Part 2 of 2:
If I was to give any advice to someone traveling to Paris, it would be to beware the Curse of the Parisian Monday. Everything good is closed and there is no nightlife. We woke up especially early to visit the Catacombes (a 2km underground walk lined with tens of thousands of Parisian skulls) only to find it's open Tuesday through Sunday for no apparent reason. Later that night we caught to metro to a jazz bar I had been recommended. We discovered that they offered free gigs every night of the week - except Monday. Turns out there's no nightlife on Monday either, although we met a lively clown, and passionate djembe player, and, just when we were about to call it a night, we stumbled across four musicians playing banjo, fiddle and guitar in a quiet street. We joined the crowd of like-minded stragglers and dance country style, swinging our partners round and round.
If I was to give two pieces of advice, the second would probably be to think before you metro-hop. I split from the group one day to indulge my romantic side at the Bridge of Locks. As thousands of lovers have done, I purchased a lock, wrote Zara and my name on it, attached it to the already heavily shackled bridge and threw the key dramatically into the river. Unfortunately I couldn't savour the moment for long - I had planned to meet the others directly under the Eiffel tower at 12:45 (we don't have sim cards) and was running late. The metro system can be very confusing, and I felt bad asking for directions from the ticket booth given my intention to jump the barriers directly afterwards to save 1.70 Euro, so I found myself training randomly. After a lot of misunderstood and/or misgiven directions from randoms I found my way to the tower, an hour and a half late. You know what they say, it's about the journey, not the destination!
We did go to the catacombs eventually. Thousands and thousands of skeletons at an arms length. The mysterious thing though is that there were neither ribcages nor pelvises (pelvi?) to be found.. To round off my cultural experience I also visited the Orsei (museum of romantic/impressionist/expressionist art) and followed a private tour till the guide shooed us away, and the Pompadour (museum of modern art) which featured lovely works like a video of somebody smushing a man's face while he sleeps. Deep. We left not sure what was the exhibition ad what was just a part of the building - we legitimately analyzed a broken escalator as an artwork for a while.
I'm finding it hard to sum up my Paris experience so far, but I can say one thing. I came with a resentment for everything French, stemming from my dislike for the language (sounds like they're trying to vomit but it won't come up) and an old rivalry with Simon that Italy is better than France (proved on World Cup 2006). Now though, I will always appreciate Paris as a place to get in touch with your romantic and the creative sides, inspired by the products of thousands of years of Western culture all around.
Tomorrow we catch the fast train to Lyon. We had the choice of the "fun" carriage and the sleeping carriage. The train is early in the morning when we find sleeping more fun than anything, so we chose the latter. Originally Zac and I had planned to skootch over to Interlaken in Switzerland for some white water rafting and the like, but we could find transport for less than 300 Euro return, so it seems our France adventure will be a bit extended. But you know what? I'm pretty cool with that. More croissants for me.