The next day we rose earlier and went to a small bar for breakfast. It took ages to get served, possibly because we were a bit on the late side for petit dejeuner, possibly because I spoke English to the waitress and she was too offended to serve us, possibly because the French believe that breakfast should be taken slowly. We waited on a couple of very french chairs at a table with a marble top and little wiggly legs like they belonged on a puppy or lion cub. When we finally got a friendly, helpful waitress, she explained how brekkie works and we ended up each with a silver tray (real silver, I think) with hot chocolate (they made the paste bit and gave you a separate jug of hot milk) croissant, cereal, orange juice, and a bit of baguette with butter and jam. It reminded me of the “continental breakfast” you got in Holiday Inns in the ’80s but so utterly knocked those into a cocked hat.

Today we had two landmarks to “do”, either of which could take half a day, so we jumped on the Métro to Bir Hakeim and wandered in the welcome grey weather along the waterfront to the Tour Eiffel. It was big, we anckowledged, then, estimating the duration of the wait to go up it, moved on. We went via the tunnel where Princess Di crashed. On the boat tour the previous day we’d picked up that there was a replica of the flame from the statue of liberty there, that was a memorial of the Princess. It turned out the flame had not been put there as such, but it had since become one as there were flowers tied near it and the top of the bridge was festooned with graffiti. Some read “Diana 4 Ever, Kaylee 2004 Boston, MA” then some French people had written huge quantities of prose or poetry.

Another quick Métro jump for lunch (of cheese and ham and baguette) then to the Louvre. Venus de Milo - check, Mona Lisa - check (this was disappointing as there was a near-hysterical, pushy atmosphere in the room and there was no chance to simply come to terms with the picture itself. Fortunately, turning my back on the ML, I was rewarded with the Wedding Feast at Cana, which is absolutely immense and allowed me some time to get into the whole art thing. We’d got to the ML via the French Paintings gallery, which involved lots of Davids (of “and Goliath” fame) and a bunch of snooty kings and lords and stuff, but we departed into the Italian Paintings gallery. Wow, the Italian paintings really leapt off the canvas! Highlight for me though was the painting of some king dude (ok I can’t remember who it was) where the artist had only got a coin to go on, so the face was exactly side-on, the hands were fudged, and the clothing was chosen by the painter to strike a balance between regal and accessible.

We wandered over the Pont Des Artes and around the Latin Quarter again where we found some extremely tasty ice cream and got it down our tops, then headed back to the Airport. The chocolate tart at the airport snack bar beat anything available in England, let alone in British airports, and the flight home was 45 minutes early, so not such a late night was had after all.