Thursday, May 28: Louvre
Not to be just totally obvious, but how could I possibly only have 2 days left in France? For one thing, I still have more than half a journal to fill up! Guess I’ll just have to come back (take note: I’m thinking 2013 for those who may want to join)…
I’m starting to wear my clothes pretty thin… They’ll be happy to be in a less aggressive rotation when I get back home. In the meantime, I’m actually really sort of out of shirts to wear and as I only have 2 days left, going to a Laundromat seems silly. So I went shopping. (Yeah, I’m serious. I know…)
Made my final trip back to the massive mall that is Les Halles and back to my new favorite store on the planet, New Look (and they have plenty of bad stuff, too, but they have lots of cute things). I didn’t find a shirt there.. *cough* ok, I got shoes. Ok, so it was 5 pairs. I know! I know… 5 pairs of shoes on top of the 2 pairs I’ve bought already in France and the 4 pairs I brought with me. But, but… I got new sneakers, a pair of sporty flats, a pair of flat brown sandals (all of which I needed) and 2 very fun shoes I could not get in the States. There. Whew… first step is admission, moving out of denial. Besides, I’ve been waiting to buy stuff for the last week so I don’t have to haul it everywhere for 4 weeks. I swear I’ve thought this through. I’m only justifying it to whomever reads this blog because as I read, even I can’t help cracking up at myself. Yeesh.
Ok, but then I found a couple of cute shirts at a place called La City that were versatile and Buy 2, get 1 for a Euro. Great deal, right? (I swear I’m done shopping. Really, I promise.)
I had a healthy lunch (pic) and came back to drop off bags at the hotel room. I switched into my new sneakers and headed off for the Louvre.
Man, that place is big. You can’t stand in any one place from the inside or the outside and see the whole thing. Nowhere. It’s so big it eclipses itself! I got my ticket from the nice lady at the counter who must just luuuuv her job (*sarcasm, sarcasm*) and headed off to the popular ground floor level of the Denon Wing to see Greek and Italian sculpture (pics galore – sorry for the blurry but no flash allowed), then back through French and Italian Renaissance paintings. I stopped through Charlesmagne’s special hallway o’ extravagance before heading to the much less crowded Sully wing for Prehistoric Greek/Etruscan hallways, followed by the almost empty Ancient Egyptian and Oriental halls. Got a couple good shots of hieroglyphics… Allise, if you’re reading, please translate! I don’t remember how to read them at all… (pics of all are on Flickr).
There are plenty of people in the popular wings, to be sure, but not really as bad as I’d prepared myself for. I wasn’t really bothered by them and it only smelled a little like sweaty humans. (ha) The big thing I did notice was that people don’t follow the rules. No flash (pish), no eating in the museum (who brings lunch to the Louvre??), no loud talking (bwahahaha, yeah right). Apparently all just suggestions. I did get to see a wide variety of tour guides, each with a different language and a different brightly-colored item held up in the air for the group to be able to see/follow. Mostly umbrellas, but I did see a collapsed/folded up baby carriage for one group. I thought that was an interesting choice as her arm is sure to get tired after about 20 minutes of holding that thing up.
There were student groups, probably with an art class, running around sort of scavenger hunt style trying to fill out a worksheet. That was kind of fun to watch. Their heads were in a lot of my pictures, but they were mostly respectful so they didn’t get too annoying.
Gray day spent at the Louvre was a good choice and I’m glad I got back to it. I haven’t been since my first trip to Paris which has been a distinctly long time, so it was good to not only see the standard hallways of well known pieces, but also to get a little lost in the lesser known hallways and crypts and see the stuff not many tourists get to.
Tomorrow (Friday), I’ll be changing hotels and I’m not sure when/if I’ll get to blog about my final day, but be assured it will be here eventually! See you all (most of my readers are KC, right?) soon ish! The week of my bday I’ll have various activities for fun that you all probably already know about. First plan up: Jazz Jam Session at the Phoenix (8th & Central) on Tuesday, June 9th.
Louvre Pics on Flickr...
I’m starting to wear my clothes pretty thin… They’ll be happy to be in a less aggressive rotation when I get back home. In the meantime, I’m actually really sort of out of shirts to wear and as I only have 2 days left, going to a Laundromat seems silly. So I went shopping. (Yeah, I’m serious. I know…)
Made my final trip back to the massive mall that is Les Halles and back to my new favorite store on the planet, New Look (and they have plenty of bad stuff, too, but they have lots of cute things). I didn’t find a shirt there.. *cough* ok, I got shoes. Ok, so it was 5 pairs. I know! I know… 5 pairs of shoes on top of the 2 pairs I’ve bought already in France and the 4 pairs I brought with me. But, but… I got new sneakers, a pair of sporty flats, a pair of flat brown sandals (all of which I needed) and 2 very fun shoes I could not get in the States. There. Whew… first step is admission, moving out of denial. Besides, I’ve been waiting to buy stuff for the last week so I don’t have to haul it everywhere for 4 weeks. I swear I’ve thought this through. I’m only justifying it to whomever reads this blog because as I read, even I can’t help cracking up at myself. Yeesh.
Ok, but then I found a couple of cute shirts at a place called La City that were versatile and Buy 2, get 1 for a Euro. Great deal, right? (I swear I’m done shopping. Really, I promise.)
I had a healthy lunch (pic) and came back to drop off bags at the hotel room. I switched into my new sneakers and headed off for the Louvre.
Man, that place is big. You can’t stand in any one place from the inside or the outside and see the whole thing. Nowhere. It’s so big it eclipses itself! I got my ticket from the nice lady at the counter who must just luuuuv her job (*sarcasm, sarcasm*) and headed off to the popular ground floor level of the Denon Wing to see Greek and Italian sculpture (pics galore – sorry for the blurry but no flash allowed), then back through French and Italian Renaissance paintings. I stopped through Charlesmagne’s special hallway o’ extravagance before heading to the much less crowded Sully wing for Prehistoric Greek/Etruscan hallways, followed by the almost empty Ancient Egyptian and Oriental halls. Got a couple good shots of hieroglyphics… Allise, if you’re reading, please translate! I don’t remember how to read them at all… (pics of all are on Flickr).
There are plenty of people in the popular wings, to be sure, but not really as bad as I’d prepared myself for. I wasn’t really bothered by them and it only smelled a little like sweaty humans. (ha) The big thing I did notice was that people don’t follow the rules. No flash (pish), no eating in the museum (who brings lunch to the Louvre??), no loud talking (bwahahaha, yeah right). Apparently all just suggestions. I did get to see a wide variety of tour guides, each with a different language and a different brightly-colored item held up in the air for the group to be able to see/follow. Mostly umbrellas, but I did see a collapsed/folded up baby carriage for one group. I thought that was an interesting choice as her arm is sure to get tired after about 20 minutes of holding that thing up.
There were student groups, probably with an art class, running around sort of scavenger hunt style trying to fill out a worksheet. That was kind of fun to watch. Their heads were in a lot of my pictures, but they were mostly respectful so they didn’t get too annoying.
Gray day spent at the Louvre was a good choice and I’m glad I got back to it. I haven’t been since my first trip to Paris which has been a distinctly long time, so it was good to not only see the standard hallways of well known pieces, but also to get a little lost in the lesser known hallways and crypts and see the stuff not many tourists get to.
Tomorrow (Friday), I’ll be changing hotels and I’m not sure when/if I’ll get to blog about my final day, but be assured it will be here eventually! See you all (most of my readers are KC, right?) soon ish!
Louvre Pics on Flickr...
posted by Jess at 9:08 AM
3 Comments:
Hey baby! Just scanned all blogs and looked at all pics on Flickr to get caught up on your adventures. It looks wonderful and you look beauticious (Sophia's new word). I love the Mango (I think) dress with the purple boots; fabo. My favorite line from you was: )"Anne forgot her cell phone at home and we walked around the train station 3 times, waited for 10 additional minutes and never saw him. She finally used a payphone (and luckily remembered the number) and called his cell to find out that he had gone to a friend’s house instead of waiting… K..." The "K..." like hmmm, why didn't you wait a-hole? hahaha very funny. You should have had 2 blogs, one G rated and one X rated so we could hear juicy stuff about the boys there. All in good time. I think I gained 20 pounds reading about all the food (wait that's really happened). Man, I'd be so stopped up eating all that cheese but how can you NOT, right? It's so delicious. XO, Toni
hahaha, Toni, you kill me. No worries, you will get the unabridged/unedited version of France in good time when I get back! xoxo
(btw: that's exactly what the "K" meant) :-D
On vous connait maintenant comme "La Dame aux Chaussures"!
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