentality on either the visitors’ or the Parisian’s side. It rests easy on the mind.

Perhaps you see in each city how you feel at the time, perhaps a mass of humanity only reflects what you are, so you leave with your memories of the city with how it made you feel as one whole. That would say a lot for my second impression of Paris, and how I have changed in the last few months.

This afternoon we went to the Musée D’Orsay, which I enjoyed immensely. Works of Monet and Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh and countless others, some familiar and others pleasingly new. The D’Orsay used to be a train station, and it makes a magnificent museum. I made new discoveries for myself in the world of art – I enjoyed the temporary exhibitions as much as the standing shows of the greats. I couldn’t have faced the Louvre afterwards though. I had been tired to begin with, then enthused, and then made weary.
Since then we’ve food shopped, and sat both in the Tuileries and here.

Time has passed and the sun will set soon.

Gemma and I have to be at the coach station at Bagnolet by nine, so we’ll have to leave this panorama, our last of the European continent, and travel overnight AGAIN.
Only this time, we’re going home...