Paris welcomes me and I embrace the new solitude for the weekend, visiting Modigliani and Chagal's women in the Galleries, and wandering the streets of Montmartre, remembering being there with my father in 1998, visiting to same cafe which happened to coincidently be next to my hotel, to drink hot chocolates and sketch old women and their dogs.

Montmartre, with its memories and cosy summer streets felt very much a place of my heart. I spent the weekend re-visiting myself after 7 weeks with a companion. Leaving Zana to be alone was both refreshing to be able to get on my own rhythm, and uncomfortable as the silence was new.

So much to say! Where do i throw my ideas out now? On whose ears can my observances land, to be handed back, re-considered and discussed? Who can I reminisce with, complain to and wake up next to?

I noticed when we were in India that I am much more of a meditative and contemplative traveler who enjoys to sit in cafes or parks, soaking up the atmosphere, watching the people, writing letters, sketching locals. Zana is a much more active traveler and we balanced each-other out in this way, bar some rare moments in the beginning where we struggled to find the middle way.

So, for me Paris was a chance to get back into my own groove. Much sketching and observing and watching, eating, sipping wine, letting the sun play with the streets and shadows, watching people play with their families and babies, pregnant women by fountain-side chatting with elderly locals. Paris in the summer! So different to when I was last here, in mid winter, both times. So charming winter is, only in Paris can even winter be charming with the desiduous trees and handsomely rugged up people. Summer brings joy to the streets and cafe life to a full and brimming pond of variety and colour. After the first night, which was awkward being alone and I went to sleep with unease and nerves, I woke with a sunny day and city to myself, and wandered in the charm of it until the evening which gave me the pleasure to meet a lovely gentleman and we ate snails and drank wine in a Montmartre bar under the full golden moon like real Parisiens. Lucky me! Paris offered herself to me unlike before and the weekend is mine!

Monday takes me to La Perrier, to visit an old friend of my mothers, Lynne, in the countryside of Normandy.