La Musée du Louvre

Today we started a little slower, but made up for it with a full afternoon and evening. We ate a late and large breakfast, then headed over to the Louvre. We are planning to go often, so we bought an annual pass. This took a little while, but it will be worth it in the end. We spent most of our time reconnoitering so that we can take our family on a reasonably efficient tour when they get here next week. For those of you who haven't been there, the Louvre may be the world's greatest art collection in the world's worst museum. It was originally a palace, and is full of intersecting hallways, dead ends, hidden passageways, and multitudinous stairs. Add teaming hordes of tour bus and cruise ship passengers intent on getting their photo taken with the Mona Lisa, and you have something less like a temple of wisdom and more like the Whole Enchilada Fiesta.

The secret of the Louvre, though, is that most people plan on a two or three hour trip to the Louvre, run in, find the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo, and run out. Hardly anyone gets up to the third level with the 18th and 19th century French paintings and the Flemish and Dutch masters, and almost no one goes near most of the ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sculpture. Even in the Grand Gallery with great Italian works most of the crowds are clustered around two or three famous paintings leaving you alone, at least for a moment or two, with the lesser-known works. In your hurry to get to Leonardo, for instance, don't miss Botticelli, Fra Angelico, and Cimabue on the way in. They're every bit as lovely as Mona, and they're not buried under eight inches of glass. I didn't take any photos. I refer you to the excellent collection of artworks available on the Internet.

After the Louvre we bought a basket of oysters and shrimp at a little shop on our street and took them to our apartment and ate them. This evening we went out for a walk over on the Right Bank. Here are a few pictures: the Louvre Pyramid

Sunset over the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel (not the more famous Arc de Triomphe on the Champs Elysée)












and twilight at the Opéra Garnier, with the craziest traffic I have seen in Paris. Apparently everybody wants to go to the Opera!