Paris: part 4

Hmm should finish Paris soon. Blogging is such a chore... I don't know how people find time to do it several times a week.



We designated a full day to Mona Lisa's house. The Musée du Louvre is a gigantic place that has one's feet worn out before one can cover the whole thing. The Louvre was a royal palace until Louis XIV decided to move out to Versailles. The museum is very spacious; I had to remind myself a few times that much of the place was built centuries ago, which explains the 30-foot ceilings and vast open spaces that nowadays one might consider frivolous in a building project.

Amidst the old architecture, the pyramids (some upright and an inverted one) almost look out of place. Artistic freedom, I suppose. They make pretty neat skylights anyway.



We picked a good day in terms of human traffic. The museum's size easily handles the 20,000+ daily visitors, although certain places tend to be slightly more crowded than others. The dear lady for example.

The Mona Lisa is behind several layers of protective glass, a barricade, and a museum staff person. What probably helps this area to be fairly jostle-free is the fact that photographing the painting has become forbidden fairly recently. It makes for a much-relaxed atmosphere, aside from the odd rebellious soul who dares to incur everyone's wrath by sneaking a shot. The New Zealand friends we met at the Eiffel Tower told us they experienced such an incident that weekend. They were looking at the painting when some lout decided not only to take a picture but to use his flash. The whole crowd apparently turned as one, and he withered under their collective evil eye. Ahh, just deserts.

She's not much to look at, but I can say I've seen her. That's half the point of seeing things isn't it?

We saw a ton of stuff, some interesting, some not so much. Egyptian non-mummies and coffin thingies...



Egyptian art (the wooden sculpture is supposedly almost 5000 years old... just neat to think of the Old Testament people who roamed the earth at that time)...



sphinxes...



hieroglyphics and people trying to copy hieroglyphics...



well-kept hieroglyphics and not so well-kept (4400 yrs old)...



the famous (so I'm told) statue Venus de Milo (she used to have arms), and other ornaments...



some 2800-year-old Assyrian decor...



mirror in the same area to entertain museum-goers...



beautiful sculptures and people sketching them...



a couple of huge and nicely furnished indoor courtyards...



... and Napoleon's living quarters...



Well that was the Louvre. Glad you could make it...

Seriously, did you really think a bunch of pictures can do it justice?? You'll have to go see it for yourself.