Day 20 - Sep 20, 2009 Last updated: 10/17/09 10:00am PT
Day vingt, More Paris, Notre Dame, The Louvre.
Today we took the metro to Notre Dame, walked around the island that it is on, took the metro back to the hotel to access some wifi from a neighboring hotel so we could check in for the flight home, ate lunch, then walked to the Louvre. The Louvre is huge. You could come here every day for a year and not see everything (I mean seriously look at and appreciate each painting, not just walk past). And there are more than just paintings here. There are sculptures and other historical artifacts. Our goal was just to see some paintings and a few statues.
Notre Dame was built beginning in 1163 and completed around 1345. It took a beating during the French Revolution in 1790, and has since been restored.
One of the few original Metro entrance from the early 1900’s.
Pont Alexandre III is a bridge completed in 1900 and named after a Russian Tsar
The Luxor Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, was originally in front of the Luxor Temple in Egypt, and is about 3300 years old. It was moved to Paris in 1833. You can see the Arc de Triomphe in the distance in the last picture.
The things that pass for art! This fountain was surrounded by these alien sculptures.
The Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel (a much smaller Arc de Triomphe). The Louvre’s pyramid is where you are supposed to enter the museum, but the line is too long. There’s another way in off Rue de Rivoli, which is north of the Richelieu wing. You enter through a shopping area and buy tickets at a machine, then go through security. We got in so fast, we thought we did something illegal. Thanks to Rick Steves for that tip.
Bet you didn’t know Venus de Milo was a plumber. Venus is a Greek statue from about 100 BC.
This headless winged statue is Winged Victory of Samothrace. It is another Greek statue, this one from around 200 BC, and is of the goddess Nike.
Don’t forget to look up. Some of the ceilings were amazing.
Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci, 1506. There were other paintings in the room, I think. You can’t get too close to Mona and it is behind glass because people don’t know how to behave.
Other famous paintings. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what they are.
Us in a mirror.
The underside of the pyramid.
During our stay in France we ate raclette and fondue (in the Alps), brioche, baguette sandwiches, gardianne de taureau (bull stew), really bad and fatty steaks drowning in sauce and olive oil, escargot, mussels, crepes, and filet mignon (imagine my surprise when I discovered it was pork – note to self: need to learn to read French better)