HOW TO...

get out of paying a public transport infringement fine...

To get to the appeals office before it shut, I raced from one end of Paris to the other in a record-breaking time of 40 minutes armed with the dodgiest 'I can not speak French very well' accent I could pull off, in an optimistic attempt to talk my way out of paying a 50 euro public transport fine:
"I did not understand"
"it was the first monthly pass I ever bought"
"they did not tell me" *struggles slightly with verb conjugation for effect*

OLD AND DUSTY

So, after living in Paris for over two months now (ooh lala!), I finally hauled derriere to check out one of Europe's largest collections of 'look at all the stuff we stole from other civilizations' (though, granted, some of it was bought...) aka the Louvre - a building with a very long history having first been constructed sometime in the 1100's as a fortress (no-one needed museums back then you see, everything was new, but they did need to protect themselves from other folks set on stealing all their stuff that would itself later end up in a museum).

That's probably ironic somehow. Let's progress...

After a time, the Louvre lost its military significance and became a royal residence, where very rich people could loll about being decadent all day - until it got plundered by the English (amongst others) in the 1400s who came and nicked all their stuff to later put in their own museums (told you it was going to be ironic, right?)

Anyway, eventually it became a museum in its own right (after all the lolling nobles had their heads chopped off), though there are certain areas that make you feel like you're about to bump into a very annoyed man in breeches demanding to know why all these peasants are trampling through his hall.