It looks like you need to watch out for pickpockets in Paris.

You see signs like these in museums. Every metro station plays voice warnings asking people to watch their pockets.

C'est la vie.

The Louvre is just gigantic. You could spend a week there and still not see everything. But they really make an unhealthy fuss over the Mona Lisa.

The main (but not only) entrance is a huge queue from level -1 up to floor 2 to see the portrait! Though it does move pretty fast. All the signs along the way only point to the painting. You get the impression there's nothing else in the Louvre at all.

They let you get pretty close, but only in small groups. Time is very limited and museum staff basically rush people out when their group's time is up. It's funny, but almost no one even tries to actually look at the work. Everyone just takes 100500 selfies for memory and leaves.

The first thing you see after leaving the Mona Lisa room is a sign pointing to the exit :)

PS. This might be because they temporarily moved the Mona Lisa to a different room upstairs due to renovations.

Paris subway stations have statues right on the platforms. There are even museum exhibits behind glass. How do you like that, Elon? :)

PS. Of course, not all stations have them, but the metro is really quite nice. Though the trains are noticeably shorter than Moscow's.

There's a station called Stalingrad in the metro (!!)

It's not enough just to get to Charles de Gaulle. You still have to get out of it :)

Right on this weekend, they closed the railway for maintenance. Instead of trains, they sent free (!) buses. So I saved money here too. I'm liking everything so far :)

UPD: people are telling me it's actually a strike, not maintenance. I wasn't paying attention to the announcements.

Fun fact: you don't actually need to go to France to see Paris (:

PS. My layover in Frankfurt ended up being way longer than expected. First, they changed my ticket to a slightly later flight (for free). Then it turned out there was overbooking and they were looking for volunteers willing to hang around the airport for a couple more hours in exchange for a small bonus. Since things weren't going according to plan anyway, I figured what's a couple more hours. Third time's the charm—everything worked out!

I was going to write a nice post about how I'd already made it to Paris while you were sleeping, but something went wrong along the way :)

Booking a flight with only a 50-minute connection during morning rush hour in Frankfurt, plus going through border control, was way too optimistic. The plane from Moscow even arrived ahead of schedule. But the border check and security screening for the connection took way longer than expected. I ended up at the gate about 20 minutes after takeoff.

I was really surprised that airport staff just ignore any requests to speed up the security process, even when you show them your boarding pass for a closing gate. It's like, "Just show up on time and wait like everyone else."

Lufthansa treats the situation like a natural disaster—something you can't prevent, but you can deal with the aftermath: they just rebook you on a later flight. I'm number 111 in the rebooking queue. They're currently serving number 84. Looks like I've got another couple hours to wait 🙈