The Louvre

Today we went to the Louvre. We got there around 10:30 and had to wait in line to buy our tickets and get in. Luckily it was moving along, so it didn't seem that long. We got in, got our map, and went straight to the Mona Lisa. It was just what everyone had said it was. Smaller than you expect, although with how many times I'd heard that it was actually larger than i thought it'd be. Everyone was crowded around her and taking pictures. We could take pictures! Just no flash. But half the people didn't listen to that part. It felt unreal that it was the original. Nothing would have given that away except for the glass covering her and the five foot berth created by guards. Don't get me wrong, it was cool to see in person. While we did take pictures of what interested us, I know it's almost laughable to put them on here. Putting a picture of the original is the same as looking it up online or in a book or buying a copy from an art store. But since this is more about chronicling our adventure and less about portraying original art, I'm posting them anyways :)

Inside the glass pyramid that's the entrance


Hallway with many many many paintings



I've already explained that Doug and I are not museum people. This was no different. I thoroughly enjoyed our time there and loved seeing different works of art from different cultures and different time periods. I had the thought while I was there that I wished I had taken art history courses so I could better appreciate what I was seeing. Some of the stuff we recognized and knew, some of it I recognized but didn't know why, and others were apparently famous that I had never heard of, which made me feel rather stupid. At least they pointed out which were famous so we could see them, even if we didn't know their history.

I also talked earlier about how I find placards frustrating because only half of them give information that I am wanting to know. We didn't have that problem here because all the placards were in French. The audio guides were sold out, so even if we had wanted to pay money, we were out of luck for a tour. So we were our own tour guides. There were a few times where we were wanting to know what was going on in a painting, but couldn't find out because we don't read French. Oh the irony :)

The Louvre is massive. I'd heard that to properly tour it would take days, and I can definitely see that it could take more than a week. We walked through every hall on the map. I felt that if we didn't walk through all of it, I wouldn't feel at all satisfied with our trip there, and would only be able to see that I'd only seen three quarters of it, more or less. So now I can say we walked it all. We were there for four hours. It was a satisfying and tiring trip.

Famous stuff that we knew:

Mona Lisa. It was hard to get a good picture of her without using the flash


Venus de Milo


Code of Hammurabi


Chopin


In just about every history book that I had this picture of Louis XIV


Ramses II


Stuff I recognized but didn't know why:







Famous stuff we didn't recognize:






Stuff we just liked:






One of the rooms with statues





Gladiator armor




Napoleon III apartment




The crown jewels






After the Louvre, we went to find a cafe. We found one and I got a coffee and Doug got a coke. The waiter misunderstood my order, but it was okay because what I got was cheaper, just blacker coffee. Oh well, I got my cafe experience!






Then we were wanting more pastries. And by we, I mainly mean me haha. We walked down some streets around Paris since we didn't have any other plans. We were tired out from the museum, so we spent the rest of the afternoon just relaxing. We stumbled upon this little bakery shop. Heaven!


I had a hard time deciding what I wanted, but picked out two. They even packaged it in a cute little box!


These were the two that I decided on.


I ate the one on the left earlier. It was a chocolate meringue. It was too sweet, not rich enough. Not bad, but I couldn't finish it.

As we came out of the shop it started to rain, so we decided to head back to our room. It was only 4:30 so we snacked and read and Doug played some computer games.

I did finish my book that I had on my kindle. It was the second in a series and was much better than the first. It's called The Girl the Played with Fire. They're crime books, so a little graphic sometimes. Unfortunately they ended it kind of in the middle of things, so I'm gonna have to buy the next one at some point. I have other books to read though, and luckily Amazon delivers books for free even when you're out of the country!

We made spaghetti for dinner but a little bit later we were still wanting some snacks. So we went to the nearby store and got some candy and got a baguette and dry salami. And toothpaste. We're running low.

We found smurfs gummies!


We also found some pink and blue sour coated gummies that we decided to try. Turns out they were bubble gum flavored. Kind of weird. If you ate half of it it was alright, it was the second bite that wasn't so good.

We went back to our room and ate the baguette and salami. It was soo good. Makes me want more just thinking about it.

Now we're watching CSI and its actually in English! The internet is running rather slow so it's taking forever to load the pictures. So I ate the second pastry. Chocolate mouse with raspberry mouse in the middle. Divine :) Maybe my favorite one so far. But the first one was also a favorite.