the day my camera died in lumiere

i woke up to the sound of a coffee machine hissing and immediately knew i was in trouble.

the first thing i did was smartphone heaven for a photo of the street outside my hostel but it glitched into static flatness...

there's this place called le benefit across the square and i heard it's supposed to have the best croissants but honestly i couldn't care less at that point...

i remember thinking 'i should just stay in bed and reassess' but my feet decided otherwise. they began packing themselves into whatever shoes i could find. which was sad because i’d worn holey sneakers for three days straight. by noon my feet looked like they belonged in a post-apocalyptic nursery rhyme.

someone told me that lumiere's best secret is a bakery called 'le benefit' but i don’t even know if that's real. maybe it's a myth whispered by ghosts? the airport left me thinking maybe time travel is just about being stuck in one place too long...

i saw a photo booth near the metro and tried to use it but the guy behind the counter just smiled and said 'you’re too serious.' maybe he was right. i’m not sure

there's a particular kind of street artist here who spray-paints motivational quotes in bad french on random walls. one had a sign that said ''> la paix est un état mental'. i almost cried but then realized that’s just icing on the grief cake.

if you get bored, paris is like 30 minutes by train. i didn’t go. i kept thinking about this morning’s coffee. the barista there made a mistake and put too much foam. it looked like angry clouds. i kept staring at it for like 20 minutes.

i heard that the best hostel in town is run by this really weird guy who plays bass covers of nursery rhymes at 3am. i never found him. probably good.

check out le benefit on tripadvisor. people swear by it. i’m just saying. link: https://www.tripadvisor.com

there's also this secondhand bookstore where the owner will sell you a cracked notebook for €2 if you promise to write a poem about existential dread in it. i didn’t take that deal. i’m bad at poetry.

i managed to find one decent photo yesterday. it was of a really obscure building with weird angles. i tried to ask someone what it was called but they just stared at me like i was a lost dog. maybe they were. i’m not sure.

if you ask nicely, some shops here will give you a sample of their coffee. i got one from ‘cafedirect’ and it tasted like betrayal. but hey, it kept me warm.

pro tip: don’t trust anyone to abandon their luggage. it happened last year at the train station. one guy’s bag was stolen by a seagull. wait wasn’t that in london? i’m getting confused. oh well.

i left with a napkin full of crumbs and a memory of that coffee machine. it learned i was a bad influence.

link to local forum: https://lumièreboards.travel

i don’t know where i am anymore but i’m sure of two things: the weather here is ok for someone who’s never cared about the weather, and that i need to sleep.

maybe next time i’ll bring a charger.

You might also be interested in:

• https://votoris.com/post/spray-paint-and-drizzle-finding-hagerstowns-hidden-walls
• https://votoris.com/post/sanaas-afterschool-scene-where-dusty-fields-meet-camera-lenses-and-other-chaos
• https://votoris.com/post/10-surprising-facts-about-ibagu-you-probably-didnt-know
• https://votoris.com/post/spray-can-dreams-and-31degree-concrete-my-messy-san-salvador-art-mission
• https://votoris.com/post/is-pikine-petfriendly-heres-the-messy-truth-from-a-freelance-photographers-lens