A Busy Monday

Today started slow, we both slept in and were a bit slow to get going once we were up. But eventually we did get going and got ourselves in gear. Our plan for today was to try to see the Louvre. This is a huge task for any one day because due to the scale of the Louvre collection it is said that if you were to spend 30 seconds on every piece there it would take you 3 24-hour days to see everything in the museum. We left our place sometime after noon, I grabbed a sandwich on our way to the Metro station cause I was peckish. We retroactively estimate our arrival at the Louvre at around 1:30. Fortunately, since it was winter and relatively early in the day it was not very crowded when we got there and we got in in minutes, rather then the notorious hours that it can take in the summer.

We got in and explored. We first visited the Ancient Egyptian collection, on Pat’s insistence, and it was amazing. Where I had previously read and seen pictures of Egyptian work and may have even seen some of it at the ROM seeing it at the Louvre was different. They have a giant collection, which ranges from giant pillars and sphinxes to tiny ornate sculptures. The tiny interested me more then the large because of the detail and the skill involved in creating the peices. The Egyptians were really masterful in their decorations and pieces were incrusted with coloured stones. It was a real eye opener.

After about an hour or so in the Egyptian collection we decided to hit the caf. Pat got a baguette sandwich and a coke and I grabbed a fruit salad and a coke. After our meal pat got a red bull to fuel his half of our adventure and we headed back into the collections.

My memory of the next few hours is a bit scattered but as I recall we headed first to the Italian paintings and to see the Mona Lisa, passing on our way through some sculpture.

We ended up seeing a tonne of paintings and sculptures from all over Europe. We saw the Venus de Milo which was pretty cool.

 We also saw the living quarters of Napoleon III, though whether they were where he actually lived or a mock up using his things I am unsure. The Louvre uses English tactfully, signs like “do not touch” are sure to have an English translation but English in the description of an artifact is a rarity. We saw ancient Mesopotamian works too but my favorite of all was the collection of Islamic art.

If, god willing, I can get a website to make slideshows that I can add to the end of post for days where I have excessive pictures then you will see that I have a disproportionate amount of pictures from the Islamic collection.

Sadly we almost didn’t see the Islamic art collection as it was the last collection we saw after we had wandered through most of the rest of the museum. The Islamic art is really cool because it has a lot to do with patterns and geometry. I find this really interesting and I remember that when I was left to my own devices in art class I used to make geometric style art so in its own way Islamic art resonates with me.

We left the Louvre around 5:30 confident they would be booting us any minute and headed west through the park to the Arc de Triomphe via the Champs-Élysées. It was really pretty and we got some really nice pictures of the Eiffel Tower as the sun set beside it.

After seeing the Arc we were right hungry and headed out in search of a place to eat. We ended up at a place called the Indiana café near by which was pretty good.

After dinner it was time we headed back to the hostel with a mission to find a place to sleep Tuesday night. Admittedly this was pretty last minute but fortunately it is winter and things are not as booked as they otherwise could have been. We ended up booking the St. Christopher’s Hostel Paris, an affiliate of the St. Christopher’s we stayed at in Amsterdam because it was relatively inexpensive and of good quality. With an additional 3 nights in Paris secured we settled down for some Impérial Rosé wine and QI.