Ah, Paris - C'est magnifique.

Here I sit in a small Paris internet cafe, blogging without a camera. I've spent the day looking for and then hanging out with an old friend of mine from Yellowknife who moved to Norway some years ago.

Paris is a great town, and pretty easy to get around in as well. Maybe I would feel differently if I lived here, but the subway is really effective in getting me from any part of the city to any other part, and I don't find it all that confusing either; just double-check the train is going in the correct direction and then hop on.

Because my day is spend mainly slumming and Gillian is at the Louvre, you can guess who has the camera. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to post some more pictures - I think I've got about 4 days to make up for by this point. On the other hand, tomorrow, we're off to Lucerne, so depending on travel times, that may not be terribly likely.

Let me talk briefly about Paris. First of all: the French sure know how to build impressive buildings. We've seen the Military School that Napolean attended, the Eiffel Tower, we did a few rounds of the traffic circle arounf the Arc d'Triomphe, we went down the Champs Elysee, we saw the outside of the Louvre, the Paris Opera house (setting and inspiration of the Phantom of the Opera), the Assemble Nationale, Place de la Concorde (where all the executions of the French Revolution took place), Notre Dame (which took 250 (!!) years to build), and plenty more. We saw where Hitler danced a jig upon capturing Paris. Yep, Paris is one impressive town with crazy history. Did you know that during WWII, before Paris fell, the French put their German prisoners in buildings close to Notre Dame, so that the Germans wouldn't bomb the cathedral? Crazy.

Tonight, I'm off to see the Moulin Rouge.

At any rate, I've got to run now, but I'll keep posting text or pictures as conditions permit. See y'all in Lucerne.