London and Off to Paris

I arrived in London Monday with no problems, got to our rather dreary hotel, found some dinner and went to bed. Mark called from Las Vegas to say his flight was two hours delayed. The next morning was spent waiting for him to arrive. He finally did so at 2:40. Not only was his flight over two hours late, they had lost his luggage. We went in search of underwear to buy, found some finally, and sought out a pub. The one we chose was fine: good  fish and chips, cider for me, beer for Mark.

The green stuff is mashed peas.

A lot of  yesterday and this morning was spent trying to track the suitcase by phone and website. We have no phone yet so nice concierge had to call. No definitive answers. Looks like his bag will have to go to Paris after we do. Breakfast offered at our hotel was ghastly. (I know because I experienced it yesterday), So we found a great little place with wonderful coffee, good pastries and a friendly check out girl. We visited the beautiful Russell Square Hotel next door to ours and pretended we were staying there instead.

 We must have talked for twenty minutes with Manuel, the doorman. He said he loved his job and the people he works with. He gave us some advice on communicating in Paris: start every interaction with "Je ne parles pas tres bien Francais..."

Getting on the Eurostar was well organized. The seats were rather cramped so we were glad it was just a little over two hours. The underwater part went very quickly; we emerged into some pretty countryside and we were in Paris. Our first task was to buy a cheap cell phone.  Not successful at the first place we tried and coming out of the shop Mark misjudged a step, took a tumble and really scraped up his arm. A nice couple stopped to help. He was bleeding a lot but nothing broken. We decided to take a cab and our driver Yassim was so very sweet. Handed Mark a bunch of paper towels, wanted to stop right then at a pharmacy, and called our apartment greeter for us with his own phone. Yassim's English was great. He said he learns it by watching "Friends" and other American TV.

We checked into our apt and got directed to a pharmacy. In France the pharmacists will clean  a wound and bandage it up at no cost. I said "Combien?"and she said, "No charge. It's my job." And

she told him to come back tomorrow at four for a new dressing. We are near Rue Cler where a totally nice guy in phone store sold us a phone and spent a lot of time explaining how it worked. Since Mark was just in his undershirt, (His gory shirt was back at the apt soaking in cold water)'we just shopped for jambon, gorgeous cheese wine on Rue Cler and then to a patisserie for the best baguette ever. We had a wonderful little meal in our cute apt.