Sunday afternoon

A walk along the Seine, Right Bank, partly in the rain, partly a walk that turned into a bike ride, when we came across a Velib station and I used my card for the first time. Not many people out. Christmas shopping in full swing. The river high with all the rain and brown, swans being washed on the swell of peniches, gulls arriving from both ends of the river to fight over bread crumbs being scattered by a thin man in a hooded white parka. Tea on the way home in the almost unfindable Mariage Freres tea shop on the Rue des Grands Augustin, it too quiet and though expensive filled with ordinary-looking people speaking quietly, tended by waiters expert in the hundreds, thousands of teas on offer. Back out in the pouring rain to come home and skip dinner, or almost.