Paris, day ten….
February 23rd, 2017 kennyrWe jumped the shark yesterday. All of us are ready to go home and having a hard time forcing ourselves todo anything except lay in the hotel room. Yesterday we set aside for the Louvre, and we did a pretty good job of getting up and walking over by 10:30am. (It doesn’t actually open until 10am) But once we got to the entrance, we realized the line for the people without tickets was huge. As Rosie and I tried to figure out how to buy them online, we stood in line. So you can buy tickets online, but you have to physically print them. So we stood in line for about an hour to get into the door.
By the way, I didn’t know this until yesterday, but the big glass Pyramid at the Louvre is actually surrounded by three smaller glass pyramids.
As you can see, the line was pretty crazy to get in the door. We found out once we got to the front, it was really just waiting for security. Everybody was having their bags searched (through x-ray machine) and then you personally walk through a metal detector. Later in the day we saw a bunch of soldiers in their full kits and rifles out in one of the main court yards.
After got inside and bought tickets, we took off in a random direction. We spent about 45 minutes walking around what I will call the Roman/Greek statue section. Rosie and Isaac were really into this, I just sort of followed along. Isaac had done a paper for school on Greek gods, so he really enjoyed see them. I managed to download the Louvre app for my phone and started trying to figure out where different things were located. (The Louvre has free WiFi, which was nice, since it allowed the App to track you)
After getting through one part of the Roman/Greek statue section, we doubled back to the main courtyard and got lunch. Food has been pretty tough on me since we got to Paris, about two out of three meals has got me sick. We had Pho for dinner last night, which I was Ok with, but it got both Rosie and Isaac sick.
Anyhow, after lunch we decided to split up. We really wanted to see different things. I told Rosie and Isaac about the spnix, which they took off to see and I tried to find the Italian artist section.
Here is my suggestion for anybody planning on visiting the Louvre, spend some time planning out your visit ahead of time. The first problem is the place is just huge, I sort of doubt you could physically walk the entire thing in a day. The second problem is the layout is super confusing. There are actually five levels, three of them underground, but you can’t get between levels at all junctions. Additionally it is designed so you can get from one major section to another, without going back to the common center court yard. It took me about an hour to figure out the second point. I knew were I wanted to go, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there. I saw a bunch of amazing things and eventually even found the Mona Lisa, but I was just ready to head back to the hotel after three hours. I think Rosie and Isaac did a better job seeing things.
I found a room full of medial weapons and this full suit of armor. I sort of wish I had some reference for size, but I think Isaac might have been to tall to wear it.
So the glass Pyramid isn’t technically a pyramid, since there is a mirror image below it. Making it really a glass diamond. Lots of people were taking selfie’s, but lining things up so it looked like they were holding the diamond on their hand.
I actually thought the view out was pretty amazing. This is one of the few outside pictures that I didn’t lighten up. You can see just how ‘grey’ it was outside. The entire week has been like that, next time we will have to come in the spring time.
Here is its, the most famous painting in the world. This picture is cropped and taken about 20 feet back. The mass of people in front of the line was crazy and the line is a good 10 feet from the actual painting.
Several random comments. I was surprised by how big it was, I expected it to be much smaller. The other really surprising thing is this was the most security of any painting / exhibit. You could touch all of the statues and most stuff didn’t have any glass over the paintings. The other interesting thing, nobody was touching/climbing over ropes to get closer. People were being respectful. I felt horrible, because I doubt it would be that way at home.
This is just a random stair way I came across. I really liked the look and it was one of those rare instances where there wasn’t a ton of people around. It also gives you a good view of the architecture. Most of the stairs and hallways were stone/marble.
At one point when I got lost, I came across this section which had full rooms from old French palaces. There was nothing but a low rope separating you from the exhibit.
I might have mentioned that I was getting tired. This is another staircase that looked cool to me. While there were a lot of people in some sections of the museum, there were others that were nearly empty. This was one of the empty ones. I have to wonder if it is was because people weren’t as interested or they couldn’t find them.Eventually I met back up with Rosie and Isaac. They were late, because they were making a run to see the Mona Lisa before leaving. It was actually pretty easy to get to it, once you realized which of the half dozen ‘entrances’ to take.
As we headed out of the Louvre, we came across a Apple Store. I might have known there was one here, but had forgotten. It was a pretty good size store to, I guess the Louvre is part shopping mall now. There were dozens of stores you had to walk past to get out.
I also found a set of Amazon lockers, I guess people may want to have their deliveries shipped to the Louvre to pick up on the way home.
We honestly didn’t do much else the rest of the day. We came back to the hotel and Rosie took a nap, while Isaac read. I had to run back to the SFR store and top up my iPhone SIM. It seems that I had burn through 5Gb’s of data on my phone since Monday. I was a little shocked by this, since I had used less than 3GB in London and we were there seven days. While I was waiting to puchase the top up, I poked around and discovered what happen. I had told my phone to update a bunch of Apps on Tuesday. I used 3GB alone on that little transaction. I have been doing EVERYTHING via my phone since getting to London, including turning it into a hotspot for my iPad and Kindle. The hotel WiFi doesn’t work very well, so it was easier to just use the cell. (And faster) Oh well. It was only 30 EUR to buy another 8GB (cheaper than buy 2GB). So now I am trying to burn through 8GB before going home tomorrow. I may download a movie to my phone via Amazon Prime or something.