Not sure how a quiche managed to sneak in here for breakfast.
Once again we lucked out and the line was very quick to get inside The Louvre. I could probably spend 2 days in here trying to see everything. There are 4 floors and 3 separate wings.
It feels like every wayfinding sign is directing you towards the Mona Lisa so we headed in that direction first. When you enter the room, all four walls contain art, but the crowd is mostly gathered at the far end where Mona Lisa hangs behind thick glass.
I was actually more taken by the giant Veronese on the other end. It’s the largest painting in the Louvre, depicting Jesus turning water into wine. There’s so much happening in the image. I got the audio tour, which was actually a custom Nintendo 3DS handheld gaming system. It would explain the details of a few pieces in each room, but even better it could direct you to any room/floor/artwork you wanted to see. So I just stood with my back to the Mona Lisa learning about this enormous painting, like a fish swimming upstream against the crowd.
After admiring it for a bit, I turned my attention to the Mona Lisa and the chaos in front of her. Slowly inching forward in the crowd until I made it to the front. The most famous painting in the world? It feels odd that this is it. Of course I had to see it while I was here, but there were many others that I enjoyed more.
‘The Coronation of Napoléon’ took 3 years to complete (2nd largest painting here). Napoléon’s mom didn’t actually attend the ceremony because of some beef, but Napoléon had the painter put her directly in the middle, sitting on that raised platform behind the crowd.
The sphinx, below, is the largest one outside of Egypt.
I outlasted everyone else in my family, at the Louvre. Addie went off shopping, and I think her and Eli have had enough museums for the day.
A few hours later Dami and I walked over to Musée d’Orsay. Whereas the Louvre featured art up until 1850, d’Orsay houses art from 1850-1940. It was constructed inside an enormous [former] railway station.
There are five floors to explore. We stumbled on Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ on the second floor. The original casting is a mile from here at the Rodin Museum.
The real reason we came here is because Damiana loves impressionist art. Up on the 5th floor we saw Monet and Manet, Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh, Dagas, Matisse and more.
My favorite was Van Gogh’s self portrait. Up-close you could really see all the swirling brush strokes that make his work so unique.
The weather was 92 degrees today and there had been warnings of thunderstorms off and on. As we headed to bed a huge storm moved in. Thunder and lightning, high winds blowing over all the cafe umbrellas. We stood on our balcony for a long time watching Parisianers run for cover as a river of storm water charted a path down the street below.
We leave early tomorrow to fly to Athens for our next stop. I’m really gonna miss the food here, and I’m not a big foodie either. How many more croissants can I find before 8am tomorrow?