Duty called and I headed off to Paris for a couple of meetings. This is a huge set of photos, with lots of motorcycle pictures, and it'll take forever to load, so sit back and relax.

My bag in the Paris metro. This was the stop I used to get to my hotel.

This is my little yellow room in Paris. The location was great (close to Jardin de Luxemborg) and the price was heinous - really expensive.

The little desk. The room was tiny, but what the heck, when you're in Paris, it's not to hang out in a hotel room.

This is the remote to the excellent air conditioner in my room. It was nearly silent, and cooled great. Contrast this to the typical air conditioner that I get in an american hotel room, that sounds like a truck rumbling through the wall... If I ever need another room air conditioner, I'll get one of these.

That's the whole thing!

Street in front of the hotel. Gird your loins for lots of MC pics.

Nice F650CS.

That looks like it's been repainted...

BMW scooter. "Executive!"

Drinking fountain around the corner. People drank from it quite a bit.

Since it was so close, I went to check out the Jardin de Luxmborg. (Luxemborg Garden.) Paris has several large parks like this, and they are beautiful. This is how it looks on October 1st.

There are lots of nice pathways.

And little kids with cotton candy that fall on their faces and cry while every one watches and some jerk photographs them.

I like the way these trees are trimmed.

At the center of the park is a big pool and a museum.

Here's the museum.

More people just hanging around.

Long lawns. People were having picnics and laying around. It was great.

Here is the pool/fountain. They have little sailboats that you rent.

You use a stick to push them out in the water. The breeze catches the sail and they sail around, and then when they get near the edge, you push them out again.

They launched it.

Of course you have to watch out for pirate ships!

I love this picture. Kids just go off in their own little world.

Some tourist filming EVERYTHING! Sheesh! ;-)

Le gendarme?

There was a cool fountain. You can read the sign, I won't repeat it all here...

There is a god looking down over a ledge at two people below him.

Here is the whole thing.

Looking down a path.

Sit up straight kids, or you'll end up like this!

Another F650.

An older RT.

Some cool french kid.

Mmmmm, K-bike.

Neat fountain on the way to the Seine. I waited and waited for this guy to get out of the way, and he stood there forever.

I was headed to see Notre Dame, the home of the Fightin' Irish!

I turned the corner and there it was.

I couldn't resist taking this picture. That dude is actually wearing a beret!

The rugby world cup was in town this weekend, and there were rugby fans everywhere. They are usually drunk and rowdy. This is in contrast to soccer fans who are rowdy and drunk.

They have this thing in Paris where you pay a monthly fee, and you get access to these bikes all over the city. You'll see them locked up in long rows. Apparently you enter your pass code, and the lock opens, and you've got a bike. You ride it all you want, and when you're done, insert it in one of the locks.

If you look closely, you can see that this scooter has two wheels, side by side. Interesting.

I stumbled across a small movie being filmed.

Some of the actors were in suits, with slicked back hair.

This guy is holding the cue cards. It looks like Russian, but I can't really tell.

They have these big boats that go up and down the Seine, for tours.

They go right alongside a lot of the touristy stuff.

People sit along this wall. If they lose their balance, they go right into the river.

Here is Notre Dame.

You can take a tour and go up on that balcony. Seeing those people gives you a good sense of perspective.

This statue is fantastic. Look how bad ass that guy looks! Look at that beard!

I think that's baby jesus.

But my favorite part of Notre Dame? These two kids. Kids are great, you take them to a place like this, and they want to look down the drainage grate for stuff. (I used to do this too.)

Someday they can tell this kid, "When you were little, we took you to Notre Dame. You knelt before the great wooden doors. You were looking in the sewer!"

Hilarious.

Gargoyles everywhere.

This is how they keep people from going up and down the drain spouts. Dang!

The back of the church. Those are some flying buttresses!

Walking along the Seine.

Cool lamp post on Pont Neuf. Pont Neuf means "new bridge" and it's the oldest standing bridge over the Seine. You figure it out!

Here is Henry IV. (that's intravenous...)

Hey look, there is the Eiffel Tower. Maybe I should head over and see that...

Looks like the GS version of my bike.

I'm not sure what model this is... it looks fast though.

Outer wall of the Louvre.

Father and son getting on their RT.

Purty. This is my next bike.

Main entrance to the Louvre.

Supergirl taking a picture of me taking a picture of her.

I sat down across the street from the Louvre and had a diet coke. It cost about $8, no joke. I know why every drinks coffee and wine - it's really cheap compared to soda!

Mercifully, my phone did not ring.

When I packed for this trip I forgot deodorant. "No problem!" I thought. "I'll get a stick in Paris." This is the kind I got.

Yes, you are reading that right, 13 euros. That's about 20 bucks! And I got it at a normal little "phamracie" (pharmacy.) Wow.

They have neat little coins in Europe.

I came across this old girl. Gorgeous.

Check out this gas station - inside the building! Premium is 1.46 per liter. That comes out to around $8 per gallon for gas.

A white K-bike. K75? I can't tell, but it looks great. I'm hungry. And thirsty.

I had dinner at some little restaurant. I ordered "Poivre rouge" which was red peppers. They were good peppers, but had too much olive oil on them.

Nice park job!

R1200RT. Purty.

I love how the K75s look. It's ugly, yet beautiful.

Another RT.

R1150R. This is my bike, in red.

Yes, in Paris you actually see people walking around carrying baguettes!

A big group of people came riding by wearing orange vests. It was some sort of organized ride.

Then these dudes with horns went by. Every so often they'd stop and blow them.

Then they had guys in cars blowing them too. I'm guessing they were promoting some green technology?

Look at them all!

Hey look, I'm closer now!

That's a rugby ball in the middle there.

The legs of the tower are huge, and interesting to look at.

Looking up. As I reached this point I realized that I could walk under the tower. It never occured to me to go under it, I always just thought about going up in it.

Being under it was cool!

Looking up the middle. You can see the big rugby ball.

Another BMW scooter.

Wow, that's a naked bike all right!

One last look, then we're off to the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees.

Le rowr.

There it is. Note the traffic going around it. It's in the middle of a huge traffic circle. There are no lines, everyone just GOES. It's nuts.

Look at the guy on the bike! He is just shooting the gap!

Wow. These cars are going fast - like 40 mph. No one is stopped, or stopping, they're all moving along.

Phew, he made it.

Citroen dealer on the Champs-Elysees.

Looking back towards the Arc de Triomphe.

And spinning 180 degrees and looking towards the Place de la Concorde.

This is Place de la Concorde. You're looking at a 3300 year old Egyptian Obelisk there. This square is famous for lots of reasons, and during the revolution they had a guillotine set up here. Marie Antionette was killed here, along with Louis XVI (he was first, in fact) and Robespierre. In one year they chopped off 1300 heads here.

Now you can ride a ferris wheel.

Enough history, it was now time to meet my good friend Francois at the Petite Cochon for dinner.

Escargot. They were delicious. See that weird pincers looking thing in the upper right of my plate? You grasp the shell with that. Then you use the little two-wined fork to pull the snail out. Then you eat it and it's amazing. Then you take a swig of their house white wine, that if sold in the US would cost $50 a bottle, but since it's the house wine here, you get free refills. (If you've been following along - it's $8 for diet coke, and all you can drink wine...)

For dinner it was tripe sausage and frites. It was spicy and quite good. I've had tripe in Vietnamese soup before (Pho) and found it hard to swallow, literally. In sausage it wasn't such a big deal. The flavor was great, but the texture was still a little chewy.

For dessert, cake and fresh whipped cream with a splash of rum on top. Francois was pouring the rum for the photo, so I got more than a splash. I've never gotten drunk on dessert before...

Now a walk home in the dark. Pont Neuf, well lit.

After walking so much that I thought my feet would fall off, I decided to start using the Metro more. It was a wise choice.

An RT trying to run me over.

Tired of bike photos yet?

Lunch. Diet coke - $8. Huge sandwich? $4. No kidding.

Another.

I decided to check out the Musee d'Orsay.

But the line was too long. I hate waiting in line. If I waited in this line, I'd stand there for an hour, and see the museum in 30 minutes. It's like a roller coaster ride or something.

Besides, they had perfectly good art out on the sidewalk that I could look at for free.

I crossed the river and walked around some more. Here is the museum viewed from the opposite shore. It's an old train station.

I went and walked through the Tuilieres Gardens. I had to go to the bathroom, and all these fountains were not helping me at all.

R-bike in front of a funky metro stop.

Some chicks were protesting the use of animals for fur coats.

Just as I'm wondering if they've got anything on their top at all, this happened. Oh my! Positively foxy! (get it?)

Nekkid ladies, nekkid bikes. What a city!

Remember those rental bikes I told you about? Here they are all racked up.

Ummmm, dude... You lost your baby!

The Paris fuzz rolls on RTs.

And horses.

These are obviously the world's most painful shoes. She has a choice between standing, or balancing precariously on that railing 40 feet above the Seine. Get some better shoes madame!

I went back to the Musee d'Orsay and the line was short, so I checked it out. It's a huge room, with little rooms around the edges. I'm sure all of this stuff is really famous or important art that Lorin could tell me about. Because I'm an ignoramus, I just walked around and looked at it. I pretended to sit and admire several works in the museum, but the truth is my feet were fucking killing me.

Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee? I have no clue.

View from the top. Typical American, right? I'm in a famous building full of famous art, and I just want to go to the top and take a picture.

It is cool though.

Looking out through the big clock.

I see dead people!

From the museum, looking up at Montmarte. It's the highest point in Paris. I never made it up there. Ok, enough museum.

Cool retro stoves.

That's it, thanks for looking.