Paris from the back of a bus

My opinion of Paris has jumped up a number of notches. I still find it utterly overwhelming, but in a far more pleasant way now that i`m a little more used to it.

We went for a walk yesterday up towards Le Palais de Justice, and along the way we ran into a reasonably sized demonstration outside the police HQ. We got chatting with a couple of the demonstrators and learned that it was about granting working permits to people who don`t currently have them, which explained the predominantly African makeup of the demonstrators. We moved on, although dad (ever the provocatéur) just had to take a few pictures of the heavily armed police observing. He remains, for the moment, unshot.

Our next big stop was the famous Notre Dame cathedral, which is massive - it dwarfs even the largest of the English cathedrals. The interior was very Catholic - dark and ornate. Unsurprisingly it was extremely crowded - they must get tens of thousands of tourists through there every day. Just after leaving the cathedral somone in a hunchback costume scared my Mum by jumping out and yelling Boo, which i found hilarious but she wasn`t so keen on.

After we had lunch we caught a tourist bus, which took us around the various monuments and tourist attractions of Paris. All of them were very beautiful, and a few were breathtaking, but two stood out even beyond that - the Arc de Triomph and the Eiffel Tower.

Both of these monuments were spectacular because in each case i thought i knew what i was getting, but they both turned out to be so much larger than i had imagined. The Arc also had the benefit of being the centrepiece of the most chaotic and murderous traffic system i have ever encountered, but the Eiffel Tower was mindblowing. I can`t really put it into words, except to just re-emphasise that the thing is about ten times bigger than i had imagined it, and it just dominates the skyline in a truly impressive way.

Today we`ve been doing more touring. It`s been very nice, but not as spectacular as yesterday. Only two things of particular note:

1) Saw the Moulin Rouge building
2) Walked down the Rue de Saint Denis and only realised half way down it that all the women hanging around the place were prostitutes (bit slow on the uptake). I guess i was surprised by 2 things - how old they all were, and how there were hardly any African women amongst them, which was something i expected more of.

Tomorrow we may be seeing either the Louvre or another art gallery, and on Saturday we are catching a train up to a battlefield tour.