Spent most of today searching BHV, the huge department store next to the Hotel de Ville, for cintres, which are either arches or coathangers depending on the context. We were after the latter. Eventually, after asking about 15 extremely busy shop assistants, we discovered the largest range of coathangers in the western hemisphere. Plastic, wood, metal, 3 pairs of trousers on each hanger, ones to hang other coathangers on, tie hangers, skirt hangers... naturally, we purchased the cheapest, plainest white coathangers available, and left the rest of the Saturday shopping crowd to fight it out on the escalators.

We also live very close to a Muji shop which, after much searching, was the only place we could find affordable rectangular (as opposed to square) pillow cases. This is the kind of fun thing you end up doing when you live abroad - all these people who keep emailing about strolling around museums and discovering little hidden markets don't know what kind of fun we're having!

Food report

Dinner last night: moules-frites for 7 Euros each, in a slightly odd place on the rue st antoine. It receives fresh moules every day from Bretagne, which is nice, but the cafe consists of two separate shops next to each other, and the only way to get between then is to go out through the main door, onto the street, and through the front door of the other one. Why does this matter? Because one half contains the bar, and the other half the kitchen. So, the waiter/barman in the bar area (where we were), takes your order, makes your drinks, then takes your order through to the other half of the cafe. Later on, your food is brought in the front door by another waiter (at this point we hadn't realised where the kitchen was, and wondered if he'd gone up to a take-away..). In the other part I guess the inverse operation is carried out. The cafe is extremely busy and waiters are always running in and out with trays of drink and food, and to add to the fun, the bar part contains a Tabac at the front which (on a Friday night at least) has a permanent queue, which the waiter has to push through with his large tray of moules or drinks.. excellent entertainment and very tasty moules, though they could have done with a bit more cleaning.

Lunch today: gallettes. Excellent.

Dinner: we finally cooked a meal in our little flat tonight, with produce from the local market in place beaudoyer. We accompanied it with the bottle of wine the landlady left for us, which was very decent. Cooking in the flat is fine, we have only electric cooking hobs but they seem pretty servicable, The only problem is there's not much light in the cooking area, so you have to lift your saucepan off the stove and move it into the light to see how burnt the food is getting..