James Tucker in Cov

So, I headed off on a 10-day trip through France and the Netherlands. My first arrival was in Paris, which I've visited before, but this gave me more of a chance to look around the older part of the city. I went down to the old Catacombs, which are stone quarries that have been filled in with bodies from the old medieval graveyards. It was pretty eerie, filled with skulls and femurs mainly, piled up along the sides of the pathways. The catacombs connect with more quarries and sewers under Paris, which apparently has one of the most extensive underground networks of its kind.
The sheer size of things like the Louvre and the Eiffel tower continues to impress me, even if the number of tourists was already out of control. In all, though, I spent most of my time wandering around, and reading The Line of Beauty, which I really liked. I planted myself on the Ile Ste Louis (the view from there's below) for a good few hours just to finish it off.
As in Brussels, there were ruins of the old city under the most important parts of the existing one- in this case the old Louvre, which was much more of a castle, and the old streets under the Place Notre Dame, which go back to the Romans. So I spent a lot of time underground.

So, like half the people I know, I haven't done anything especially social or exciting, on account of exams for the last little while. I am almost out of the woods now, though, and have some big plans for the future. Above, however is a picture of the Old England building in Brussels, now part of the Museum of Musical Instruments. Under the royal square to the right are the remains of the old palace/castle that I got to poke around in.