This was the last of the ten days I'd assigned to exploring the streets of Paris with my camera. I gravitated to the Louvre, as had happened most mornings after I'd convinced myself it was "en route" to that day's destination (much in that way you find reasons to name-drop and loiter on the subject of your crush in a sentence about literally anything). I knew that today, Monday August 24th, Parisians would start returning from the annual vacation period that had meant the city I'd experienced until now was, in fact, a half-empty one. To avoid the feared influx of Marseille-hungover locals (photographers are misanthrophic like that), I got up at Hideous o'Clock, so it's dawn light gloating in many of the images below. For the record, Paris still did not start flexing until about 9am. And the only sign of returned Parisians that I noted was the cyclists who make jaywalking across the Rue de Rivoli a bit perilous -- previously a bowling ball of demented energy, today a freaking boulder.