A Day in Paris - part 6

It was still Thursday.
We left the Arc de Triomphe to begin our walk down the Champs-Elysees. 

No trip to Paris is complete without a stroll down the Champs-Elysees. It was a bit of a walk. My wife didn't want to go into the fancy stores along the way. It was getting late, so we just wanted to enjoy the walk to the Louvre. Google tells me that the distance is 4.5 kilometers.

That's just short of 3 miles in real measurement. It wasn't a bad walk...it was a very nice walk...but there were complications. Now that we had left the monument with the free restroom, my companion informed me that she needed to use the bathroom--complication number 1. We were also getting thirsty. I bought another Orangina--the precursor to complication number 2. 

We made an attempt at addressing complication number 1 in the long park that runs along a portion of the thoroughfare. A sign indicted that use of the facility would be 2 euros. The place looked a little off-putting...so we were; off-put, that is. Wife said she could wait.

After we had entered the Tuileries, we were climbing a short set of stairs. At the top, two girls accosted us. One girl said, while holding a map, "You're from here, can you tell us where the nearest subway stop is." I was wondering why she thought I was "from here." Was it the dopey hat? Was it my debonair look and jaunty air of je ne sais quoi? (Who really knows what that is anyway?) When I didn't respond immediately, she whisked the map away and went down the stairs. I don't know if she suddenly realized that I was not in fact "from here." Or if she thought maybe that I was "from here" but didn't speak English. Either way, I was happy with her decision to seek an answer elsewhere. We continued on to the Louvre. 

I was surprised that there was no line at the entrance. My wife thought that it might be closed. I assured her that it was not. I had planned this out; we were arriving at the Louvre on one of the days that it stayed open late. We descended at the entrance beneath the glass pyramid (which wasn't even there the last time I had been to the Louvre). Below, I could see a line. I made some inquiries. That line was for a special exhibit. I didn't care. I wasn't interested in that exhibit...but I did want to see the rest of the great museum. 

The lady told me that the rest of the Louvre had already closed. Only this one special exhibit remained open. I knew that couldn't be true. I knew the museum stayed open till 9:00 or 10:00 p.m on Fridays. I had planned for this. So I told her that I thought the museum was open late on Fridays. She said that it was...but today was Thursday. That's when I remembered...I had originally scheduled our visit to the Louvre for Friday night. Then there had been some complications with the plane tickets, so the tickets we got had a Friday morning rather than a Saturday morning departure...and I had never revised my 22 step day in Paris schedule to account for the change from Friday to Thursday. It was another Maxwell Smart moment. The lady did let me me know that the Musee d'Orsay was still open. I told her that we had already been to that one that morning. Oh well.

On the bright side, the Louvre restrooms were still open. My wife met some nice people from Oregon in her line while resolving complication number 1. Shortly after that, the last bottle of Orangina kicked in. Without going into detail, let me just say that I became very familiar with the men's room in the bottom of the Louvre. It really was complication number 2, and the resolution thereof was not pleasant. I will say that it was one of the nicest restrooms that I was able to use during the trip, it ranked just below the restroom at the Frankfurt airport. While I did not get to see and cannot express my thoughts upon the overabundant oil paintings, or the great number of magnificent statues in bronze and in marble, I give the plain porcelain in the famous museum a plethora of plaudits. I felt much like Rodin's The Thinker--which isn't displayed in the Louvre.