All you need is Lourve

Day 3: The Louvre

This was a day that I personally was only marginally looking forward to, but my wife was so giddy with excitement and couldn’t hold still with the thought of looking at the Egyptian Doorway exhibit that she got me excited with the thought of it. The entrance to the Louvre is a very modern piece of architecture that I got the impression of having mixed feelings about from the general public. Some thought it was an eyesore, while others seemed to think that the clear pyramids covering the entrance down into the Louvre as an example of how Paris is progressing with the modern era while keeping in touch with its history. My thoughts are that they were well used in the movie “The Da Vinci Code”, but all I could really see with them was the headache it would be to keep clean. What can I say, in some things I am a romantic, and in others I am hopelessly practical.

Now unfortunately my wife Cat started to get overheated in the waiting area for us to get our tickets to tour the different exhibits, and started to get sick. Needless to say we were separated from the group during these events so we ended up going on our own little tour while trying to find the rest of the group. This was predominantly unsuccessful but in the process we did accidentally get to see the majority of the Louvre.

I say accidentally because in the process of looking for the group we saw signs for the Mona Lisa and thought what the heck since we are in the area we may as well try to see her. We were unsuccessful with the Mona Lisa but we did end up turning a corner and came face to face with the Venus de Milo. We were both shocked and gratified that there seemed to be an ebb in the flow of tourists for we were able to get clear picture of her. I must say that after all of the pictures I have seen of this remarkable sculptor it was incredible to see her in person, not to mention that fact that every picture I have ever seen truly does not do her justice. Another piece of artwork that we accidentally came across was “Winged Victory”, this piece is another one that the pictures have never been able to capture properly it seems for I had no idea it that big.

There is one other thing that I would like to touch on; the French are no ruder than anyone else. During this stay at the Louvre we encountered both sides of this particular coin. While the lady who takes the tickets was an incredibly abusive…lets leave it at wench. But her boss was an incredibly sweet young woman who apparently gave us tickets to the entire museum free of charge, just so we would have no problem trying to find anyone. Needless to say the ticket collector was unhappy with this. But I can see where she was coming from being a customer service employee in the most visited museum in the world; I have seen Americans act worse than she did in much less stressful jobs.

Also due to Cat continuing to feel terrible we cut the trip short and started our first lesson on understanding the Metro without any assistance. We passed that test with flying colors. BOOYAH!!!!!!