Born to be Wild

15th June - We stayed close to where we are staying for most of today. I was up vomiting during the night and still felt quite nauseous today (more than the low-grade usual). I had dared to get excited that it was improving over the last few days, but oh well. I am happy to be pregnant and 40 weeks of nausea in the scheme of a lifetime is not huge.

Warning: gross details to come in this paragraph!! - it was the kind of violent vomiting I can laugh about now, but I had to take the plug out of the sink (you know the European kind that sit in the plughole raised a few millimeters and you lower them to close). I realised I had not chewed my spaghetti properly and I had to wipe little splatter marks from the walls above the sink (and people laugh at me for traveling with Pine o Clean wipes?! They come in so handy. Ok, gross details over.

Back to Paris.

So today we checked out the famous bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, near Notre Dame. What a joy that was. I love a bookshop at the best of times, add all the character and history of this one and I'm loving it even more. Ernest Hemingway used to hang out there. They published Ulysses when no-one else would. Upstairs there is a reading library (you can't take photos up there, sorry), and the seats up there turn into benches. Aspiring writers sleep on the benches and in exchange work for free in the shop! Oh the romance!! I bought a biography of Marie Antoinette (I've wanted to read it since our visit to Versailles and haven't been able to find it in Australia), and some cute kids books for the baby. They are in English but hopefully the baby is picking up some French and a love of Paris on this adventure. Then when you pay they stamp the inside of your book so you remember where you got it. Oh love!! What a find. Thanks Chinners and Claire for telling us about it. I missed it in our Lonely Planet!