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The first thing to do was work out the Paris metro. Of course I’m biased, but I thought it was really rubbish compared to the tube in London, mainly because the map is awful. It’s a horrible spider’s web, especially in comparison with London’s, which is a modern design classic. But eventually I’d worked out how to get from République to the centre of town, and later still I’d work out that it would have been quicker to walk it anyway.

I started off by checking out Notre Dame. If I’m honest, I didn’t think it was that great at first. I’d expected it to be bigger, and darker. But after looking all around the outside, I decided it was quite impressive. Round the back there is a garden which is much quieter than the tourist nightmare round the front, which always helps when you want to appreciate something.

It was incredibly busy when I first arrived, so I thought I’d wait until a bit later on to go inside. I filled up my time wandering the streets of the Left Bank, eating crepes and enjoying the sunny weather. It’s a hugely explorable area, around there, and very pleasant just to look around.

After a few hours, I tried Notre Dame again, and this time it was easy to get inside. Still quite full up, though, and really it would be useless as a place of worship, if that was what you wanted to do there. Tourists are a pretty disrespectful bunch, and they were chattering away in there. Flashes were firing all the time, which was annoying if only because they were all trying to take photos of the fabulous rose windows, for which flashes are useless. All the same, it’s a pretty impressive place, built on a grand scale.