It is another sunny evening in Paris, the weather here has been great. I spent most of the day travelling underground, using Paris’ RATP (Régie autonome des transports parisiens). It is a pretty easy system to understand; New York’s subways are pretty similar. Although like with Dublin’s DART, you need to keep your ticket with you throughout the trip, as sometimes an official asks too see it when you are leaving the subway.

I took train 8 to Balard, to visit the Parc André Citroen, and to get on the hot air balloon they have there. The view was awesome, I got a bunch of pictures. Not to mention that there was essentially zero tourists, so I got to get on the balloon with a bunch of Parisien families, with kids right out of The Red Balloon.

The people in the park definitely did not show the normal amount of attitude that I have been seeing in most of Paris, especially tourist Paris. So that was refreshing, and really the highlight of my day. I got asked for directions a bunch of times in the park, because it didn’t even occur to them that I was a foreigner.

Then I took train 8 back, and transferred to train 3 and went across the city to the cemetery Pére Lachaise, where Jim Morrison is buried, along with lots of other well known people (Balzac, Chopin, Proust, Oscar Wilde, etc). The atmosphere around Jim Morrison’s grave was quite the opposite from the atmosphere in Parc André Citroen, and not just because I was hanging out around a lot of dead people instead of a sunny park.

And that’s about it for today.