I thought my time in Paris would be spent alone. Not that I had any prob­lems. With its effi­cient rail and bus sys­tem, Paris is very much geared for tourists and it is dif­fi­cult to get lost. I cov­ered quite a lot of ground in the three days I was there. Includ­ing walk­ing up the Champs-Elysees from Franklin Roo­sevelt sta­tion and the Eif­fel Tower from Tro­cadera Gar­dens sta­tion, just as Jag had sug­gested (thanks Jag!). I espe­cially loved the Lou­vre (where my head started spin­ning after a few hours), the Moulin Rouge, the Basil­ica of Sacre Coeur and that whole bar­gain shop­ping stretch at Montmarte. 

It was my last night though on the 26th, and I could hardly believe it when I bumped into Shruti and Param (who I know of online for a while now). 

This seemed even more unbe­liev­able, since I had been try­ing to meet Param in Ban­ga­lore ever since he moved from Hyder­abad, but had to keep post­pon­ing for some rea­son or another! I met his wife Shruti a few weeks ago instead for some work. So I wouldn’t actu­ally have recog­nised him. As it so hap­pened, Shruti turned around and said, “Anita?” 

It was a freaky coin­ci­dence for sure as they had checked into the very same place I was stay­ing in.

Any­way, it was really a pleas­ant sur­prise for me as not only did I land up hav­ing din­ner with them both, but we also met Mahesh, who is cur­rently also in Paris. The last time I met Mahesh was a few years ago, before he left Mum­bai for Wash­ing­ton, so he too was nat­u­rally equally sur­prised when he saw me cross­ing a Paris street in front of him! 

So there we were — four of us — all brought together by some strange cross­ing of our paths in Paris, where we had least expected it! We had a small impromptu blog­gers meet at a small diner in Bastille, sit­ting out­side on the pave­ment (like they love doing!), over cham­pagne, not so good food (mine at least) and a very amus­ing and charm­ing Israeli waiter who kept us in splits.

We couldn’t help but won­der, “What are the chances?” I guess stranger things have been known to happen!

I left Paris the next day and am now in a very small town called Inver­ness, in North­ern Scot­land. Sis and I made our way here from Birm­ing­ham via Edin­burgh and will go to Glas­gow before return­ing to Lon­don. Did a quick cruise on the lovely Loch Ness today, but no sight of the mon­ster. Appar­ently, it might still be there. :) The drive through the Scot­tish high­lands — rolling hills, beau­ti­ful plains cov­ered with orange yel­low bracken, des­o­late stretches of for­est and sheep (mil­lions of them!) — was rather lovely, though the weather was a lit­tle on the cloudy side. 

Spend­ing a night at Inver­ness and we haven’t decided what to do tomor­row. It’s Sun­day, and we found out that the Scots don’t work at all on Sun­days so that will cre­ate some prob­lems for us. But we should fig­ure out some­thing soon. Cur­rently, on very expen­sive Inter­net time (of course, any­thing is expen­sive when you pay in pounds and earn in rupees!). 

I also have yet to find a place where I down­load all the pic­tures I took in Paris and Scot­land so far. So that will have to wait. A few more days left of my hol­i­day and I realised that time sure flies when one is hav­ing fun!