Day 1: Louvre / Shakespeare & Company / Notre Dame Toilet / Les Invalides

Monday, 19th of June 2017

Louvre / Shakespeare & Company / Notre Dame Toilet / Les Invalides

I will have to give you an account of my first day around town, since if I don’t write it down I will forget everything I have done. In the morning the hostel let me use their printer and I bought a ticket to the Louvre, but they were all sold out until 11:30. I decided to go there early anyways so I could explore the Tuileries garden outside. I walked from one end of the garden to the other end. Lots of people were jogging through on the sandy dirt. There’s a large grove of trees near the middle on both sides of the lot which provide a great deal of shade. That was the loveliest part, all the shade, as it was still quite hot for 9 in the morning. When I got back to the Louvre my feet were already tired from so much walking, so I sat on some steps inside a breezeway of the outer building and people watched as the tourists walked by.

Entrance to Tuileries

Tuileries Garden

Once inside the Louvre, it was a mass of people all speaking different languages. The first two floors I saw were ancient Greece and Egypt and they were swarming with people. It was hot and overwhelming, and I wanted to see the paintings. I finally made my way to the second floor and when I saw the first oil on canvas it was like life being breathed back into me. I sat and admired every detail. I walked for several hours admiring the artwork until I felt absolutely starving.

Inside the Louvre there were artists painting copies of the artwork. I found this so interesting and weird to look at.

I bought a poppy seed baguette avec poulet et tomates et moutard, a green macaron, and a bottle of water inside the Louvre, then took it outside, hoping I could find a place to sit by the Seine to eat. I thought there might be a grassy riverside place, so I was quite surprised to find all the banks of the river were enclosed by concrete. I could not sit down at any of the many café’s to eat either because I had already bought food. I checked the map and saw there was a little park next to Shakespeare and Company, so I walked across the river at Pont Neuf and quickly found the bookstore. The park next to it was dirty and smelled of city and urine (a lot of places in France smell like urine, especially the metro). Hungry and no better option in mind, I sat next to a tree and ate half my sandwich and green macaron. I was especially looking forward to this as it was my first French pastry, but it tasted vaguely like spinach drenched in sugar. (I later found out Paul’s where I got the food inside the Louvre is a chain restaurant. French people hate it because the food is not fresh, and doesn’t taste as good, which proved to be very true.)

Shakespeare and Company was a highlight. Though it wasn’t air-conditioned and I could feel sweat running down my back it was so nice to peruse and sit. There was a children's book about Ella Fitzgerald’s friendship with Marilyn Monroe that I was so tempted to buy, but I didn’t want to lug a big book all over town with me. I ended up buying the 2^nd Harry Potter for Hunter, who has been challenged to finish the first Harry Potter this summer. Amy has shown an interest for nursery rhymes and fables, so I bought her a children's book of Little Red Riding Hood. For myself I decided to get Letters of Emily Dickinson. It’s tinier than Red Riding Hood, but thicker, and anyways I knew it would be a long time before I returned to the hostel so small books were key.

Then I headed over to Notre Dame, which I didn’t expect to visit, but they had the nearest public restroom. One good thing to know, if you need to pee in France, all the public bathrooms charge .80 Euros to 1 Euro for entrance. Perhaps that is why all the streets smell like urine? Men don’t want to pay for the public restroom, because only women have been lined up for every bathroom I have seen, oh and later today, I saw a guy peeing in the flowers outside Les Invalides.

So, the line was a mile long for Notre Dame, and I could already feel myself getting sunburnt (the sunscreen was in my lost bag), so I decided to take the metro to Les Invalides and see what it was all about. So once there, I walked the distance of the lawn from the Petit Palais and Grand Palais to l’armee Musee twice because I was looking for a building called Les Invalides, which doesn’t exist. This is what I get for not doing my research ahead of time. All I really knew about Les Invalides is that Napoleon’s tomb is there. Once I finally figured out it was in L’Armee Musee and got there, it was so late, I thought it was for sure closed, and it was. I walked through it anyway to get out of the sun. By this time I had drank all the water I brought with me and was so so thirsty.

I walked in the direction of a small park and found a little market where I bought a huge bottle of water and these donut peaches. I call them donut peaches, because they are peaches, but they are shaped so funny, like little donuts. I think they are from Spain, if I read the little label correctly. I sat on the lawn right outside and ate. Those peaches were the juiciest most perfectly ripe peaches I have ever tasted. Maybe it was because I was so tired, or so thirsty, but they were amazing. I figured everything else was going to be closed, so I laid down and read Emily Dickinson’s letters, which I didn’t like at first. Apparently when she was 15 or so, she thought she had all the boys wrapped around her finger. I dislike that kind of snobbery, but maybe it’s because I lack her confidence.

            On a good note, I had no trouble finding the Metro back to the hostel, and definitely feel confident I won’t get lost using it. When I got back to the hostel, I checked with the reception desk and they still hadn’t received my bag. The girl at the desk said sometimes they deliver after 9pm so I went upstairs to take a shower and checked back at 10pm. Still no bag. The reception let me use their phone to call the number on my lost bag claim slip, but nobody after hours could do anything, aside from how difficult it was to communicate in French over the phone. I went back up to my room and checked the tracker online. In one place it said my bag was out for delivery, in another place it said it was already delivered. I knew I had a voicemail on my phone, but I wasn’t planning on using roaming to make calls while here. I couldn’t figure out how to access the voicemail, but thanks to being able to call Mike on Wi-Fi using Whatsapp, he accessed my voicemail from home and held it up to the phone so I could hear the message play. It was in French and really fast, but I heard the word baggage and phone number. We had to play the message three times before I felt like I’d written down the number correctly. There was nothing to do except wait for the morning.