Saturday September 6 1:41 PM EDT Diana Mourned at Paris Crash Site By Alister Doyle PARIS (Reuter) - Several hundred people, some sobbing, left flowers and candles Saturday at the Paris road tunnel where Princess Diana's car crashed as France bade a muted farewell to the princess. Elsewhere in the French capital, British stores observed a minute's silence and dimmed their lights. Streets were unusually quiet as many people stayed indoors to watch Diana's funeral on television. In the Ritz Hotel, where Diana and her companion Dodi Al Fayed ate their last meal last Saturday, the sound of the television broadcast in a side room echoed into the dining room. Inside the tunnel, some braved traffic to climb over crash barriers to leave bouquets of flowers at the concrete pillar into which Diana's car slammed last Sunday, killing her, Al Fayed and their driver. Passing traffic had already hit and scattered some of the flowers. Above, a paper sign said "Princess of Wales Square" in bright sunshine over the River Seine from the Eiffel Tower. At the entrance of the tunnel, some took pictures, others put down flowers, some were crying. A few were dressed in black. Even some teddy bears were left among the bouquets. A British flag, the Union Jack, was hung at one entrance to the tunnel which runs under the Pont d'Alma bridge. Several hundred bouquets of flowers were piled up by the Flame of Liberty, a golden replica of the flame at the top of New York's Statue of Liberty, at one end of the tunnel. "I came here to show my respects. It was a tragedy. Her life was so manipulated by others," said Marco Roldan, 25, from Chile. "We have come here because we want her soul to return to England. We don't want it to be lost," said Tricia Bolton, from Bristol, western England as she and her husband Ian laid a single red rose at the entrance to the tunnel. They and others complained at the small scale of mourning in France compared to that in Britain -- and the lack of seas of flowers. Alan and Joan Kean, a British couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary with champagne at a nearby cafe, said they were disappointed not to see flags at half-mast -- and pointed to a French flag in the corner of the square. But in the Paris branch of British chain store Marks and Spencers, customers and staff broke down in tears as the shop dimmed its lights and observed a minute's silence. "I think it is amazing how this has touched so many people," said the store's general manager, Bill Pudney. One British woman in her 30s sat down and wept with her face in her hands. A middle-aged man knelt near the entrance and appeared to pray. Senior sales woman Michele Zoubir talked in tears about the time she met Diana when the princess made a private visit to the store along with Prince Charles in 1988. "She was very sweet, she did not say much. She was mostly behind Prince Charles but she smiled a lot," she said. France has greeted Diana's death with a mixture of shock and bewilderment at the scale of outpouring of grief worldwide. "Like the 'flu, the emotion of a crowd is contagious," the daily France-Soir said in an editorial. Ecuador tourist Carlos Ortiz, catching a flight home from Orly airport after a holiday in France, probably summed best the way people had reacted here. "All this reminds me of Evita Peron. It seems to me they went over the top. They want to turn her into a symbol but I don't understand what symbol," he said. The grief over the 1952 death at age 33 of the wife of former Argentine leader Juan Peron has become a legend in Latin America.