Paris noises

I arrived here yesterday late afternoon, and did the usual things that need to be done: getting some food in the house. Stayed up until 11, took my melatonin and went to bed. Listened to the street noises, which are very different from what I’d hear in Palo Alto—no commuter train whistle, but church bells, cars, people walking and talking under the window or on a nearby street. A concert of some kind down the street, impromptu, I think. Right now young voices laughing together, maybe coming out of the dental school a few doors away. When I woke up at 3:30 am, there was a couple talking and walking, her in high heels. Earlier I noticed, as I have before, that everything grows very quiet from 1 to 3 in the afternoon, when people are eating lunch; the same thing happens from 8-10 in the evening. That is very different—just the fact that lunch and dinner are quiet periods of the day in the centre of the city, and that they last more than half an hour.