You have to love a city where the simple act of buying a ham and cheese sandwich and a double espresso can be so nourishing - the smell, the workmen chatting at the bar, the guy behind the bar producing it all with a flourish.
And then the harsh, impatient Anglo-Saxon reality of my job clashes with that delightful, yet laid-back, French attitude. I need to pay and quickly run a couple of hundred metres and get back to the camera position looking over the Eiffel Tower.
But the guy behind the bar, the one with the flourish, is in the middle of a relaxed but animated chat with a suave looking couple. I'm waving around my money, but he hasn't noticed, and he's in no rush.
As the minutes click down, and in my mind's eye I hear Lateline's theme tune going to air in Australia, it suddenly hits me - this is what the left in France fears will be destroyed by Nicolas Sarkozy, their way of life, their passionate resistance to what they see as an Anglo-Saxon led rat-race fuelled by turbo-charged globalisation.
But I made it back in time, all the while thinking French politics is so far to the left of politics in the UK and Australia that Kevin Rudd's industrial relations policy would be seen as more right-wing than that of the supposedly divisive and newly elected French President.
It may not make much sense to anyone not up on Australian politics, but it was an illuminating look. And even if that quote doesn't make sense, Epstein goes on to talk about Tony Blair's farewell speech and how England in that context compares to France.
Wade.