Paris

Long time no blog. Sorry about that but I've been distracted, since Christmas, by ill relatives in Liverpool. Cabin fever got the better of me and so now I'm in Paris.
I flew into Charles De Gaulle airport on Monday night - the biggest airport ever! It took almost as long to taxi from landing to the disembarkation point as it did to fly there from Manchester!
The next day I met up with Mariko and Alexander, the latter is a grandson of a friend of mum and dad's back in Melbourne. We had a leisurely lunch at a restaurant around the corner from the hotel. Then Mariko had to go to work so Alexander offered to take me on a tour of Paris on his motorcycle. The only way to travel in this town! Traffic is crazy! We zigzagged our way past the Champs Elysees, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Arc de Triumph, Montmartre, Palais de Justice, Republique, what's left of the Bastille and sundry other paces. So much to see in this town! There was one street I want to find again but I don't know its name. Every shop on the street was a guitar shop. It was somewhere on the way to Sacre Coeur so maybe I can find it again. A whole street of guitars - heaven!!!!!
Today I went to the Louvre. Magnifique!
I caught the bus outside the hotel and got off at the river (Seine), then walked about till I figured out where I was going. I think I crossed the river three times before I got to the right place. Fortunately Parisians are a lot more polite than I'd been led to believe. And a lot more helpful. Even to English speakers.
The Louvre is so magnificent, wonderful, it's hard to describe. There's just too much there. I wandered around for about 6 hours but still only touched the surface I think. Of course I saw Mona Lisa. Works by David as well - his revolutionary works are elsewhere though. The coronation of Napoleon is there though - the world's biggest piece of propaganda perhaps?

Later...