In which we search for a bathroom

Note: This properly belongs in the posts about this weekend, but it was enough of a ridiculous adventure so that I'm giving it its own post.

At one point Saturday afternoon we found ourselves at the Jardin des Halles, a large Parisian park, hoping that Cherry would be more cooperative if we gave her an opportunity to blow off some steam. Naturally, after the kids had played on the playground for a little while, Cherry came running over and announced, loudly, that she needed to pee. Now, had I been in Fontenay I would have taken her over onto the grass, maybe behind a bush or something, pulled down her pants, and told her to go to it, but there were an awfully lot of people around, and most big parks have public restrooms, so I decided to find a bathroom. This turned out to be a mistake.

On the way into the park, I had noticed one of the freestanding toilet kiosks that one sees scattered throughout Paris. Unfortunately, I hadn't noticed whether or not it was actually in order, and it seems that many of them are not. (Supposedly they're in the process of upgrading them.) Since it was a couple of blocks back, I didn't know whether it was actually operational, and the kiosks always reek, I decided against that option. I would find a bathroom actually in the park. Surely there would be one. . ..

As we exited the playground, I saw a sign: Toilettes Publiques. Porte Berger. 300 m, and an arrow pointing to the left. A bit later there was another sign, identical except that the distance was now decreased to 200 m. And further still, a sign announcing that the toilets were now only 100 m away. By this point we were virtually to the other end of the park, and since porte means door or entry, I came to the (wrong) conclusion that the signs had been telling me that the bathrooms were located at that entrance to the park. Cherry and I spent several minutes looking around that end of the park, punctuated by yelps of "Mommy, I need to pee now. I'm going to pee in my pants."

Since we couldn't find the bathroom the fall back was to find some grass, preferably not right in the middle of everything, that she could pee on. (Grass doesn't end up smelling as bad as concrete. Don't ask how I know this.) Of course this was a formal Parisian park, and except for the grass in the playground area all of the lawns were properly fenced off to prevent people from walking or sitting (or, OK, peeing) on them. About a third of the way back to the playground, I noticed an escalator going down under ground, and saw that the sign above it read "Porte Berger". Hmm, well that matched the signs we were seeing earlier, even if I had no idea what Porte Berger was. We headed down the escalator.

In case you were wondering, Porte Berger was the entrance to a massive underground shopping mall. And there were no toilettes anywhere in sight. Finally I found a small green sign, which directed me to another escalator. And another. And yet another. Then, way back in the corner we found the toilets. And of course, had to pay 40 cents for the privilege of using them. On the plus side, they were clean and definitely didn't smell like stale pee. On the minus side, by the time we'd gotten back to the playground the bathroom trip had taken almost half an hour.

(While I know that Paris (and Europe more generally) have a reputation for charging for bathroom use, this is the first time I've had to pay to use a public toilet since Sapphire was a baby, and I've used many Parisian public bathrooms during that time.)