Dining out

We don't often go out to dinner, but Caroline was anxious to try out the acclaimed fish and chip restaurant (cum shop) on the other side of town. So, we booked a table for this evening and gave it a try. Not bad, was the verdict, if you don't expect haute cuisine. The chips weren't cooked enough for my taste, but they were certainly not too oily. My sea bass could have been anything, though again the batter didn't cloy in the mouth as it can do. There was a genuine no nonsense feel to the place, and a warm welcome

Funnily enough our friends the Greenwolds, whom we saw on Saturday, were telling us about their son Michael's new venture: the first fish and chip shop to be opened in Paris, The Sunken Chip.

Black and blue

The Confraternity of St James celebrated their patronal feast with lunchtime tapas yesterday, but those of us present in North Paddington were in somber mode: the deaths and injuries of so many train passengers en route for Santiago cast a black shadow over proceedings.

It comes less than a fortnight after the fatal crash near Paris. I reflected on having travelled along both stretches of line in recent times: the French and Spanish maintain that provision of excellent rail links fit for the 21st Century should not merely earn them a bubble reputation - a claim now punctured (at least in Spain's case) by what looks like the negligence of one man.

One woman has made a difference to Trafalgar Square, with the unveiling yesterday of Katharina Fritsch's Hahn/Cock. I biked past after dark, the polyester resin sculpture, nearly 5 metres high, roosting surreally on its plinth. Great!

Safe return

My four train journeys yesterday and today have all been uneventful, and here I am back at home again. At Cheltenham Station the reception party consisted of Caroline - and Thomas! None of us were expecting him to come from Lisbon for this weekend's celebrations: a lovely surprise, in springing which Sarah has been instrumental.

For the third time in four, I had a sleeping compartment to myself, travelling from Munich to Paris. No disturbances. The early morning run through Eastern France revealed just how much rain has been falling there recently.

In Paris, I wandered round the 10th in search of breakfast, passing some jolly looking shops. In one window, a sign: "Thanx (sic) God I'm a V.I.P." Another went by the name "Yak & Yeti." Johann Strauss's bust enlivened a square I passed through. On the Eurostar, people around me had been in Paris for the tennis, and were returning disappointed at so many matches being lost to the weather. But today at home it's warm and sunny.

Brasov

The sun is shining here, and indeed it's rather too hot for sight-seeing; so after a mini-wander around (an an excellent lunch), I'm sitting in the cool lobby of Hotel Casa Wagner, in Brasov's main square, away from the Whitsunday crowds, with an equally cool beer to hand. In other words, it's a good life!

My train journey came to an end this morning at 10ish, just under 48 hours after leaving Cheltenham. The best part was the last: I had my 3-person sleeper from Budapest on the Ister Express all to myself, and awoke to see hills peeping out of the mist and the sun slanting across the landscape from left to right, rather than from right to left as last evening.

The train was not, thankfully, in a hurry, so I was able to enjoy the very attractive and varied landscape - fields much divided up, sheep (with shepherds), hay stooks, woodlands with banks of false acacia trees in bloom, lakes and rivers, birdlife (plentiful), and even a couple of horse-drawn carts. They obviously haven't all gone for lasagna.

In the villages, each house with its steeply-raked roof, there was not a lawn to be seen: gardens are intensively cultivated with vegetables - all of course far ahead of ours at home.

The final run into Brasov was across flatter territory, snowy mountains being now the backdrop, a reminder of Brasov's strategic importance in old times. I received an uninvited (but rather welcome) history lesson from a certain Peter, who was unashamedly out to earn a little money: he approached me with a distinctive brand of English (Orwell is his favourite writer) as I stood taking a photograph of three trumpeters in costume high up on the platform of the city centre tower (they perform at 12 each day as a reminder of the role of the human fire alarms of former days, Peter told me). Vlad the Impaler was, he assured me, a goody: having read a full and very gory description of his methods in my Rough Guide, I remain unconvinced.

I really do recommend coming by train if you are thinking of Romania for a holiday. I had a delicious dinner in Paris - at Brasserie Flo, the station restaurant: in Munich, I arrived off the Cassiopeia in time for breakfast near the Marienplatz; and in Budapest I ate well at the recommended Rosenstein. Both German and Hungarian sleeping cars were more than adequate, though, going for a shower this morning, I found it in full use as a broom cupboard. And loo paper is BYO.

Switching between French, German, Hungarian and Romanian may sound interesting, but - though this feels like a contradiction in terms - English is the lingua franca.

Paris 10e

Aristide Cavaillé-Coll - not a name with which I was familiar - was reputed to be the finest organ-builder of the 19th Century. He is commemorated by a garden near the Gare du Nord. I have been strolling around this part of Paris since arriving by Eurostar this afternoon, with time to spare before I catch the night train to Munich.

Sitting outside a café in the sunshine with a beer, I watched children being collected from school, mostly by grandparents. The atmosphere of this area resembles not at all that with which I am familiar, and even in daylight feels quite threatening to an old codger from Cheltenham. I took refuge in the large church of St Vincent de Paul and found Mass in progress - peaceful and dignified, as befitted an elderly congregation, but with a young, rather traditionalist priest.

Emerging, and before walking the short distance to the magnificent Gare de l'Est, I bought apricots, bread and peppermints at a supermarket ahead of the rest of my long journey. Now I'm enjoying dinner in the station restaurant.

Paris Gare de Lyon

We have just been sitting under an awning outside the Duc de Richelieu bistro in rue Parrot near here, having an early supper. Though the air is warmer than it was in England this morning, the rain has been pouring down on a scooterised traffic warden, pausing to slap a notice on the windscreen of each of several illegally-parked cars alongside us. Our Geneva train leaves shortly, and then it's on to Lausanne to sleep, before going on to Florence tomorrow: a friend of a friend advises against the sleeper to Italy.

La Fête du Muguet

It was hot, and Caroline in particular was exhausted by all the walking, biking (Vélib's) and crowds, especially round Notre Dame, so this afternoon we sat with our backs to the Seine embankment on the Quai d' Orléans and watched the world go by, in varying states of undress. We had travelled anti-clockwise: first, passing through the market in Boulevard de Reuilly, dodging the bunches of lily of the valley thrust at us at every turn. Then up onto La Coulée Verte - dodging the joggers this time. That brought us nearly to the Bastille, where we braved the bike hire system for the first time, wobbling via the Place des Vosges to the Centre Pompidou. By then lunch seemed a good idea: from our table on the pavement of Rue des Lombards, we could almost see the Tour St Jacques. Most appropriate, in view of my impending departure for Le Puy-en-Velay tomorrow morning, to walk along his way.

Paris 12e

Here we are in France - Caroline for just two nights, me for 16. We are staying in Paris with our friend of long standing, Tatou. She has a flat not far that from the Bois de Vincennes, though her local park (where I took this picture) is hardly big enough to swing a cat in. She brings her grandchildren here when they come to visit. It already feels warmer, though there's rain in the air. Tomorrow is 1st May, so of course all the galleries will be closed, but there'll be plenty to keep us amused, not having spent time here for a long while.

James Joyce

Declan Kiberd's Cheltenham Lecture yesterday represented for me all that's best about our Festival of Literature. Here spoke someone, of whom I'd never heard, on a topic of which I lived in some fear, and by whose language I was transported for the whole hour.

Professor Kiberd, looking a little like an apologetic Groucho Marx, flattered us initially by extolling Cheltenham: "one of the last of the intimate cities." As, he said, was Dublin at the time of Bloomsday, "the dailiest day". People walked. They must circulate in the city streets, like blood in the body, "the weather as uncertain as a baby's bottom" (Simon Dedalus). Bohemia in Dublin was compulsory: in Paris, optional. Joyce was in revolt against a sort of arrogant bohemianism: culture separated from everyday life.

The lecturer, as a writer on Ulysses, described himself as like a soccer correspondent for the book. He quoted the Balinese response to Margaret Mead: "We do everything as well as we can." Joyce would have liked that bit of self-help philosophy: he wants you to become the parent of your own reading. "The ordinary is the proper domain of the artist: the extraordinary can safely be left to journalists."

Kiberd was particularly strong on Joyce's love/hate relationship with Catholicism. Religion has declined into fretful rule-keeping, yet Joyce hung around churches in Holy Week, knew the Latin of the Triduum liturgy by heart, and particularly loved it when they sang Lumen Christi at the Easter Vigil. "Good idea the Latin. Stupifies them first;" but after saying this, Bloom administers his own viaticum, offering bits of white paper to the gulls in the Circe episode: when they aren't fooled, he resorts to Banbury cake. Later again, Bloom gives Stephen the Eucharistic coffee and bun.

The lecturer described Bloom as the womanly man, akin to the central figures in so many Shakespearean tragedies, as contrasted with the comedies' manly women heroines. And Stephen Dedalus took to drink as the shy person's revenge, his way of dealing with the insult of the actual.

I see from my copy of Ulysses that I tackled it 40 years ago: time now to do so again I believe.

Paris: Musée d'Orsay

It was our first visit to Paris for many years: the last time I saw Cézanne's Achille Emperaire, it was hanging in the Jeu de Paume. That means we can't have been there for at least 22 years: the old station building on Quai d'Orsay was opened as the great museum it is by François Mitterrand in December 1986.

The obvious comparison is with Tate Modern, also built round a cavernous main hallway. You can't compare the pictures, but as a gallery it seems to me that Musée d'Orsay wins hands down.

After a relatively cursory look round the collection either side of lunch - there are 80 separate galleries: we shall have to go back! - we walked in the sunshine across the Pont Royal to the Louvre, to see their great Mantegna exhibition. One of my very favourite artists: what a day! All we missed out was hiring a Vélib'.

Out of training

Four weeks ago today we were in Paris on the first leg of our InterRail holiday, from which we have just returned. Having embarked at Cheltenham Station, this - our first train - was late, our carriage door was stuck and the loo was blocked. I won't say every continental conveyance - we also had goes on metros, trams, buses and even a funicular - was perfect by contrast. They did all however run to time and were mostly more comfortable than our dear First Great Western.

We are still digesting it all (assisted by 900 photographs). Apart from our 36 trains, we clocked up six capital cities, 11 art galleries, 13 cathedrals, 17 World Heritage Sites - well yes, this does include a couple we saw from the train - and slept in 22 different beds. No opera and only one concert - but what a concert (Dudamel conducting the Göteborgs Symfoniker in Nielsen). Good food (and drink). Meetings with old and new friends, and much kindness of strangers. Hardly any rain, and really warm at times.

Low point: my bag was snatched in Barcelona, complete with credit cards and €100 - boring to say the least, and chastening in view of the specific warnings friends had given us.

More later perhaps, but must now get on with the thank you letters!