Salut, mes amies! I'm now on the final leg of l'excursion Grande. This week finds me enjoying the bucolic pleasures of a Holiday Inn located in a French industrial park called Jouy en Josas in a river valley known as Val de Bievre; one of my colleagues told me that means "Valley of the Beavers", but I think he was just yanking my daisy since Babelfish translates "Beavers" as "Castors". Anyone who's fluent in French, feel free to let me know what a "Bievre" is and I'll be forever grateful.

In any case, Jouy en Josas has little, if anything, to recommend it outside of some pretty scenery, so I found my way by train to Paris on Sunday to do some looking around. As with Milan, I stuck to well-known tourists sites beginning with Notre Dame. The joint was packed with Japanese and Korean tourists, so I beat a hasty retreat.

Next stop was the Louvre which is just a vast, unmanageable sprawl of poorly laid out galleries. Impossible to see everything, so I concentrated on trying to find the specific things that interested me; the collection of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities, followed by this cool gallery of Oceanic art. I think the guy here on the right may be a long-lost cousin of the Goof.

The Louvre also has a superb collection of medieval art that includes quite a few reliquaries. I snapped a bunch of pictures which I'll put up online once I locate a @#$@# driver for my USB card reader.

Oh yeah, I got to view the Mona Lisa from about 20 feet away, trying to see over the heads of a bunch of Japanese and Koreans furiously snapping flash pictures. Sorry, but I don't see what the big deal is; it's a nice painting, but I'll take a gallery full of cool, enigmatic Rothkos over her little smirk any day.

From that point on, my day became something of a death march. I rode the Metro to the Tour Eiffel, then walked back to my starting point with stops at the Hôtel National des Invalides, and Place de la Concorde. I ended my day with a stroll along the Seine where I searched fruitlessly for non-tacky souvenirs to bring home. By the time I got back to the hotel, my feet felt like they were swollen enough to fill a pair of clown shoes.

The rest of my week will likely be devoid of any further sightseeing, although I may attempt to escape to nearby Versailles, schedule permitting.