Sun, Aug 24 - Paris to Germany

10.02am - last morning in Paris, and a gray and rainy day...10.10am - omelette jambon, croissant and thé à la menthe, at Le Départ St. Michel, before heading over to the Gare du Nord to catch the high-speed train to Germany

10.35am - YOU try getting a tea to go at a Parisian bistro...

12.19pm - on the Thalys train Paris-Cologne, via Brussels. They had an online offer of a 1st class ticket for 2/3rds of the price of a regular 2nd class ticket. So here I am in first class, after an ample breakfast - and they're serving a full meal! Who knew?

This is a very fine marinated salmon, a clafoutis of courgette (zucchini) with pine nuts, asparagus spears with a lovely saffron dipping sauce, two anchovy-wrapped olives hiding under the salad, some warm olive bread plus some roquefort-style cheese to go with it, some tomato juice, and a panna cotta with red currants. Delicious. And yes, ahem, I finished all of it.

2.20pm - on the stretch from Brussels to Cologne, they only handed out chocolates...

3.16pm - I suddenly remembered I had some leftover macarons in my bag! These are not from Laduree, but from the fancy Grande Epicerie at Le Bon Marche, and they were nowhere near as good. Granted, they're a day old here already, and weren't kept in the fridge either. But they were about half the price of Laduree's (which are 1.5 Euros each, while these are sold by weight) - that must mean something, right? Flavors are raspberry-ginger, pineapple-lime, and apricot.

5.13pm - a croissant made from pretzel dough (these are amazing!!)) purchased at the Ditsch at Cologne Station, where I had to change trains, on the ICE from Cologne to Limburg. By the way, this is a fairly standard train in Germany, and by golly, it is wonderful. Clean, comfortable, modern, nice. Makes you feel bad for Amtrak back in the States.

6.14pm - German comfort food - pancake soup , with mom's homemade pancakes, at mom and dad's

6.31pm - mom's homemade apple sauce, made with nothing but apples from the garden, vanilla and cinnamon, at mom and dad's

9.02pm - a Botinchen, which is some neapolitan ice cream plus a chewing gum as the nose. Note that a Botinchen will always smile at you no matter what, which is not something that can be said of a lot of people. As such, it is always much appreciated.