Ventured out to do some touristy things today, but didn't get that far.  Went to the Louvre, but the queue to get in was about an hour long, and I wasn't prepared to stand that long in force 9 gales just to see art that's printed on mugs and t-shirts.  Can I have specialized in art and say that I don't like the Mona Lisa?  We walked around instead again looking for interesting architecture and for non-touristy local culture. 

there, flying buttresses, that's my gothic architecture fix satisfied... St-Eustache.

an interesting wall on the Rue du Louvre

a real Parisian toilet, and the Bourse de Commerce

the jaunty 'do not cross' man

France takes care of its metro stations.  This was my part of my favorite one.

And an adventure:

I should have believed Nigel when he told me that he thought the train announcer said "the train will not carry passengers any farther".  Instead we decided to stay on the metro that then turned into a scene from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie (the scene where they're in the boat in the chocolate river...).  All the lights turned out and none of the people in the car spoke the same language... so we didn't know what was going on.  But luckily it stopped three or four stations away where we pulled the emergency exit and crossed over several busy tracks to get to a platform.  Duh.  Fortunately that was the stop we wanted.  Here's the other passengers contemplating their escape.

To end our evening we went to another cafe.  We sat down and had a bottle of their house wine when they started playing American Christmas music.  Then we looked over and there was a familiar face, the man who plays the Irish guy in Star Trek, you know, the one with the curly hair... was sitting opposite us.  It was too many weird things at once for me, so we got our bill and left.