Drive-by Arting

After walking back from Notre Dame to the hotel, we went one block further to check out the massive St. Sulpice Church, the second largest church in Paris after Notre Dame.  It's not nearly as beautiful outside or inside, but worth a look if you are in the neighborhood.

We got back to the room around 4:45 to rest a bit.  For some lucky reason, I decided to check the hours of the Louvre for Tuesday.  The guidebook didn't list hours for Tuesday, so I checked on the internet -- the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays!  (Why? -- Beats me!).  So we hustled back out of the hotel, grabbed a cab and sprinted over to the Louvre.  After an argument with the ticketseller (who's job it is to sell tickets, not to not sell them!) about how little time we had, we went in.

As many people were streaming out, we were rushing in.  First to see Winged Victory (not on purpose -- it was there as we went our hurried way), then the Mona Lisa.  We rushed downstairs to see the Venus de Milo, before finding -- after some wrong turns -- Hammurabi's Code. 

It all had the feel of a drive-by arting -- sprinting through a museum to see the major works.  While that is not the ideal way to see the Louvre, we had no choice.  If we didn't go then, we wouldn't be able to go -- it's closed Tuesdays (I  know, I mentioned that already), and we were leaving Paris on Wednesday.  Yes, we paid too much for the tickets for the time spent, but after we hit the big four, we covered some additional turf before being chased out.

At this point, we were all exhausted from the day's walking, sightseeing, line-standing, etc.  So we came out of the Louvre in the Garden of Tuileries, wandered around a bit, and got some ice cream.  My bad ankle was officially killing me, so we rested on a bench for a bit.  Carol found a creperie on TripAdvisor, that was a long walk from the hotel, and 1.7 miles from our current location at the Garden.  We grabbed a cab that would only take us within three blocks of the restaurant -- it was down a very narrow road. 

After getting into the restaurant (below the Sorbonne part of the Left Bank), the one person working tried to lose our business.  First, she tried to put us at a table too small for four people.  I said no, and she wasn't happy with us.  (By the way, at that point there were two other people there, and it was a little after 6pm, so the place was not packed, and never got crowded while we were there).  So she did the passive-aggressive French thing and didn't wait on us for a while.  Finally, she got reinforcements and took our order.  The food came quickly though, and was quite good, so we went ahead and got dessert crepes too.

So, while we didn't have the tour guide Monday as planned, we did cover all the major sites in Paris.  My advice -- at least order tickets on-line and print them at home for the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and the Musee d'Orsay (foreshadowing) so you can skip the lines and save a bunch of time.