Le Tour Weekend (Friday Afternoon and Evening)

Pont Neuf - oldest bridge in Paris (despite it's name!)

Looking down from the Pont au Change onto the Quai du Louvre I can see the 'beach', the area of sand, sun loungers, bars, ice cream vendors and open air showers that the city makes available each July for those who haven't been crushed in the rush to head south and south west to the beaches of the Med or the Vendee. It's not even 10 a.m local time and yet the temperature is already in the low twenties and the blue skies betray their lack of confidence in the BBC weather forecast.

The Mémorial de la Déportation is a memorial to the 200,000 people deported from occupied France to the Nazi Concentration Camps during the Second World War. Situated at the eastern tip of the Ile de la Cite, behind the Notre Dame, it was designed by the French polymath Georges-Henri Pingusson and opened by Charles de Gaulle in 1962.

There are memorials to those who lost their lives in the concentration camps at the Cimeterie du Pere Lachaise, I suppose however that this one is more 'public' and the cynic in me says it has helped the French assuage it's collective guilt in a way that perhaps the Dutch have yet to do, apart that is from hiding behind the legacy of Anne Frank.

It's a sign of the, post 9/11, times that bags are searched before descending the steps to the memorial itself which is a series of sculptures and a room containing 200,000 tiny lights in memoriam. In situations like this there is a collective responsibility at work, nobody talks, respect is given unconditionally, I only wish people wouldn't use flash photography and/or wear baseball caps, it just feels wrong.

I feel like I'm becoming some sort of memorial to sufferance groupie, having previously visited Auschwitz and Birkenau I have this year been to the Stasi Museum in Leipzig, the Memorial to the Division of Germany in Marienborn and now here. I think however that it doesn't hurt to step outside the normal comfort zone and remind myself of the freedoms I am able to enjoy.

From the Notre Dame I make my way via the Jardin Du Luxembourg (and elevenses) to Montparnasse. It strikes me, as I walk along the Rue de Rennes that the Montparnasse Tower (all 210 metres of it) looms above the district like Nakatomi Plaza in the first Die Hard film. It's still the tallest inhabited building in France and the ninth tallest in the EU. You can take the fastest lift in Europe to the top floor and I decide that having previously observed Leipzig from on top of the University Building (a mere 29 floors) my vertigo could do with another shock. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your view point) the queue for the lift is too long and I head for the metro and a short trip for lunch.

Post lunch is spent watching Stage 18 of Le Tour from Salies-de-Bearn to Bordeaux which Cav wins. TV2's coverage is excellent, as you would expect of the host broadcasters, but the post stage programme is ruined by Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz being given the longest plug in television history for their current film. The poor French interviewer is clearly under instructions to interview the toothsome twosome for as long as humanely possible without actually mentioning the bike race. When the race is discussed you just wish somebody on hand would have the presence of mind to make Tom Cruise wear a set of Shimano Derailleurs internally.

One of the reasons I needed a suitcase for this trip was that I wanted to bring my tripod to try out some night photography in La Ville-Lumière ("The City of Light"). My intention was to shoot Notre Dame, Montmatre, Eiffel Tower and Arc De Triomphe - all the obvious sights, unfortunately fate would intervene on the Saturday afternoon and I would leave the city on Monday morning having only completed one of the four assignments I set myself for the two available evenings. Still, I'm quite pleased with the result: