Paris - Valentine's Day.

It's Valentines Day in Paris. With my cold for company, I look out from my attic window to see a market across the road. It inspires me to head out, down the three floors of the turquoise and magenta red ornate staircase, past Audrey who doesn't bother to even look up, and out into to the cool morning. The market is full of wonderful vegetables that I haven't seen before; radishes abound in all different shapes and sizes, their thin beige roots curled against their red and pink skins. I buy clementines which I've only every heard about, a cross between a mandarin and orange, a remedy for my cold. I marvel at the delicate lettuces arranged like flowers and dark root vegetables that give off the smell of damp earth. I'm on the way to the Galeries Lafeyette and as I walk, I find a warm cocoon of a cafe, #Cafedelacomedie filled with mirrors and interesting characters, writing in journals, on computers. I look up from my coffee to see myself reflected over and over in the mirrors, it's like looking at the many reinventions of myself over the years.

I enter #GaleriesLafayette, the famous art nouveau fashion store built in 1912, I'm unimpressed until I reach the middle of the store and look up. The glass dome and surrounding balconies are stunning. I decide to buy a drink for my companion cold, an expensive glass of orange juice, just so I can sit and gaze at the building. Then I'm off to another small museum of the artist #GustaveMoreau and then onto #Montmatre; but my cold is demanding that I return home for a rest.

On the way back, I pass an an amazing patisserie where I buy myself a Valentine's gift - a huge raspberry macaron, filled with whipped cream, half dipped into chocolate, with a syringe of raspberry couli, the whole masterpiece sitting on a thin biscuit attached to a gold board. I am careful to get it home safely where I consume it in between my newly acquired coughs, envisioning myself in a garret in the 1920's, with a bit of consumption; Moulin Rouge in the back of my mind.

I manage to go out for dinner, the waiter is again saddened by my lack of male companionship; bringing me a very large glass of wine to compensate. It'll have to do.