Why do I love France?

I've been thinking about why I love France so much. It could be the food, the cheese, the wine, the peoplem the history. But really it's the lack of the anti-intellectual cultural cringe you see in Australia. Arts funding here is sprayed around with a fire hose and people living off that funding are considered the country's future, not a bunch of leftie bludgers.

The sports section of the newspapers this week have, along with the usual football, large sections on the Kasparov chess matches (Kasparov lost and is no longer the World Champion). In the Herald I'm sure this was relegated to three lines on page 24.

We haven't actually done much this week as far as touristy stuff. Mostly it's just been wandering around the city. It seems to be school and uni holidays so there's stacks of young people in all the shops and museums, which makes things interesting.

Holly's been loving the shopping and has bought quite a bit, though she's having trouble buying shoes that fit her big hooves. A word for the fashion conscious: please boycott Kookai. This company makes only two sizes of clothing (informatively labelled 1 and 2) and shoes which don't even come close to fitting. I don't understand why anyone would buy clothes from them unless they happen to fit one of their two sizes. I mean who's going to spend big money on designer clothes that only kinda fit?

I've bought a funky pair of shoes to go with my new suits, gloves and a beanie for the cold London Winter.

Last night we found a place that's as close to the value we were getting in Vietnam as possible. 80FF for 1.5 litres of beer called "cheap blonde". Not quite 50 cents a litre but getting there...

Today we're going to the Paris Museum of Modern Art. Tonight our friend Mani is popping down from the Netherlands for the weekend. We'll hopefully get out to some funky club and possibly make it to Versailles tomorrow.

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