France, Part 2: In which feet and metro are put to work.

In contrast to the Perpignan stay, our five days in Paris were packed from top to bottom with activity. We arrived on Monday evening at about 6 o’clock, checked in to our hotel in Montmartre, then decided to head out for dinner. We ate in a restaurant near the Gare du Nord, before catching the metro to Invalides and watching the sun and moon change places over Pont Alexandre III.

For the rest of the week, we walked and metro-ed all over the city, taking photographs and browsing in shops. Some of the most charming destinations were the seventeenth-century, glass-ceilinged passages, lined with small businesses selling everything from cakes to books to dolls houses. From one of these passages, Galerie Vivienne, we progressed to the Palais Royal and rested on a bench along one of its tree-lined avenues, watching a man share his lunch with some sparrows.

On another occasion, we visited the brilliant CinéAqua, a curious combination of aquarium and animation studio that works surprisingly well. I stared at the mini sharks, stroked some koi carp, and became very excited by an exhibition of original character sketches by Hayao Miyazaki for his most recent film, ‘Ponyo’.

We also explored the cobbled streets and winding stairs of Montmartre, cooed at a cat (alright, that was just me), marvelled at the metro’s talented buskers, riffled through geekery galore in some comic book/sci-fi/fantasy/anime/video game shops in the Quartier Latin, and took our pick of its numerous restaurants opposite the Notre Dame.

And, yes, I took hundreds of pictures of this beautiful cliché:

P.S – don’t worry, Flix, it’s not all Eiffel Towers; there’s also this not-particularly-French photo for you…