Thank God (all Gods) for McDonalds

OK, so our plan for today was to get up early, like 7am and head to line up for tickets to climb the tower. Ya you heard correctly, we gonna pay for the pleasure of climbing up the tower to the 2nd platform. Nuts.

Guess the race weekend and the traveling caught up as we did not crawl out of bed until well after 9.

We headed to tower area after making our lunch of rustic bread, turkey and a smoked cheese, with carrots and oranges to complete. We intended to picnic in the Tuileries gardens not far from the Louvre. The sun came out and the wind calmed down and we indeed enjoy our picnic.

So between the Louvre and the Tuileries gardens they cover lets say a hundred acres and there were likely 10,000 people about and dozens of outdoor cafes throughout yet we seen like 1 (one) toilet sign. Good grief. After getting off the main causeway we finally recognized a golden arches and knew we could get relief there. Lined up but not too bad.

We then hopped on tour bus and did a complete circuit of the sights and got off at the De Champs Elyees, visited the Arc de Triomphe where the Tour De France finishes each year. The lines were terribly long with what seemed like national school field trip day.

We will go back tomorrow, same as for Notre Dame and the Latin quarter.

So we strode the Champs and a few side streets looking for ice cream. Nada. Time to find a toilet again too. Nothing signed. Ah, more golden arches. Line up OK, so thankful. Our biggest beef so far is the total lack of public washrooms. Heck even the pay-toilets are few and far between.

As we are not much for museums on the inside, per say, we love the architecture and facade rich old buildings. There are some real beauties here along the Seine river. We decided on a river cruise to gain some different views of these magnificent structures and were not disappointed.

We enjoyed Galletes (crepes) for dinner as the place we wanted to eat at did not serve until 8pm and we had not eaten since 1pm so will try to visit them our last night here. I had one stuffed with duck, apples and potatoes and Sharon did classic ham, cheese, tomato and basil. We finished with one smothered in Nutella and pralines.

After a brief rest in apt we headed over to catch the light-up of the tower and were asked as many as 50 times if we wanted to buy wine-champagne-beer-cigarettes from the same 4 guys. Worse than Mexican beach. Ditto on the tower trinkets. There will be a line of 8-10 guys with handfulls of the same trinkets, and the next one in line thinks you'll buy from him. Really after saying no to the first 1/2 dozen. Anyhow the light-up is fantastic.