A candid moment captured from a slightly elevated perspective, showing a woman with expressive hand gestures talking animatedly on her phone at a nearby cafe table. Her wine glass is slightly tilted, and the focus is on the raw, unposed energy of the scene. The background is a typical Parisian street scene with buildings and passersby
A wide-angle, slightly tilted shot of a wet cobblestone street in the Marais district of Paris. Ancient buildings with slightly leaning facades create a sense of depth. The image is taken from street level, capturing the texture of the stones and the reflections of the overcast sky, with a lone figure walking away in the distance

Walking until my feet hurt

The rain stopped sometime around midnight, but the streets stayed wet until mid-morning. I checked out at 11:00 – exactly on time – and started walking with no particular destination in mind.

My original plan was the Musée d'Orsay. I'd been looking forward to it since Osaka, thinking about those Impressionist paintings and how they might look different after weeks of Japanese art. But when I got there around 13:30, the line stretched around the block. Groups of tourists with umbrellas, school kids on field trips, a wedding party taking photos by the entrance.

I stood there for maybe five minutes, watching the line barely move, and just... kept walking.

Paris feels different from Japan in ways I'm still processing. Everything's louder here. People talk on the Metro. They gesture when they speak. The coffee shops play music. After the careful quietness of Kyoto and Osaka, it's almost overwhelming.

I walked along the Seine for a while, photographing the plane trees like I'd planned. They're magnificent – these massive London planes with their peeling bark creating patterns that look almost deliberate. Some of them must be over a hundred years old. There's one near Pont Neuf that's so wide it would take three people to circle it with their arms.

Around 15:00 I found myself in the Marais without really intending to get there. The streets are narrow here, medieval almost, with buildings that lean toward each other across the cobblestones. I stopped at a small café – not because I needed coffee, but because my feet were protesting.

The waiter brought me an espresso without asking what I wanted. It was strong, almost bitter, nothing like the carefully balanced coffee in Japan. But it was good in a different way. Direct. No ceremony.

I've been thinking about that a lot today – how different places have different ways of doing the same things. Coffee. Walking. Being in public spaces. In Norway we're reserved, almost cold to strangers. In Japan there's formality but also this underlying consideration for others. Here in Paris, people seem to just... exist loudly, without apology.

A woman at the next table was arguing with someone on her phone. Not quietly either. Her hands moved as she spoke, nearly knocking over her wine glass twice. In Oslo, people would have stared. In Kyoto, it would have been unthinkable. Here, no one even looked up.

I sat there for almost an hour, watching people pass. Students with backpacks. An elderly man with a small dog. Two women pushing strollers and talking rapidly in Arabic. The waiter came by once to ask if I wanted anything else, but didn't rush me when I said no.

The weather's supposed to warm up tomorrow – maybe up to 25°C according to my phone. That'll be nice. Today felt grey in a way that matched my mood. Not sad exactly, just... tired. The kind of tired that comes from too much movement, too many transitions.

I have 211 days left. That number keeps running through my head. When I started this journey, 500 days seemed infinite. Now I'm past the halfway point and it feels like I'm running out of time. There's still so much to see. South Africa. Peru. Iran if I can get the visa sorted. The road trip across America I've been planning.

But today I couldn't even manage a museum line.

I walked back to the hotel around 17:00. My room is small but clean, with a window that looks out onto a narrow street. I can hear people talking below, the occasional motorbike, the distant sound of a saxophone from somewhere.

Tomorrow I'll try the museum again. Or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just walk some more. Paris isn't going anywhere, and neither am I – at least not for another 117 days when that flight to wherever-I-decide leaves.

For now, I'm going to order room service and watch the street below until it gets dark. Sometimes that's enough.