The Purrito and her crew went to Giverny yesterday. Seeing as it was a holiday, Victoire 1945, under normal circumtances, this would be free license for me to camp out on the kitchen table and play video games all day, something that, in retrospect, I should have done. Instead, I decided to (try to) be a responsible adult, and do the things that needed to be done.
Not wanting to run the risk of being admonished by my very French doctor again (the Purrito has flatly stated that his willingness to finger-waggle me contributes significantly to the high esteem she holds him in), I decided that I’d shower and head to the lab to get the required bloodwork done. Heading out, I noted that it was a bit quiet, but that there were a few things open, so I figured I had a decent chance of getting my list done. Making my way to the lab, I was disappointed to note that it was closed, particularly since the notice of fermeture exceptionelle had Saturday’s date, not Friday’s. I looped back around to the apartment, hatching a plan; I’d check the hours at the hospital’s in house lab, head up there, go back down to Concorde to grab grammar books and macarrons, and then head home.
The hours for the hospital checked out, and there was no notice of closure, so I hopped in an Uber.
…an hour later (normal trip time: 25 minutes), I arrived. Both the driver and I had forgotten that the Champs-Élysées was closed due to the imminent parade. Walking into the hospital, it was again quiet, but not completely abandoned, but the lab was most decidedly closed. Thwarted once more, I considered grabbing a taxi to head up to La Défense (having decided that there was too great a chance that everything at Concorde would be closed), but decided against it, as the cab drivers typically use the northern chunk of the Champs-Élysées (technically avenue de la grande armée) to get there, and I had little doubt that one of them would “forget” about the closure in a ploy to run up the meter.
Five minute into my 20 minute hike to the Pont de Neuilly station, it started to rain.
While almost the entirety of CNIT was closed, FNAC was, mercifully, open, something I had begun to doubt, though I hadn’t seen any fermeture exceptionelle notices on the door in the preceding days. I bought my French grammar books, picked up the Lego Hobbit game for 3DS since it was in their bargain bin, and headed the hell home, four hours of my guilt-free gaming time wasted.
In retrospect, I should have known all of this was going to happen; a year in, I slipped back in to the very classist assumption that rules the US: holidays are for white-collar workers, and everything else will be open as normal. Such is not the case in la France, and I’d do well to remember that.
Fezzik In Paris 