One Night in Paris…

Zac stops at the door of Peck, Milan, in a state of panic, brandishing his iPhone. “We can’t go in there! Everyone says they’re really rude, and will throw you out if you look like a tourist.”

Peck, for those of you who aren’t obsessed with Italian food, is a little like a Milanese version of Harrod’s Food Hall, minus the vulgarity – a temple of gastronomy and lovingly-wrapped packages, with a myriad prosciuttos behind the counter, enough teas to shame a Chinese Carrefour and some disturbingly lurid mortadellas. And cheese, obv.

“Don’t worry,” I say, tugging my T-shirt classily down over my expanding muffin top. I’m experiencing another bout of mysterious weight gain, and I can’t for the life of me understand why. It’s not like Italians are fat, Chrissakes! And I’m certainly not going to stop eating, or drinking Negronis, or start taking exercise just for the sake of exercise. “It’ll be fine!”

“OK,” he says, resignedly, with the burgeoning self-consciousness of someone who’s heading into his teens. And in we trundle, trailing the stupid little wheelie suitcases we so ridiculously changed down to because we thought we’d feel better with carryon suitcases than packs in Western Europe.

And… Peck is wonderful. They turn a blind eye to our suitcases. The white-clad chaps don’t mind us pondering. They answer my questions, in abysmal Latinian, painstakingly simply – in fact, one guy speaks good English – and we buy four types of prosciutto, for tasting back home, just to see if anything can compare to the 40-month aged San Daniele that we ate at I Rusteghi in Venice, and some wild strawberries for a snack on the train.

It seems to be running late. But the board doesn’t work. And there’s no one at the enquiries desk. So I’m not sure we’re even in the right place at all. This, I think, would NEVER happen in China.

Said train, the Thello, departs from an implausibly suburban, poky little station in the middle of goddamn nowhere. And it seems to be running late. But the board doesn’t work. And there’s no one at the enquiries desk. So I’m not sure we’re even in the right place at all.

This, I think, would NEVER happen in China.

A babble of tourists meander around, asking each other questions, until we find someone who sounds convincing, and up we head to the platform and wait.

The train arrives, and, after a short pause while police interrogate some dude on the platform, we’re away.

We’re in a mixed, 6-berth cabin, packed with all the diversity of new Europe, which means I can take my schoolgirl French out for an airing it last had when we had dinner with a Roman couple in Rome and found majority French with bits of English and Italian was the best way to converse.

Zac and I are opposite each other. “Perhaps you could swap so that you are close together,” suggests one guy in African-accented French.

“That’s a good idea!” I say.

“You’d need to ask l’Arabe,” he says.

Oooh! It’s the guy the police were talking to, looking not exactly shifty but… well, about as uncomfortable as most people would be if they’d been unable to board a train without an interrogation from Italian police.

I ask him. “Sure,” he says, and swaps bunks with Zac.

“They’ve put me in a carriage full of guys!” she says. “Would YOU sleep in a carriage full of strange men?” “Yes,” I say.

There’s an English speaker in the bar, in a state of high dudgeon. “This train is terrible,” she says. “Outrageous.”

This seems a little harsh. Our second class berths are roughly equivalent to the second class berths on a Chinese train, albeit at approximately ten times the price, and considerably more than the cost of a bucket-shop flight, but at least we’ve taken a few tonnes off our humongous carbon footprints, eh?

“What’s the matter?” I ask.

“They’ve put me in a carriage full of guys!” she says. “Would YOU sleep in a carriage full of strange men?”

“Yes,” I say. Of course, unlike Chinese trains, this European train has doors on the second-class compartments. But I think one’s chances of experiencing violation in a six-berth compartment on a European sleeper train are close to zero – and I’ve never even registered the gender balance of the compartments we’ve slept in on Chinese, Mongolian, Vietnamese or Thai trains.

We stare at each other, in mutual incomprehension. This is, I realise, why Thello’s website allows you to book spots in a woman-only carriage.

Perhaps she’s expecting to change into a nightie, or something? I’ve always assumed that on a train one sleeps in one’s clothes. Unless one’s a child. Or has a private compartment, or summat.

A second round of interrogation at the French border – again, all for the benefit of L’Arabe – and we roll into Paris very far from well rested. As I get off the train, my flip-flops bite the dust.

Back to our carriage. I usually sleep well on trains. Not this one.

Sometime in the wee hours, French-speaking police enter the compartment, shine lights in our faces and, apparently satisfied, move on. I assume, befuddled, that we are entering France, but with hindsight it’s probably Switzerland.

Then the lights shine again. A rumble of voices. “What was your original name?”

L’Arabe replies. “Why did you change your name?”

I miss l’Arabe’s reply again. I drift in and out of a fitful sleep, Zac still snoozing in l’Arabe’s original bed, while the poor guy undergoes another 30-minute interrogation.

Odd, I think, drowsily. I’ve no reason to believe the guy is militant – in fact, given the absence of facial hair and his willingness to give up his bed to a boy travelling with his obviously unmarried mother, I suspect he isn’t – but I’m sure this sort of farrago is precisely the type of unpleasantness that turns folk into radicals.

A second round of interrogation at the French border – again, all directed at L’Arabe – and we roll into Paris very far from well rested. As I get off the train, my flip-flop breaks. I change into my heels, which are, frankly, taxi shoes and progress, wincing, stinking and filthy-of-nail, dragging my stupid bloody wheelie suitcase behind me, to a restaurant where we can eat pastries and find somewhere to stay.

The cheeses, I am disappointed to note, are served fridge-cold. Bloody health & safety, I think. The French must be at least as cross about this as we were about our bananas.

For Zac, who has done La Louvre, the Arc de Triomphoe and the Eiffel Tower with his father, and EuroDisney with me as a tot, le gay Paree is all about the food. We scoff some patisserie, find a cheap Montmartre hotel on LateRooms, and establish ourselves in our garret.

First up! Shoe-shopping. Well, flip-flop shopping.

Shopping for mundane stuff – normal, non-tourist things – is a great way to get a feel for any area, anywhere, and we very much enjoy, insteps notwithstanding, our wander past antique shops, into the odd vintage clothes shop (well, I enjoyed this bit, anyway) and past fabulous cheeseries as ripely aromatic as the cheese in Three Men in a Boat into a place packed full of bargain bins of spangly flip-flops.

Satisfied – I with my purchase, and Zac with the fact that I’m no longer whinging – we head down to an absolutely classic French bistro, Restaurant Chartier, for 6 euro foie, 10 euro steaks and buggerall euro house wine. The cheeses, I am disappointed to note, are served fridge-cold.

Bloody health & safety, I think. The French must be at least as cross about this incursion as we were about our bananas.

The boy, for the record, does not like French cheese. I tried him on the stinky stuff when he was far too young, and, pushing a decade later, he’s still averse to that gloriously rotten aroma.

“Shall we go and look at Sacré-Coeur?” I suggest, tentatively. “It’s a very famous church, and it’s walking distance from here.”

“Churches?” says the boy. “Meh.”

And so, we amble through Montmartre and back to base. Cake, steak, and a pleasant stroll. Sorted.

Due to the checkin process now required on entry to Fortress Britain, it’s more like an airport experience than a train experience, except without the smoking pit that enables one to grab a quick gasper ahead of enforced abstinence.

And thence to London, on EuroStar, which is genuinely exciting since it’s a train that goes under the sea and the boy hasn’t been on it before, but also frustrating because, due to the checkin process now required on entry to Fortress Britain, it’s more like an airport experience than a train experience, except without the smoking lounge that enables one to grab a quick gasper ahead of enforced abstinence.

And… there we are. In St. Pancras, to Kings Cross, which still has the builders in around the tube area – in fact, I can’t remember a time when Kings Cross wasn’t having something done to it — and up to Norfolk to the bosom of our family.

The prosciutto, we conclude, is good, though the wild boar is perhaps a little dry. But none of it quite lives up to the flawless ham sandwich we ate at I Rusteghi…

Further, the weather is atypically lovely. In fact, I’m seriously considering spending a month or so in Blighty before we head to Egypt.

Image: Montmartre s’Éveille by Alexandre Duret-Lutz– Flickr Creative Commons.