Thursday - Paris - Louvre et Champs Elysées!

So, here is the rest of my trip… sorry it’s almost a week later but I had a ton of work to do when I got back and this is the first time I’ve had to finish my notes and work on getting my pictures online!

So, this morning I had aimed to get up around 9 am to be out an about by 10. Benjamin had to get up around 7 for a meeting he had so I figured that there shouldn’t be any issue. Well I ended up waking up when Benjamin got up and was getting ready, so I got up and lazily got ready myself. I had gotten online and was trying to get the wireless internet he has working but for some reason it wouldn’t. After Benjamin had left, he said I could use his laptop if I would need to – so I got on there to see if I could find the key for his network. Well… after that didn’t work – I realized that he had an Ethernet cable hooked up to his internet! So, I plugged in and did some stuff online and checked emails.

By 10 am, I was out and about. I stopped at the small grocery store before getting on the metro and picked up a large bottle of water and a sandwich for lunch – to save me some money! Then, I hopped on the metro and headed towards the Louvre! I figured I’d see things around the huge Louvre museum and then in early afternoon, get another bike and bike through the Jardin de Tuileries, up to the Place de la Concorde, and up the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triumph.

When I got to the Louvre, I was already underground with the metro and ended up going into the carousel underneath the pyramids where there are shops. There, I walked in and had a great view of the upside down glass pyramid! But as there was much more to see at the Louvre, I headed through security, and into the main lobby under the huge glass pyramid in the middle. Because I had the museum pass, I didn’t have to wait in any lines at all, so I just picked up the map of the museum and was able to go where I wanted. Of course there were certain things I had wanted to see in the Louvre, but I glanced at the map and tried to figure out the best way to see all that I wanted to see and not waste too much time getting to places. As the Louvre is divided into three sections, I first headed into the Denon wing.

There, I started with Italian sculptures – which were incredible! Some of them were by famous sculptors like Michelangelo. Though, as there are three levels in the Denon wing, I stopped going through the sculptures and started working my way through the Pre Classical Greece exhibit. I worked my way through those, seeing some amazing works, and ended up on the second floor where I was back into sculptures again. But before I headed off in that direction, I stopped in room 7 of the Denon wing and saw the beauty of Aphrodite, also known as Venus de Milo. She was all alone in the work as far as artwork goes (they are moving that whole area around), her ancient armless statuesque body amongst a swarm of Japanese tourists taking pictures with the flash on – which is a huge no-no in any museum, let alone the Louvre! But after admiring her for a bit, I decided that she’s been standing there for so long, I could slip out without saying goodbye! Haha!

Before I headed back to the second floor’s room of Italian statues, I stopped and browsed through the Greek works in the area – but mostly was admiring the ceilings in the rooms themselves. To think that most of the Louvre was the private royal residences, it’s just amazing how much room they had and how ornate each room was. It seemed like each room was the equivalent of the Sistine chapel! But I moved on to the Italian Sculptures again and in there, discovered some amazing works of art. Some of these works included the “Borghese Gladiator,” “Pysche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss” by Antonio Canova, and lastly “The Dying Slave” and “The Rebellious Slave” by Michelangelo.

At the end of this gallery, there is a huge multi-leveled staircase that I took upstairs into the third floor which is all the paintings. So I would have the least amount of backtracking, I started with the two large portrait galleries – and they definitely were large! This was an amazing corridor of long rooms packed full of grand paintings. It’s hard to think of someone taking up to three years to paint them! This gallery was cool because there were even some paintings that I recognized either from classes in school or just in general. For example, the large portrait galleries included “The Coronation of Napoleon I” which is the second largest painting in the Louvre, “The Raft of Medusa,” “The 28^th of July 1830: Liberty Guiding the People” which is a famous painting of Eugène Delacroix, plus so many others that I found either amazing to look at or just impressive to look.

After glancing through these galleries, in which there was an occasional artist painting a replica of one of these great masterpieces, I made my way through the Old Italian paintings into the Grand Gallery itself – which was incredibly long! It was hard to see the end of it. This of course was full of many important paintings including DaVinci’s “The Virgin on the Rocks” and so many more that I could list forever. This of course was a very busy gallery as most people coming to the Louvre are coming to this gallery because of all the masterpieces in there. I had decided to work my way down the one side and come back up the other. About halfway down, was the entrance to the room number 7 which is where I discovered La Jaconde by DaVinci. This is of course Mona Lisa herself! The room however was packed as hell! And what was disappointing was the fact that although she is behind glass, and there’s a wooden railing around it, the crowds were kept back by queue lines with those rail thingies. And of course, on the wall facing Mona Lisa is the largest painting in the Louvre – The Wedding Feast at Cana.

After dealing with that heard of the masses, I headed back into the Grand Gallery to finish looking at the paintings. One my way back, however, I was looking at DaVinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks when I thought the girl next to me looked rather familiar. Well, anyways, she turned around and lo and behold – it’s Rachel Edelstein! She’s from Juaniata College in Eastern PA but studying this year here in Lille at the same school, and even some of the same classes as me! It ended up that her parents were visiting and they had come down so they could catch their flight back. It was amazing how in the middle of Paris, one of the busiest tourist places in the world… and in the Louvre where there are so many people… I met someone I knew!

Anyways, after basic introductions, they invited me to hang out with them for the day and they’d get us both dinner (both Rachel and I as the poor college students!). So I joined them in looking around. I ended up seeing a lot of the same things again but they had gotten the audio guides that give information on certain paintings all throughout the museum – so we shared them and learned some interesting things about some of the paintings. I had opted not to get it because I didn’t see there would be much value in it. Her parents were older, but incredibly nice as well and we talked about a lot of things as they live in Pennsylvania as well. Since her dad has diabetes, he needed to get some lunch after a while – so we stopped at the small café at the one end of the large painting galleries. Of course, they paid for both Rachel and I. I was only hungry for a tuna sandwich though her mom insisted that we both get something else, perhaps dessert as she figured we were being polite. They ended up getting dessert as well – which was delicious!

From there, there were different places that we had wanted to see, but all of us were interested in the medieval part of the Louvre, so after walking back through the Italian Sculpture Gallery, we headed down to the medieval part. We stopped and her mom got a picture of Rachel and me in front of this huge sphinx that led to the entrance of the Egyptian area. This area was really cool as it is the foundation of the original fortress on the grounds. Believe it or not, it wasn’t discovered until the 80’s when they were making the grounds better as a museum and also when they built the glass pyramids! It was hidden in the central area under the ground – so it was cool to walk alongside the old medieval walls. However, the actually History of the Louvre exhibit is only open on the weekends so we were a bit disappointed in that. From there, we only had about 45 minutes before the museum closed so we actually decided to split up as Rachel had wanted to see the Islamic exhibit and I was keen on seeing the Egyptian exhibit. We had planned to meet up at the point they both met, so we headed off in our ways.

In order to plan it right to end up at the meeting spot and see all the Egyptian stuff, I actually started back with the ancient Greek area and worked from there through the Egyptian stuff. It was really cool, though I was limited on time. One of the cool things that were there though was the sarcophagus of Ramses III – which was huge! There were many coffins as well; it became hard to keep track of them!

I had gotten about halfway through the Egyptian areas, when Rachel called me. It ended up that the Islamic exhibit was closed and as they were going over to the Eiffel Tower afterwards (I had been there yesterday) she was calling me to wish me a good trip and everything. Their plans for the rest of the weekend differed from mine so I wished them a good trip as well and thanked her parents again for the meal and a good afternoon. As I was not in a rush to meet them, I slowed down a little bit but still had to remember that the Louvre was closing soon! So I say the last few things, and headed out towards the main entrance. After stopping at the gift shop and getting a museum guide as well as some reproduction postcards, I left through the main glass pyramid itself as I came in another way.

Even though it was later in the day than I had planned, I kept with my plan and started heading to the Jardin de Tuileries… only I couldn’t find a bike station! So I just started walking along through the park which was gorgeous like all the other parks here in France. Though it was quite a long walk, even just to the Place de la Concorde! I had been keeping track of the time, and realized that I could still get to the Orangerie before it closed, which is the new building that houses Monet’s water lilies paintings. And actually, the only reason I was allowed in was because I had the Museum Pass – and I was only given 10 minutes, but it was worth it! The paintings were astounding! The two sets are completely 360 degrees separated into four panels and each is shown in a separate oval room. There was almost no one there, so I was able to get great pictures of them, and admire the work up close. However, I didn’t have much time, so that didn’t take too long.

Since I was right there, I walked across the traffic to the center of the Place de la Concorde, which is a huge area. It now is home to two huge fountains and one of the three Cleopatra’s Needles – this one commemorating Ramesses II. Also, up the lane I was able to see the very Greek façade of the Madeline church. Looking back towards the Seine, I looked over the bridge and saw the back side of the Hôtel des Invalides. However, I kept on my walk as I still had a long ways to go before I got to the Arc!

At this point, the Champs Elysées is mostly through a park, with a couple theaters inside it and smaller food places. The next major area I reached as the Grand Palace and the Petit Palace, which were impressive to see! The roof of the Grand Palace is all metal and glass. I was curious to go inside but it looked like there was some exhibit going on that I’d have to pay to get into or something… not sure, but I passed up on that and kept on walking.

I then got to a round about which had nothing much in it, but while I was walking around it – I had noticed that the store on the corner of one of the roads was the Gucci store, and further on down I saw other names of fashion. While I didn’t realize this at the time (and would’ve walked down the street if I had!) was that this was the Avenue Montaigne which is where the huge fashion names have their stores and offices. But as I didn’t know this, I kept on going!

By this point I was in the shopping part of the Champs Elysées and there were a lot of upper end restaurants and stores. I stopped in the Disney store, just for laughs which was rather cool! I then got a sandwhich at one of the small patisseries on the street when I noticed up the way was the Louis Vitton store. So I headed up there, noted passing the Lido theater as well… but I had gotten to the store just after it had closed – bummer! Not like I could afford anything in there anyways!

So, eating my sandwich, I kept on walking up the street and passed a bunch of stores till I got to the Arc de Triumph. I had planned on going underneath the roundabout around the Arc de Triumph but after I had taken pictures, I walked underneath and got there only to find that it was closed due to a civil union strike! So I got pictures underneath it and around it without traffic in my way! The French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is right there under the Arc so it was interesting to see that. But as there was not much to do there with it being closed, I headed back under and figured that I should get going back. But since it was getting dark, I figured I’d wait till the lights came on to get some pictures – so I did some souvenir shopping! Soon after I got done comparing and shopping around, the lights were on – so I took some pictures. I also noticed that the Cartier store was right there but didn’t get real good pictures of it as it was closed and had gates over the windows.

From there, I got on the metro and made my way back – but decided to stop at Notre Dame to get pictures of her at night with all her lights on. So I got out, and walked over to her in her splendor – she’s just as impressive by night as she is by day! After getting a bunch of pictures, I walked across the Seine to get more pictures of her from different angles and ended up coming back on another bridge. Then, I headed back to the metro stop and headed back to Benjamin’s.

Once back there, I just relaxed, and as I was really tired – jotted some notes down for this blog, checked my email and talked with a few friends for a bit before crashing!