Trying to get a coffee in Paris before 8am is a fool’s errand. You may find the odd boulangerie open, but the French generally prefer their caffeination to occur at a more civilised hour – say 9am.

Which is why I was not surprised on my first morning in Paris, for September’s spring-summer fashion week, to find exactly zero cafes open at 6.45am. What I did find on my still-dark morning walk were Jess and Ian, running to Pont Neuf. Jess and Ian are friends from Sydney, and though I knew they were in Paris, the odds of running into them in a city of two million people (and around 50 million tourists annually) was as slim as a Chanel 2.55.

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