Dusk closes in on Paris.
Banks of artistically angled lights magically wake from their day's slumber and bathe ancient buildings around the city in a warming glow.
The striking, stark glass pyramid made famous by Dan Brown in his book, The Da Vinci Code, protrudes like a white diamond in the centre of the Louvre Museum buildings proper; and all the while 20 larrikins with loutish smiles on their faces terrorise other tourists as they streak around these extensive paved courtyards on push-bikes.
It had rained on my first day in Paris so I joined every other tourist in the city, it seemed, to visit the Louvre with the one main aim of seeing the Mona Lisa.
I was warned that it would be anticlimactic. It wasn't.
After I elbowed my way through throngs of like-minded tourists in a stadium-sized room reserved for just this one painting, there she was looking at me in all her glory with that slight sly smile, suggesting she had trapped another in her web.
Or perhaps the painting was just a photocopy; how was I to know?Next, after a standing in a queue in the rain for an hour, I was ushered below the streets, below the water mains and below the sewers of Paris to view the catacombs.
The people here were stacked just as tightly as at the Louvre but I found these French to be more polite; none of the pushing and shoving of the current generation.
It dawned fine the next day and I was off to the south leg of the Eiffel Tower to follow up on a tip about a must-do cycle adventure.
For 10 years, Fat Tire Bike Tours has operated a number of bike tours around the central hub of Paris and when I arrived at this, the most recognised structure in the world, quite a crowd had gathered beside the man with the Fat Tire sign.
We walked to their nearby office, handed over 28 ($57), and were each issued with a comical-looking bike which sported wide, ape-style handlebars and robust, kerb-bashing fat tyres.
The business offers a day tour and also a night tour and, as I was to find out, they complemented each other but did not cross paths.
"Watch out for those Fat Tire tours," one bystander told his girlfriend as we got under way. "If they have not started drinking yet, they soon will be," he warned while pulling her closer.
And, judging from the sag in the tour leader's saddle-bags, we could soon find some truth in his words.
Basically flat, Paris is well-equipped for cycling with cycleways and an abundance of public parks to amble through, away from sometimes chaotic roads.
However, it was also tremendously exhilarating to be cycling in peak traffic down a boulevard in central Paris, a city I didn't know, on the wrong side of the road and without a care in the world.
"If they toot their horns, it is just the French saying welcome to Paris," our guide advised before we set out.
"Stick together and we will take over the road."
And so we did.
We had the same blind faith in our guide as a bungy jumper has in the rubber band tied to his legs.
Where the guide went, like a swarm of bees we followed, and watch out any bus, red light, car, or pedestrian who got in our way.
The tour took in many highlights of inner Paris.
We had regular stops for information and history lessons.
"Don't expect to do the Louvre in one day," was one gem of advice.
"If you spent one minute with every piece of art, you would require 300 days to see them all."
This tour does not enter any buildings but it is the perfect introduction to the city, a great help to get you oriented and give you an idea about where you might most like to visit.
One venerable gentleman on our tour, an experienced world traveller, thought the cycle tour was "marvellous".
He last rode a bike in 1965 and despite completing both the 10km day-tour and the 15km night tour, had no sore muscles, no chafing, and no bike-related problems anywhere else; at least so he claimed.
There was wine also, drunk from plastic cups while taking a night boat trip down the Seine River.
And plenty of it.
The three Kiwi chaps felt sorry for the load the guide had been carrying and happily took on more than their share.
Despite that, they were not involved in three minor biking "miscalculations" that happened after the boat trip and resulted in some closer-than-planned inspections of the Paris pavement.
Fat Tire Bike Tours also operate in Berlin, Barcelona and London.
