It most definitely was the longest day of the year!

Our plan was to take the metro to Place Concorde,

walk through the Jardin des Tutleries, and tour the textiles exhibit at the Decorative Arts Museum. Ngila wanted to see the fashions from different ages. Well, we made it Concorde and the gardens. There we were sidetracked by the ice cream cart. Ngila hung out with Julius while she ate her gelato.

Then we learnt that the textile wing was undergoing renovations. Plan B was to just hang out - with Joan on the Rue de Rivoli

and Victor, at his flat in the beautiful Place des Vosges.

He must have done alright with "Les Mis" because it's not cheap having a home in this loveliest square in the city.

We came home to rest up for our attack on two of the biggies, the Louvre and the Eiffel tower. The former is open until 9:45 on Wednesdays and the lines were supposed to be shorter. That info was correct. The line was non existent.

We staggered out after 2 and a half hours having seen all that we could manage.

We got to the Tour at 10:15 pm  so we could see the sunset and the lights come on

and that's when the wheels truly fell off. Again, our info was correct. The line ups were short. But there was a line up for security;
a line up for tickets; a line up for the second security point; a line up for the elevator to the 2nd level; a line up for the elevator to the top;

a line up to get back down to the second level;

a line up to get to the bottom;

a line up to try for a taxi. At 12:15am, we decided to head home on the metro. Ngila planned out our route. We carefully asked a metro employee if the metro was still running and were assured that all of the metro ran all night. We got off line 6 to change to our line 8 only to discover line 8 closed at midnight. Back onto line 6 to ride to line 5 to change for Bastille. Line 5 also shuts at midnight. Back on line 6 to change to line 1 for Bastille. Hurrah! Line1 does runs all night.  Our epic journey ended at 1:45am. Don't tell her parents.
We've had a couple of strange, little things happen with gov't run operations - like the post office that only had 3 overseas stamps. To buy any more was "not possible".