"Les Jardins de Versialles"

Thursday 9th August

Graham:

Hi,

Victor’s having a great time exploring Paris; Just like ET he doesn’t bother to phone home much, but we’ve had sufficient contact with him to know at least the outline of what he’s been up to. Apart from getting to know loads of lovely little bars and tucked away restaurants He has been to “Notre Dame”, “le Tour de Eiffel”, Le Place du Concorde”, “Les Jardins de Tuileries” etc. Tuesday night he went to “le Quartier Latin” to “hang” with crowds of students. He had a great time, met students from every corner of the world, got a real chance to practise his French and still somehow made it home after checking out a few bars, to his apartment in Curbevoire.

Yesterday he went with my friend Saman to visit the Louver museum. It’s a massive place and would take days to see, so they had to pick a certain area and do a sort of micro visit.

Today he is going to take the train some 20km to Versailles, where I lived when I was working for Citroen, in their design dept. His plan is to visit the gardens of the “Le Chateau de Versailles”, perhaps have a bit of a picnic there and a sleep beneath the shade of a tree and then at about 8pm head for the market square, which is the epicentre of Versailles. There are many restaurants and bars with terraces in the square and many of them are inexpensive, as Versailles is a student town. (It has three lycees (6^th form colleges.)).

I used to live at 7 rue de la Poivererie, Victor is going to install himself in a bar restaurant very near to there and have a few nice cold beers, whilst he waits for Sanam who is planning to met him there. They are going to have diner together and enjoy the atmosphere. It real is most wonderful to have a nice meal in an ancient cobbled market place and be entertained by musicians who pass amongst the tables playing “”La Vie en Rose” and other great songs from the marvellous “ Musique François catalogue.

Tomorrow he plans to go to “”Montematre” which is the student/artist quarter and has more bars than shops, where he plans just to chill and meet other students.

How I wish I were 18 again!