Nostalgia, Charged by the Hour

In which a shopping mall proves more faithful than expected, a market delivers on old promises, and a rendez-vous looms at the edge of every sentence like a tide coming in.

A foreign bed is a test of character, and I am pleased to report I passed it — up at nine, coffee dispatched, and facing the particular luxury of an entire day with nowhere urgent to be until six that evening. The rendez-vous itself would have to wait its turn. First, there was time to kill, and killing time properly is an art I take seriously.

We pointed the Captur toward Parly 2, once the undisputed capital of my teenage shopping ambitions. It has aged the way old friends do — recognisably itself, though half the tenants have been quietly replaced while you weren’t looking. I navigated its corridors without a single wrong turn, which felt less like memory and more like muscle reflex refusing to let go of the past.

From one nostalgic landmark to the next: Versailles town centre requires no GPS from me, only the faint pull of habit. We tucked the car into the underground car park and surfaced into the market, where the food hall performed exactly as advertised by two decades of memory — still excellent, still populated by names I recognised the way you recognise handwriting.

The side streets behind the market remain thick with restaurants, and choosing lunch was less a decision than a formality.

We settled outside, in the sun, and the meal that followed earned every bit of its reputation. Our waiter managed the rare trick of being both efficient and genuinely good company, which brings me to a small provocation for my American friends: no tip was expected, none was factored into anyone’s calculations, and the service was better than plenty I’ve had where twenty percent was assumed before the menus even arrived. Make of that what you will.

Lunch concluded, the Captur pointed a few kilometres further west — toward the actual reason for this whole excursion into the Paris region. That part of the story I’m still not ready to tell. More to come, as promised, and sooner than you think.