By Gordon Farquhar BBC Five Live sports news correspondent in Paris

Baudillon is confident, but Paris' inspection was not without problems

Philippe Baudillon, the head of the Paris bid, was adamant Thursday's strikes and demonstrations had no impact on the evaluation commission's job of examining Paris's 2012 Olympic credentials.

"Nothing disrupted the Commission's work! Nothing!" he said confidently.

And commission leader Nawal El Moutawakel backed up that view when she said: "The strike did not affect our work. People were demonstrating wearing 'Paris 2012' T-Shirts."

The sun has resolutely refused to shine on the inspectors' visit, with damp, cold and fairly miserable conditions to match those experienced in London just a couple of weeks ago.

Paris' bid in detail View from Paris

The dank weather is not the only similarity with the London bid.

Paris, too, is using famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower as backdrops for some of its sports venues.

But it also has a lot to build: an aquatic centre, an athletes' village and a string of temporary venues.

Who are the Olympic inspectors?

However, it does already have the Stade de France, clearly capable of being a centrepiece for an Olympic Games.

With that in mind, it is a little hard to understand why they didn't present the stadium in athletics mode for the International OIympic Committee.

An artists' impression of the Paris Olympic village

It was set up for football, but the next game is hardly imminent. A little mistake perhaps - and there have been one or two.

Using police outriders and sailing through every red light as they whisked the delegation and media through the city on strike day was scarcely depicting the daily reality of Paris.

Indeed, it did not even show the speed of progress one could expect with an Olympic priority lane system in operation.

Paris strike hits Olympic visit

In addition, some of the presentations to the media have lacked focus and inspiration.

Why no video to look at of La Rochelle (the sailing venue)? Just holding up and pointing to an aerial photograph was not very sexy.

Perhaps the work of inspectors was not affected at all by the strikes, unlike the millions of Parisians who rely on public transport to get them to their places of work every day.

Then again, some members of the evaluation commission might have sympathy with the claims of the unions for a better deal.

Perhaps they might be tempted to campaign for a shorter working week at the end of their five-city tour: no-one can accuse them of not putting the hours in.

Still, being invited to dinner with a king, a queen, a president and a mayor is reasonable recompense.