I think I can begin each blog post from Paris saying that we begin each day starting out later than we want to. We set our alarms with the best of intentions but something always gets in the way, the first day we went out we forgot our camera. We set our alarms for 8:30, which was just too ambitious, and we ended up getting up at 9:30 and leaving around 10:30. Then we had to stop and get coffee or my Mom would not be able to function, so we went to the place we had gone the day before, but this time there was no space at the bar so we sat at a table. A fun cultural fact we learned is they charge you twice as much for a cup of coffee when you sit at a table, for the ambiance! My mother was not happy about this since the coffee there was fairly expensive to begin with. It’s one of those things we will laugh about later, but it was hard to let go (I had one of those today so look out for it in later blog posts! Look at me, creating suspense). Then we were on our way to the first stop of the day- the Louvre!
The Louvre is the magnificent national museum of France and it is the most visited museum in the world. The building itself is almost as magnificent as the art inside of it as it was once a palace in the 12th century. Once a new king moved in there he would add on to the building, which makes it perfect for an art museum. Eventually it was left for Versaille and was opened to the public in 1793 so that everyone could enjoy the royal art collection. More recently in the ‘90s another entrance was built by the American architect I.M. Pei that is a big glass pyramid with the lobby underneath and a small pyramid next to it. It was constructed to help handle the large masses of people coming to the museum everyday. Not everyone likes the pyramid entrance, partly because they say it does not fit with the rest of the architecture and that it is difficult to maintain because it is glass but I like it and I think it is a cool contrast with its surroundings.
We had a bit of trouble finding the right entrance, because of our museum passes we could use the group entrance and we could avoid the huge line through the pyramid for people who were buying tickets. But we found it all right and entered into the museum only to find it packed with people. It turns out that Wednesday is one of the busiest days for the Louvre so it was us and thousands of other looking and jostling in front of some amazing pieces of art, which I found frustrating because when I go to art museums I actually want to look at the art. I don’t just want to see the famous stuff and take a picture of it. I don’t just want to stare at it for two seconds and then move on. If I wanted those things I would stay at home and look at art books (because those reproductions will be better than anything you can get on a camera). I want to see the parts that you can’t get from reproductions, which is somewhat hard for the most famous parts of the Louvre.
It started out a little rocky because we were following the Rick Steve’s free audio guide (which was great!!) and we could not find the first room. It was especially hard because my mother and I are both severely directionally challenged, there is a language barrier and the hordes of other tourists that obscure signs, stand right in your way and devour whole works of art… It turns out in the end that the first room (Pre-Greek art) was closed, which was particularly sad for me because I had just studied those works in my Art History 101 class.
After a rocky start we actually had a great day. We saw many really famous works, like the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa (which had such a crazy group in front of it I took a picture of the group and the painting). We also made a detour to see some of the things I studied like Roman painting, an Etruscan sarcophagus and if we go back on Sunday (it’s free on the first Sunday of the month along with many other museums) we plan to see some of the other more ancient works, especially from Egypt and things like the Code of Hammurabi.
After our tour we were exhausted and hungry so we decided to just stay in the Louvre and eat lunch. Usually the big museums have great food that is pretty reasonably priced so it is easier to just eat there then to have to look for a place to eat outside. We did have to wait quite a while to pay for our food but when we sat down we realized there was free refillable pitchers of water, which doesn’t seem like that big of deal but we always get really dehydrated and in restaurants they will usually only give you one small glass of water, unlike the States where they bring you water till you burst. So we were very content with our meal and we fill up our water bottle and then went back out into the heat. It has been unusually hot in Paris according to most of the people we talked to.
We then decided to take a break from the artwork and sit outside in the gardens right outside the Louvre called the Tuileries, which was a really nice break. There are a couple of fountains (with really filthy water) and a ton of statues and a wide long path that leads to another pond where people race boats, according to my Dad. There are no benches but instead they have metal chairs, which can be moved and rearranged, and my Mom and I found two in a shady spot and commenced with people watching and one of our favorite hobbies, judging what people are wearing. We never do it meanly and a lot of the times we are looking for ideas for ourselves but we certainly have a lot of fun.
Once we are ready we move on to the next museum at the end of the park, Musée de l'Orangerie, which is a very small (compared to the Louvre) museum dedicated to the impressionist painters. I really enjoyed this museum at first partially because I could actually look at the artwork up close. They had a great temporary exhibit on a current artist, Didier Paquignon who lived in both Spain and Paris, which you could really see in his artwork that I loved. His colors were very Spanish and his style was very impressionist and he did a lot of different types, landscapes, portraits a series on the metro.
We then moved on to the more famous dead impressionists, which I enjoyed but the last part that we visited was most memorable; Monet’s Water lilies, 8 of the series in a two circular room that was built specifically to house these paintings. When I first saw them though, I was a tiny bit disappointed solely for the reason that the last time my mother came to Paris 14 years ago, she told me about this room and so as a child I had imagined a floor to ceiling room painting with only holes for the door. Of course reality cannot compete with a 6-year-old’s imagination but it was still pretty amazing. We sat there for a while and then we went home. It was a fabulous day!!
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