Day 3- Saturday 29 May

The big thing that we did today was a 4-hour walking tour; we started at St Michel, the central metro of the Latin Quarter, brushed past Notre Dame, down the Seine and saw a Space Invaders mini-mosaic that is apparently a global anonymous art effort, saw bullet holes in a building from the Revolution, across Pont Neuf, past people selling books and posters along the Seine, down eventually to the Louvre pyramid, the first time I'd seen it, to a Starbucks, down Jardin des Tuileries where kids were floating primitive sailboats in the Round Pond and other kids were playing soccer and people with blue and yellow mohawks were screaming and blowing horns in big groups and waving flags because there was going to be a big rugby match and they were everywhere, to Place de la Concorde with the current navy headquarters and gilded lampposts and the place where they used to have the guillotine [1,200 were killed in that square, and apparently people used to avoid it because of the smell, which would be really saying something in revolutionary Paris], then up a bit up les Champs-Elysees [or Elysian Fields, the ancient paradise where Greek heroes would rest to wait for their loved ones] not the really famous bit, the bit with trees and huge and hugely expensive houses behind iron gates topped in gilded spikes, you know, then a turn south to le Grand Palais and le Petit Palais, and the tour was over.

Take a breath.

Then I went off on my own down the Champs Elysees, because the rest were heading south and that didn't suit me, amidst crowds of yellow and blue clad and painted rugby fans, only now they were hanging out of their cars as well, up the shopping bit this time, where men in suits stood at the doors of perfume stores and people packed into Disney and Nike and other places you wouldn't know that I don't know and can't remember the names of. I stopped momentarily to witness about 500 people rollerblading down the main drag with a police escort, of course, before going on and seeing some kind of military ceremony completely surrounding the tomb of the unknown soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe. There were about 200 of these guys, and then a marching band showed up, and I asked a lady what was going on but only caught the phrase 'tomb of the unknown soldier,' which I already knew about, and that was that. Apparently you can go up into the Arc, but I'm not sure why you would do this, as there don't seem to be windows ....

Walked around, around, around, before it began to pour, then took a severly crowded metro back to the hotel, where one of my roommates was lying down feeling sorry for herself and I discovered that the strange burning smell in our room was coming from my power adapter. Went to the epicerie [grocery store], and am now eating fig newtons from the plane, because they're about to go bad, and a weird drink called Lychee that I thought was coconut but tastes more like, I dunno, an albino apple. Google tells me it's a fruit grown in south China, so I can't describe it better.

Random stuff about France- in a restaurant, even a dinky one where you just order a can of something and a sandwich, they will always give you a glass, or if you order water, just for yourself, the water will come in a small glass pitcher, and they will give you a cup. The epicerie was cool, and the entire thing could have fit in a Publix wine section- there are no morbidly obese people in France, because they couldn't fit down the aisles [or rather, these people do not do their own shopping]. The frozen food section was about a third the length of the store and about as long as Tori, and outside there were some fruit and vegetables, but no raw fish.