France: Paris and around

I am back from spending two weeks and a half in France.

The first week was in Paris, and for once we did not have to run anywhere. Walked around, saw a museum, went to a theater once, visited Sainte-Chapelle (can't miss it) and in general had a jolly good time. It was rather summery most of the time, too.

For once I had a local sim card with data connection. It cost me 20 euro, and was quite worth it.  Just as they say on the Internet, the employee who sold it to me claimed it would take 5 days for the data connection to start working, but the data connection was up and working the next morning.

More shockingly, the man told me to hide my Magen David, at least in Muslim areas, because it's not safe, and followed up by expressing such opinions on Muslims that I would have had to censor them out of Hommaforum if the man were a member, which he hopefully wasn't. I was not really shocked by the fact that the man had such opinions, but rather by the fact that he was telling all this to a customer whose reaction he could not possibly predict.

Speaking of which we finally went to the terrifying suburb of Saint-Denis, known for its crime rate. The historical center of this town was quite worth seeing, though, and in the subway girls in hijabs offered my parents their seats, which was quite nice of them. Apart from its crime rate, the town is famous for the world's first mostly-Gothic cathedral.

Saint Denis, incidentally, was a guy who carried his head under his arm. Must have been inconvenient, but at least now I know where that Finnish expression comes from.

Apart from Saint-Denis we visited Fontainebleau and Vincennes. After seeing the Vincennes casle I found a lot of new respect for the duke of Beaufort and everyone else who escaped from there.