On the last day, we had lunch on the Seine. Bread and cheese, purchased at the market by Trevor. He had been taught by his bosses at work about how to pick the best baguettes: ‘They take their roles very seriously’, he said, leading to speculation on whether he had meant ‘roles’ or ‘rolls’. [It was 'roles', but either would've worked...]

Photo courtesy of some Americans, who offered to take it and then requested we take one of them. It was all pre-planned...

Afterwards we were going to go to the Catacombes, but by the time we arrived they were turning people away due to imminent closing. As a substitute we went to a mosque. Well, the cafe at the front of one, anyway. It was full of small birds, green tea and nice blue tiles.

Small Bird.

Tea, blue tiles

After the mosque we went to the Botanical Gardens for an afternoon amble.

A fishsculpture.

Someone didn't pay attention to the 'danger' sign

A nice treehug.

a Cedar of Lebanon.

The roof of the middle of the labyrinth

And we finished the night in a Scottish Theme Pub, where there was supposed to be a bluegrass gig on [oh, how multi-cultural it is all becoming] but there was a Scotsman playing tennis on TV, so it was put on earlier and we missed it. There was much roaring at the tennis, and fortunately the Scotsman won his match so it was happy roaring.

At some point I went to sleep. Got the Eurostar back in the morning, and was very pleased to have bought my lunch in the morning in Paris. It was a sandwich. I ate it in King’s Cross station feeling really smug, because I had a nicer sandwich than it is possible to buy in King’s Cross station.

The first thing I did when I got off the train in York was stand waiting at a zebra crossing for the cars not to stop, and/or attempt to drive over me, because in Paris this does happen a bit [even when the green man is lit up]. A taxi driver looked at me as if I was mad. I laughed at bit and crossed the road. Presumably this confirmed his suspicion that I was mad. Never mind.

Day 3 was rather rainy. I went to look around the centre of Paris, and decided to go to the Tuileries. It rained, but not drastically. Here are some people enjoying a pond with their umbrellas:

Tuileries in the rain

After walking around and along the Seine I went to have a look at the Louvre, which was expensive so I didn’t go in. This was despite the best efforts of a young man who worked there, who decided to very unashamedly chat me up. ['I have come to talk to you because I think you are cute' were his exact words. This tactic generally makes me slightly distrustful of those who use it, but he did it in a reasonably charming French kind of way so I let him off...] He told me that if I hung around until 6pm, under-26-year-olds could get in free. Unfortunately I am 27 [and had also promised to go home and make Sophy a cup of tea for when she got in from work because she says her boyfriend, who is French, does not understand the English need for being provided with tea upon entering a house and she wanted to make the most of my presence and understanding on this matter]. But I talked to him for a little while. He said that the rain made him feel miserable and he ‘needed people to love him when it was raining’. Quite sweet really. [And yes, yes, all right... it was very nice to be told I was cute, even if fundamentally I find the 'you look nice' approach unnerving. I was feeling a little bit over-rained-on myself...]

Then I caught a metro back to Sophy’s. Some of the metro entrances are quite interesting:

Some bikes and a decorated metro entrance

Went to a shop to buy a bottle of wine, whereupon the owner, a small Tunisian man, asked my name and told me I was very beautiful. Interestingly, he seemed to already know all the names of three other women who came into the shop after me. The men are extremely forward around here. Maybe this is only compared to those in the UK, though.

Here is the bottle of wine that I bought:

Is this a region in France?

Obviously I bought it entirely because of its name. It was quite nice though. We took it to Trevor’s and he fed us some extremely nice food, and subsequently, via a complicated trip through some bars and metro stations, ended up in a goth bar at 3am drinking absinthe with some friends of a friend of Sophy’s. It had a special thing to drip water through the spoons and everything:

Sophy with blurred drippy absinthe contraption in the background

Today I have felt a bit tired.