Indoors and loving it

I'm in Paris, yes I am. Lots of factors made this happen sooner than it might have. First, the last two days before Amiens were ridiculously long, and made me hurt. Then, in the area south of Amiens, campsites are thin on the ground; I walked all the way to Chaussoy-Epagny where the map I picked up at tourist info in Amiens showed a camping, only to be told by some locals in a cafe that it was 6km back north and east of there. Grr to backtracking (even if a kindly old fellow interrupted the early part of his session of Ricards to give me a lift up there, narrated in the broken but remarkably solid English he picked up while in the French army 30 years ago). Then, I'm a bit behind schedule. While still having a fixed date to arrive in Geneva (as I'll have company going over the Alps), I don't want to be rushed as I cover the upper reaches of the Seine from Troyes to Dijon.

So yesterday I walked the 10km or so to get to the N1 route and hitched into the Paris suburbs, from where it was a quick bus/RER hop to get into the 14e arrondissement where I'm now holed up at my friend Genevieve's place. Warm bed, internet connection, bakery a few doors down. I'm a happy boy, and it doesn't matter for now that my right knee is acting up.

Bought some good maps from the IGN shop (like Stanford's but only selling their own stuff), so now I'll spend some time chilling out and planning the nitty-gritty of the next couple of weeks. And catching up on sleep.