minke: adventure in paris

Three hours left. Just got time for a museum - D'Orsee or Picasso, I guess. Wouldn't mind seeing the inside of the Notre Dame, and getting wine.

One beer before I go, a Jenlain. This place apparently makes beer cocktails, including one that lists 'bier flambe' as an ingredient.

f12 left, so not enough to get something to eat, unless maybe it's really cheap outside the station. I'm allowing myself an hour to get to the station and I don't have to make any connections.

Between here and London, I've nearly run out of ink in this pen.

I wish I knew what that last beer I had last night was, it was delicious.

I've been lugging around four bottles of wine all day - not appelation controlled, quelle risque. I hope they're nice, and worth the effort.

Went to Notre Dame, a mass was on (on? it's not a tv show!), and it smelled very churchy. I went in the side entrance first, saw one of the rose windows, then went around the back to try and see the one that faces out, but couldn't. Then the organ started playing and I got a bit freaked out. Something about the smell of candles and that Catholic incense (myrrh?), the echoing of the priest's voice and the organ.

Metro (well, RER) to Musee D'Orsee, but the queue was massive so I left and walked across to the Tuilleries and the Louvre. Queue from the pyramid around half the courtyard. If you go through the passages between wings you can see in a bit without having to go in. I'll come in winter, I think. Though it looks a bit like the sculpture garden in the Tuilleries outside, and that never does it for me.

Out, watched rollerbladers, got a free booklet about Belgian designers - lists shops in Antwerp, handy, hey?

Walked down to here, Chatelet Metro is across the road so it's easy to get to Gare de Nord.

I slept really badly last night, partly cos it was noisy - people downstairs, and hours later people buzzing the door and leaving. There's always one girl with an annoying laugh in any group of drunk people keeping you awake and I always plan to kill them if I meet them in the corridor in the morning.

I can't believe people really wear berets.

(The Seine always has a current, sometimes so strong it makes permanent waves in the middle. It always looks as if a boat has gone past. And the colour is so odd, as if it was a clay suspension. So different to Amsterdam's canals.)

Paris is so different to other tourist cities, I think partly because it's not as if they have to try to have a 'Paris end' (sorry Melbourne).

[I was also thinking about the air of desperation some other tourist cities have, being hustled and begged at, but then on the way back I encountered a horrible variant of the 'woman begs in subway with child' where the child was actually made to run towards you holding out a cup to match her mother's, begging for money. She would have been maybe three.]

The wind is blowing hard, but here inside it's a beautiful sunny day. I can see the Place de Chatelet through the window.

Oh no! It's the Rollerblade Police. (Four of them just crossed into Place de Chatelet, pert buns at the ready. I'm talking about the chick cop's hair, of course).

Nearly time to go. I'm so impressed that I can do this just for the weekend. I totally rock. Sorry, it's not like I built the fast rail track, but I went through all that crap and in the end, I get to do this.