We had just left the souvenir shop near the Pantheon. We were on our way to the Luxembourg Gardens. The sidewalk was pretty wide, wide enough for some shops to have racks of goods out on it. There was also a youth sprawled on the sidewalk. He had two suitcases next to him. The suitcases were red. We gave him a wide berth; there was something hinky about the guy.
I realized what the feeling was when my wife kicked the container, made from the bottom quarter of a clear plastic water bottle, which held a few coins, and which he had placed out in the center of the walk. The container was virtually invisible. She hit it solidly, like an opening kickoff. The bit of bottle went tumbling; the coins went skittering. Did I mention the grate across the sidewalk? Most of the coins went down the grate that was located about six or eight feet from the ambush site.
I found two of his missing coins that the grate had not consumed, both one centime pieces. I could see that we had walked right into the trap. My wife was very apologetic. I thought about explaining to the guy that he should be more careful about where he puts his stuff. I'm not sure if he wasn't much of an actor, or if he was just saving the theatrics in case they were needed; he didn't seem very upset...and I was still packing about two pounds of change in my pocket. So...I asked how much he had had in the bottle bottom. He said, "Quatre." He didn't say whether it was euros or centimes. So I pulled out a handful of coins and gave to him...it was probably a little more than four euros worth. He seemed happy. We moved on, having fallen victim to a scam, but not feeling too badly about it.
Luxembourg Gardens welcomed us. In my memory, it had always been bright and sunny at Luxembourg Gardens; it was where I had spoken with an American writer all those years ago; if I remember correctly, he had told me that he had helped write the script for the movie version of An American in Paris.
It was Thursday, and the sky had begun to take on a battleship hue. We were both hungry, having skipped step one (breakfast) of our planned 22 steps for the day. We bought ham and cheese crepes and ate them in the park, admiring the greenery, and getting lightly sprinkled with rain.
According to the daily sheet from the red book, our next step, number 7, was to take the metro to the catacombs; exploring the catacombs was step 8. Problem: step 9 involved leaving the catacombs via the M4 to the Musee d'Orsay. The M4 was nonfunctional; we would lose more time in circuitous travel. We scratched the catacombs from our list. I had been there: bones, lots and lots of bones, macabre. Besides, I had already decided to add another destination to our list. We skipped steps 7 through 10, substituting a new metro route to get us to step 11, the Musee d'Orsay.
There were two or three lines to get into the museum. I noticed that the shortest line was specifically labeled for British and Americans. We got in quickly (using our Paris Museum Pass)...after the usual frisk and bag examination, but no body cavity search. The museum was seriously awesome. Tons of stuff. We took our time, trying to enjoy the moment, examining lots of paintings and objets d'arts. Some of them are pictured below. We looked until we could look no more, to the point that the thought of gazing upon one more framed canvas, or one more likeness in clay, bronze, or stone caused our eyes to roll back in their sockets, our knees to collapse, and the bowels to loosen. So we were there a good twelve or thirteen minutes. No. Seriously, we were there for an hour or two. It's really a place to spend an entire day...but it was Thursday, and we had 22 steps to complete.
This one was sculpted after the model stepped on a LEGO.
Aerobics can be so exhausting.
When we left the museum, we purchased drinks. My wife chose a bottle of water. I, remembering the sweet citrus bite of the drink from dinner the night before, chose an Orangina. And we were off to the destination that I had added to our schedule. A guy on a rickshaw bike offered to give us a ride there...but we already had plenty of metro tickets, which were much cheaper than the price of the ride...so we went under ground once more.
Next time: A Day in Paris - part 3.
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