I've been back from Europe for over a week now. Did I ever really go there? The thousands of photos indicate yes.

I've ridden my bike three times already, in an attempt to conserve some of the summer spirit. The first trip was to the supermarket, then on Monday I rode along the Torrens to visit the office. The sky was overcast, the water was brown and the boring, muted towers of the Adelaide skyline gave me a visceral reaction. I muttered some ungracious things about the city and did not take any photos.

Since then my body has adjusted to the dark and the cold and the damp. It was definitely a good idea to put fresh bedsheets on the bed the day we left. There is still eight weeks of winter remaining, but at least the backyard that confronted me after a week away was not just a gigantic pile of mulberry leaves, but a couple of flowers too.

Saturday was my third bike ride, a trip to the markets between downpours for delicious, strong coffee better than anything I had in Europe (except maybe one in Rome) and cheap fruit. I felt a lot better after that one. Then we rode back home.

Shuffling through Italian border control like level 99 on Nokia Snake

Cowbells jangling in the cloud cover at dawn.

Strong coffee poured from a moka pot onto microwaved milk in a tiny kitchen in Naples.

The smell of alpine forest. Rounding a bend to see the peak of the mountain Pitalus, and the steep meadows bathed in sunshine.

The colours of Venice after the sun gets low.

The cold, sweet water dispensed by the water fountains suspended on the cliffs along the Path of the Gods.

Removing my hiking boots after ascending and descending the hundreds of steps from Amalfi to the Valle delle Ferriere.

The view of everything from the top of Arc de Triomph where a hazy, grey sky turns the muted, symmetrical avenues of Paris into an infinite sphere of amazing views.

The contrast between the bald, muscular Italian man overtaking us at 120km on the freeway and the tiny smart car in which he is seated.

Tucking the lower half of my shirt up into my backpack straps so that my exposed abdomen can leak off some heat into the humid atmosphere.

The shower in Amalfi with its warm, heavy water falling from directly above in a glass cubicle of perfect proportions.

Cheesy dance music thudding as the crowd dances beneath the eaves and shutters of 500 year old buildings, while lightning flashes overhead.

The surge of the Paris metro 4 line accelerating from one station to the next.

The heat of the sun in Rome being instantly extinguished by the massive shadow of the colosseum.

The taste of the puddle of butter in the centre of a French, buckwheat crepe.

Standing between the monumental size of THE CORONATION OF NAPOLEON on the equally immense Louvre palace.

Sitting still in the Luxembourg Gardens under a stormy sky.

Naked and wet in the middle of Qatar airport.

Before... After

Today I tried being a Parisian. After being here six nights, seeing most of the tourist attractions, eating a lot of kebabs and working out how to use the self service checkouts at Monoprix I finally found myself with a couple of hours free to live in the city instead of visit it.

This meant, leaving my hotel wearing sneakers instead of hiking boots. Donning sunglasses and noise cancelling headphones. No backpack, camera, or map. I had places to go and things to do.

My first impressions, it reminded me of living in Sydney. There too, any visit to the city for work or leisure is always slowed down by tourists. Paris is a lot vaster than Sydney. And because of the language, tourists stand out much more here too. I would imagine as a Parisian that it would be easy to feel superior when there is a ubiquitous lower class of human - the tourist - in your daily life behaving clueless and obnoxious because they don't know your language or your culture.

I strode by some tourists on my way to the supermarket, and left them standing dumbly while they waited for traffic signals that I jaywalked through. I reached some gardens with a snack and a beer and music on and felt very at home putting my feet up on a second chair and relaxing under the cloudy, yet warm summer afternoon sky.

My belonging in Parisian lasted until someone sat next to me at the park and their cigarette smoke put me off. Which was not long.

This was actually my second visit to the Luxembourg Gardens today, and third gardens in general. I don't think I will ever tire of going for a walk first thing in the morning and then eating breakfast somewhere pleasant. The destination for us today was Jardin des Plantes. I was forced to eat my oats with a fork as one of the spoons has been MIA for a while.

We then indulged in more summer fruits from the street markets of Rue Mouffetard, as well as a chocolate covered eclair, that we took and enjoyed in Luxembourg under nice skies and in front of nice flowers.

Then we did visit one final museum, because we already had the reservation for Sainte-Chapelle. This place is only really worth visiting because of the stain glass windows, and yeah, they are impressive.

Each panel is a full story, most are books of the bible. I'm starting the plan now for converting my June journal entries into stain glass.

After that we ate lunch at an Israeli style creperie, enjoying a savoury crepe followed by a buttery one. This gave me some fuel for the being a Parisian that followed.

Our final evening: another visit to the bookstore, then dinner at Rosie's BBQ, and a walk along the river enjoying the sunset.

And that was that. C'est fini. Nothing left to do but go to bed so that I can then travel for 26 hours and end up in the cold.

As a history enjoyer, a major challenge when planning a 2,000 kilometre trip across Central and Western Europe is deciding exactly which sites and sights are worth visiting. For instance, in the courtyard of a medieval church in Paris (now a public park with a view of Notre Dame) is a large, flat stone which used to be part of the pavings of the Roman road back in the days of Lutetia. When you are sitting in a twenty year old house in Australia that sounds really fascinating. But if you've just come from a walking tour of Palatine Hill in Rome, it's far less impressive.

Even such obscure Parisian landmarks such as the oldest house, with its exposed timber frame, are less meaningful after a visit to a town like Colmar and its cobblestone streets that are lined end to end with buildings from a century earlier.

The fact is, you can cover kilometres and plan meticulously, but you can't travel through time. The Pantheon in Rome might be over 2000 years old, but it's not possible to see it as both a pagan temple, a Catholic sanctuary, and its current, restored form. Which is annoying, because I really want to.

The Latin quarter of Paris in the nineteenth century might have been the epicentre of nightlife, culture and innovation, but nowhere in 2023 will let me experience a night there with the same vibe. And even if they do invent time travel and I become fluent in French, I'll never be able to do something about my Australian accent.

So at some point, immersing yourself in history becomes a choice between chasing the sensations of the past through proximity and crumbling marble, and just reading books on the subject in Adelaide. Or a balance in between.

Europe has plenty more to offer than history and photo opportunities, like cheap supermarket beers, great hikes and baked goods. It should be possible to enjoy it without the pressure of gaining a greater understanding of the Western civilization canon. And there are free walking tours that will cover 75% of what you can possibly memorise through books before travelling while also maintaining a 9-5 IT job.

At the same time, a non-superficial understanding of the history of a city does help with finding the right Airbnb location. In the same way that learning the basics of a language might help you get a new bottle of conditioner from the hotel room service. Travelling can be a conversation between yourself and a location. Knowing what a city has been through can break the ice.

But if you really want to intimately understand somewhere you're probably going to want to stay there a month so that you can justify the years of study you needed to do in order to get the context as it applies to the past three millenia. That's definitely the case for Paris and Rome, but I wouldn't rule out anywhere in Europe for a lack of yore.

But Europe also has an opportunity cost, with cities so diverse from each other only a short train ride apart. So what can you do with your time, really?

After another pleasant visit to Luxembourg Gardens for breakfast, we were then turned away from the Pantheon as whatever incident they were facing entered a second day.

That was sad, but the crypt under Notre Dame was open and not very busy in contrast to the huge crowd of tourists above ground posing for selfies in front of the cathedral and its scaffolding.

This museum was quite small, and I learned about the former Roman baths that were on the site, as well as the apparent former shoreline of the island. It definitely wasn't as good as time travel, but there was a cool computer simulation that helped with visualising things.

Bocce players not featured.

Next step on our quest to maximise the Paris Museum Pass was the Concierge, a former palace slash prison with an interactive iPad tour that described both.

That experience was much better than the Louvre's guide, and you certainly left with a connected feeling to the time of the terror, having spent your moment in the former cell of Marie Antoinette, who spent far more than a moment in it herself.

From there, and after another kebab in another city park, we entered Musée Carnavalet. Once again, this was an institution that was an attraction in its own right. Originally the mansion Hôtel Carnavalet was converted into a museum when Hausman was doing his thing on the streets of Paris. And once they ran out of room the Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau next door was annexed to join the fun.

The restaurant in the courtyard of Musée Carnavalet

Musée Carnavalet in Paris is a museum about... Paris. Once again, this sounded amazing in Adelaide. Having consumed a mini-library of Paris content after booking my flights, attending a logical, physical catalogue of so much of what I'd covered was naturally enticing. And I do give this museum five stars in providing a comprehensive history of Paris. The first few rooms contain an archive of physical street and shop signs, for example, and each gives you a glimpse of a moment, a life, a transaction between two Parisians and it's awesome. But then you go downstairs and start the history lesson from the old, bark canoes and stone tools uncovered from prehistoric Parisians and realise you're going to be working your way up to modern day and your feet immediately start screaming. Because Paris is unto itself a museum of Paris and there is only so much content you can absorb in seven days. Also there were way too many exhibits of antique furniture and wallpaper. My advice for Musée Carnavalet is the same as it is for Les Invalides, the Louvre and many other Paris institutions - dedicate an entire day to it. Ideally a day inside a month that you are in Paris but otherwise not going to museums.

However, this model of the Bastille was the perfect size to go in the garden. If only I could find it on eBay.

After the museum we took a break for coffee before riding the metro north to Montmartre. Here we combined further history with even more stairs. Getting out of the metro station by foot was like climbing Giotto's Bell Tower, with a bit less claustrophobia. Then there were more stairs up to Sacré-Coeur, and even more to reach the viewpoint on the dome. It was another good sight though. The inside of the cathedral was also impressive, but I didn't take any photos there. I was sorely tempted to take at least a snap of one of the "No Cameras, No Phones" signs and the many other tourists next to it waving around iPads filming.

Looking out from Montmartre

We then took a walking tour of the Montmartre area for even more history, covering third century Christian martyrs and twentieth century famous artists. There is a lot going on in Paris. And I love it, but it's tiring. Sometimes this week it has felt like it would be better to travel somewhere with histories that no one knows for sure. I don't want to trade Paris for that. But next time, that's probably what we should do. Maybe there I would actually feel like I'm on holiday.

St Denis was killed around ~250 AD for his beliefs.

The St. Denis Gate, a fragment remaining of the medieval city's walls, gives a different view of the martyr. Passing drivers don't seem to register the historical significance of this.

I love Paris, but I'm yet to land on the right choice for a souvenir to bring home. And it's not for lack of options. First time visitors would be amazed at the opportunistic touts and the scale of locations that they try to sell plastic Eiffel Towers from Wish along with bootleg water, cigarettes and Heineken.

Last week, the day we rushed to Paris thanks to delayed trains, I lost my notebook and my most treasured pen. But I don't want to replace that with a new book with a cover featuring a painting of Napoleon, or some Parisian landmark.

What I want is something that truly captures the vibe that is this city on a summer's evening. From the crazy bustle of the subterranean metro, to the riverside picnics and the cafes filled at 9pm at night, to the calm, flat, off white landscape that is the city when viewed from up high, such as the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

I want to put in my house the feeling of a city that is simultaneously 2500 years of history, and millions of living people. I want to feel in my backyard the vibe of bringing a baguette and a beer to a park or square filled with other people doing the same, under the view of monuments or ruins or gargoyles that are ancient.

In Adelaide there are no human monuments around you that remind you that you are one of a multitude, a meaningless life lucky enough to be surrounded by delicious food, cheap drinks, company and incredible sights. There are geological reminders, sure, but there's something about the works of human hands that resonates with me, and something about such a density and intricacy of works that reinforces that feeling.

So I guess what I need to fit in my suitcase is a gigantic, old building. A Roman bath, a chateau, a triumphal arch, a temple to reason. A marble statue slash fountain with a plethora of spouts and ornately shaped stone butts.

The Jardin du Luxembourg is where we started today, looping around the boundary to see birds, fountains and flowers. We then found a crepe and coffee forumule for breakfast, and began walking towards Les Invalides. This required eating a bagel at a second stop along the way, before arriving right before opening time with the other diehards who wanted to see Napoleon's tomb first thing.

Les Invalides

The life of Napoleon Bonaparte's corpse, I would say, would be more interesting than the average human's actual life. Dead on St Helena, and initially a symbolic enemy of the Restoration, things changed again in Paris and it was recognised that - in all the complexities of life - he was worth being a tourist attraction as this was a few decades before the Eiffel Tower was raised.

So in 1840 they dug him up, released the gases, and transported him 7000km. In Paris he was marched through the Arc de Triomphe (that he commissioned when he was still alive) and put on display for 20 years. He was then laid to rest permanently in Les Invalides in 1861, a former military hospital that Napoleon's wars kept busy many years earlier.

The tombs of Napoleon, his son, and a few other family members, famous generals and marshals can be added to the long list of buildings in Paris that are over the top in their size, decoration and detail. Sculptures, reliefs and gilding define all of them, but Napoleon's tomb is the most momentous. Viewable from the top, and below via a marble staircase lined with statues and carvings, it is an enormous grave. I was joking about people lining up to see it first, but witnessing it without a crowd around was an experience, although I'm not exactly sure of what kind.

Napoleon in a box. It's about five metres tall.

Bumblebee motifs in the corner of a fresco above an arch.

The rest of the exhibitions at Les Invalides were less ornate. The big parade ground is lined with old cannon, and from there we took in the medieval and renaissance armour and weaponry. There were a lot of suits of armour. After that we visited a temporary exhibition about Charles de Gaulle who I actually didn't know much about. He too lived a very eventful life for France, and his existence is probably the reason the aeroport of Paris is not known as Napoleon Bonaparte Airport. (Or maybe it's because Napoleon Bonaparte Airport already exists in Corsica).

Triple gun. Was probably not used in actual battles.

A large movie theatre with five different screens ran through de Gaulle's life in the language of your choosing, and this was enlightening and also a great opportunity to sit down for half an hour.

After that, and at some point a Nespresso coffee at the cafe, we moved onto the Napoleonic Wars. Here there were many artefacts of the soldiers and battles from the Napoleonic era, and the centuries after leading up to the twentieth century. Having read Napoleon's biography a few years earlier, this was an excellent review of things I'd read about. There was also a cool recreation of a battle featuring lots of miniatures and well-timed lights.

Sketch of Napoleon, we are rocking essentially the same haircut today. Coincidentally! I am sure Napoleon was cable of having a haircut in Paris as he speaks French.

We left this part of the museum around 1820. The World Wars exhibit was closed, which was disappointing as well as a reprieve. I'd expected the visit to the museum to last a few hours but it was already past lunchtime and there was one remaining part I really wanted to see - the Museum of Relief Maps. Up on the top floor of the wing was a collection of wood carved, 3D maps of geographical areas of importance from the seventeenth and eighteenth century. They were originally created for planning and strategizing purposes, and created by master surveyors and master carpenters so that the dimensions were exactly right. They are huge, and basically a preview of satellite maps from 200+ years ago.

The floor also featured a wooden model of the Mont-Saint-Michel, which was not made for military purposes, but by a brother of the island at around the same time of the reliefs. This one was very cool.

Random building on the walk back while trying to find lunch.

Post-nap, we went to the Paris Pantheon with hopes of climbing up the top there for an early evening view of the city, but it was closed for an incident that was not disclosed. We then considered briefly going to the opera, but decided to stick with the original plan of another picnic. This time in the Tuileries Garden that we had skimmed past a few times but failed to spend any time in. We grabbed some takeaway and a drink each and then found a spot (a couple of spots in fact) to enjoy the evening ambience. I absolutely love how many freestanding seats that the city of Paris has littered around its big parks. You can cluster them together in groups, or take them away to your own private space.

Plenty of chairs to choose from in Luxembourg Gardens at opening time.

We sat in the Tuileries until close to sunset, then walked slowly back along the river admiring more sculptures and architecture and well-adjusted public drinkers. In Adelaide it was close to eight degrees.

Tuileries duckpond.

In French, souvenir literally translates to a "memory". I will be bringing back many of those.

This morning while walking back to the hotel after walking the Paris version of the high line, some guy with windows down on Pont de Sully was playing Daft Punk's Around the World unironically

Allora. Pooping on holiday poses challenges for me as I lose the rhythms of eating, caffeine and bowel movements that I have at home, and whose predictability is what inspires me to take holidays in the first place. It wasn't until my third day in Rome that I managed to pass the omelette and smoothie I'd eaten back in Adelaide, and everything else since. It took a double Roman coffee with milk to finally do the trick. "I am the Caesar of my sphincter", I proclaimed to myself as I kicked off what I thought would be a return to normal form. (The visit to the Roman Forum the day before was still embedded in my consciousness.)

I think it was the extra spicy sauce on the already spicy chicken curry takeaway that I ate on my last night in Lucerne that disrupted further Pax Romana. Or perhaps it was just the Gauls? Because I've had troubles for days in France and definitely feel like my stool is in arrears, and is approaching a debt-ceiling that I do not want to hit in public, especially in the Louvre or on the top of the Arc de Triomphe. The Caffe Latte Venti that I drank this afternoon on the Metro between Odéon and La Defense gave me great confidence that a bipartisan agreement might be reached quickly, and - other than on the 25 minute bus ride to Rueil-Malmaison - the most logical place for this accord to occur was in the toilets at Château de Malmaison. It was the former residence of Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais and her husband Napoleon Bonaparte. And where we were visiting this afternoon.

Well before this trip out of Paris, months earlier, when I first discovered Josephine and the Bonaparte family's sprawling retreat was on the Paris Museum Pass I'd wondered how Napoleon might feel if he knew I was visiting his retreat and taking pictures of his stuff. The first, obvious impression is that he wouldn't care at all. I don't like Napoleon, but I do respect him for working really hard to be an extreme example of what a single, individual human is capable of doing in a lifetime. Even though a lot of the things he did were bad, other things he did were admirable and incredible (the metric system, his strategy and tactics, his memory and ability to learn and innovate).

Napoleon was also a general of the people, and would join the soldiers and followers at the campfires before and after battles. Theoretically, if he was interested in those people maybe he would be interested in me and my life too. He was definitely an egotist, which would count in my favour as he would surely be inquiring to know exactly what kind of future-people would visit him. He also spent a lot of his days travelling, so I think we would have in common the challenges of pooping across Europe.

I did try to poo at Napoleon's house today, but just like the appropriately named Waterloo, today was not my day of victory and I only farted a few times. Oh well, I'm going to Les Invalides tomorrow so I might have to console myself by dropping a turd next to his corpse.

Editor's note 27/6: I did, and it was satisfying. I am l'Empereur of my l'Anus. Napoleon and the Tyrannosaurus Rex are now both on the same list.

Back in Paris, the Coulée verte René-Dumont - AKA the Paris High Line - was a lovely although not thrilling way to spend the morning and enjoy some cooler temperatures that had rolled in. The baguette and coffee we had for breakfast helped with this. Also, I am not even joking, the free water fountains in the park at the end give out sparkling water. I am not looking forward to returning to Adelaide...

Here are some photos from a new perspective:

I won't write about getting lost on the way to lunch before our trip out to Rueil-Malmaison. One of the drawbacks of doing so much walking is that you do need a lot of calories to restore energy and despite all the restaurants and supermarkets it can be hard to just find a burger sometimes. Luckily I eventually did, which helped a lot.

The trip to Rueil-Malmaison via La Défense also required eight total tickets for the two of us, including special ones for the way back into Paris. Probably worth it to see Napoleon's study, harp and billiard's table.

Did he seriously read all these books on a weekend getaway from Paris? Maybe he did. Maybe he just thought they looked cool. I should get a library...

There was a bit of overlap with artworks I'd already seen in the Louvre too. And - in a topic I'll reflect on more in future - while the Château was primarily focused on Bonaparte, historically a lot of other things happened there too including Napoleon III restoring it after the changes between the restoration and 1870. I can say that I sat on Bonaparte's toilet, but really there's a whole 150 years of cheeks between then and now that mean it wasn't a completely immersive experience. And it wasn't his actual toilet obviously, he would have shat in a fancy bucket and I had to make do with the public toilets in the renovated right wing.

When we finally translated the public transport protocols we arrived back in Paris to overcast skies around Trocadéro for our plans for a dinner picnic in a park with the locals. We balanced our view of the Eiffel Tower with finding a bench in the shade that wasn't covered in pigeon crap. We did have a view of the landmark, through the trees, as you could kind of see if I hadn't focused on the raspberries in this photo.

The picnic - baguette with falafel and carrot with vinaigrette, cucumber and raspberries - was extremely pleasant no doubt helped by the rising tower in the background and the can of French Amber Ale.

After dinner we walked over to the Arc de Triomphe and skipped the queue with the Museum Pass to take in the panorama.

I think Arc de Triomphe is my favourite landmark in the whole city so far. The story behind its construction (more Napoleon obviously) and positioning, the sheer amount of detail in the reliefs (after so many in Europe, finally some with guns in them). And the view. It kind of makes everything you've seen feel so close, but all at the same time.

One of the reliefs features a stolen sphinx being carried through... An arc de triomphe! Très meta.

Having borne witness to the scale of the city and the length of the Champs-Élysées, the most obvious course of action would have been to take the metro back to the hotel. Instead we walked. First through the garish, American shops and restaurants on the right bank, then across at Place de la Concorde and back to the hotel from there. A total of 32,300 steps for the day and that barely squeaks in for a podium finish.

How many landmarks can you spy?

We started our visit to Paris with the City of Lights walking tour, which concluded an hour before sunset.

Today was our first full day, and it was definitely filled.

Starting early, on a mostly deserted Boulevard St. Michel, we bought café crème from a takeaway store, the first hint that coffee in Paris was not going to compare to Italy.

We then ate crepes on Ile de Cité in a park that wasn't technically open.

After breakfast we needed to find a toilet, a journey that took us across the prow of Ile Saint-Lois (a 17th century planned neighbourhood), over the Seine, past the medieval architecture of Hôtel de Sens and to a small playground where a part of one of the Bastille's towers remains in a fenced off section behind an old gazebo.

No plaque, but a little bit of trash.

Between that point and our first afternoon nap in Paris we walked up the canal of Port de l'Arsenal, visited Place de la Bastille, had another average coffee among the shops of Marais, visited Place des Voges for further review of seventeenth century urban planning.

One of the first planned, public squares for recreation. Circa ~1604. Still going strong in 2023.

Then we visited one of the oldest houses in Paris (now a busy Pho place), had a kebab, and saw more of the canals.

Around dinner time we re-emerged to golden, early evening sunshine and browsed a couple of the many English second-hand Bookstores. As a book lover, these cramped spaces crammed with second hand novels, non-fiction, plays and everything else in narrow aisles and mismatched shelves stretching above my head reminded me of Portland, and were a treat just to be inside. The prices were quite high though.

After the bookstores we commenced a self-guided history tour of the nearby area, concentrated on the Latin Quarter and Île de la Cité. This took us past statues, old churches, parks and streetscapes, and highlighted the many appealing and busy restaurants between Church of Saint-Séverin and Boulevard Saint-Germain. We squeezed in to a table at La Maison de Gyros for an immense plate of chicken kebab, salad, fries and garlic sauce. More chicken in one meal than I think I ate in all of Italy.

Our tour continued after dinner, past the church into Square René Viviani to observe the oldest tree in Paris. There was a paving stone from the original Roman road somewhere around there, but I couldn't spot it before the whistles started to kick everyone out.

We crossed to the island and admired what was left of the Notre-Dame. An amazing building, and with all its scaffolding a reminder that even city staples that feel like they might last forever could one day be whittled down to a hard to find paving stone in a small garden.
Fortunately, the gargoyles withstood the flames. And we learned about the difference between gargoyles and grotesques, and added a few museums to the to do list.

After a further tour of the island, we came up to the O.G. modern Paris landmark the Pont Neuf. According to some French historians, on this bridge in the seventeenth century they invented for the first time "stopping and admiring a river in a city". And whether that's true or not, I do believe that at a time when rivers were full of mud and corpses and the many cast offs of early industry that anything that motivated city planners to take steps to clean up waterways and create walkable places to visit was a huge turning point in world history for people like me who would come to visit centuries later with my camera.

And speaking of walkable cities, we crossed Pont Neuf to the right bank, and then down to the edge of the Seine. As the sun set in front of us we walked four kilometres, never needing to cross a road once. The entire way, on both sides of the river, people sat with picnics and drinks and music. Parisians and tourists. Hustlers sold water, beer and cigarettes. Everyone was happy. A group walked behind us for a few minutes playing Titanium on their portable speaker on repeat and people sang along, which was a nice connection back to Adelaide on a Saturday night in France.

We reached the Eiffel Tower at dusk, paid a Euro for the toilet and then crossed back to a good spot in front of Trocadéro to wait for 11 PM and the light show.

During planning the Eiffel Tower didn't even earn a pin on my map of Paris, but it was worth seeing once. Not just for the spectacle, but to be a part of that huge crowd which spanned both sides of the river and all around me. Everyone was here to be in Paris. The part of my homo sapien brain that likes to conform to social norms was ecstatic. But more than that, during the sparkling that lit up the iron beams, the mood of the crowd carried the sensation that this was one of those moments in life that you look forward to, and that you don't forget. It symbolised the achievements of a species and an individual that allowed me to be born halfway across the world and to then stand here in this historic city for a few minutes. Five to be exact. Then we took the metro back to the hotel for sleep.

I have been in Paris less than eight hours. Ten percent of that was spent in the queue for a metro ticket.

My first impression is that scaffolding is on everything. (Not everything, but it felt that way by the time we'd walked past the Louvre and through Place de la Concorde.) And also that the French haven't worked out that smoking isn't cool yet.

The only thing not scaffolded is the sun.

After the initial check in - air conditioning! - we walked past the Luxembourg Gardens in search of food and on turning left onto Rue Soufflot the Paris Pantheon came into view. Huge! Seemingly floating in the near distance at the end of the boulevard. This was Hausman, not an accident, but it's one thing to know about it and another to experience it.