Been there, slept through it..

Limping back to the Gare de Lyon, minus my rucksack, I breakfasted and settled on a sit-down in the Tuileries, a park near the Louvre. Quite why then I rode past to the Louvre I don't know.

The Metro station lets you up past shops and the inverted glass pyramid that Da Vinci Code aficionados will recognise. It is not, as I imagined, an extension of the one above, that one hovers over the huge expanse that sits below the Louvre proper. Information in every language, tickets, food and drinks, books - though not a sight of the Da Vinci Code - gifts and knick-knacks are all available. A spiral stairway leads up to the pyramid base whence you can exit to the Louvre courtyard. Set all around were cool stone benches. Bliss. I sat and watched the Louvre crowds for a few minutes before I felt sleep coming.

I woke suddenly to find a soldier smiling at me.

"Bonjour," he mouthed, before continuing his slow patrol with his two colleagues. I'd seen them before on the Gare du Nord, beret, boots and battledress and, of course, automatic rifles at the slope. They patrolled every 30 minutes or so as did the other three or four patrols at the Louvre. Security men in suits wandered around on foot or rode bicycles waving the touts on.

It's a contrast, coming from a place where a policeman on the beat is unusual, to see so many soldiers; I wonder if it keeps petty crime down.

I didn't want to walk around the Louvre, even at the very reasonable €8, so after a few hours of napping, I wandered into the Tuileries gardens. Paris really is a city for lovers: snuggling pairs lay on the grass, kissing or sleeping, talking or eating. I missed the Moldovan one.

I gave myself a promised citron pressé at one of the cafés and watched the ever-moving horde of tourists pass in either direction. To one side a fair included a large carousel and a big wheel, to the other an exit to the Seine, which I took.

The Metro on the other side was closed so I limped past the street cafés and the street artists and booksellers and eventually crossed back across the river to the Louvre.

A man played the accordion whilst looking wistfully at the Louvre. I looked: he had no hat for money; he was just playing for its own sake.

I subjected my bag to the umpteenth X-ray scan and took the Metro back to the hostel.