Finally Museums

We've been holding out everywhere on buying tickets to museums because we wanted to wait for France but finally now we've done it! We started with the Louvre. Naturally we needed to spend the whole day there. So, we woke up early, packed snacks and lunch and lots of water and headed to the Louvre. We tried to get there a little before opening (at 9 am) but unfortunately public transportation was not on our side. We arrived around 9:20 and bee-lined it for the Mona Lisa. It's not that we only care about seeing the famous pieces, we just don't want then to be surrounded by a crowd 10 feet deep of people. We were still early enough that we got a front row view. It seemed kind of sad though, sitting behind so much glass with a barrier around it, alone on it's wall. I prefer walking down a hall in a museum and then you backtrack because you realize wait, that's Monet's water lilies. But alas.

After seeing the Mona Lisa we decided to go our separate ways and meet back for lunch, because with five miles of museum, how could we hope to stay together? Most of my favorite pieces were by lesser known artists on the second floor. I spent the morning doing a thorough tour of the second floor. There are less of the large format narrative paintings that I associate with the Louvre, but there were lots of nature and landscape paintings which are my cup of tea.

In general however, the artwork that fills the Louvre is not my favorite style. What makes the Museum worth doing every time is the grandness of it. All of the rooms are exquisite. You have Napoleon's apartments and the Apollo gallery, and then the fact that it is FIVE miles of art!

We met back for lunch and then split again at which point I focused my attention on the first floor. All very impressive but after our second meeting at 4pm we were both waning a little bit. We did the ground floor with it's Greek and Egyptian antiquities fairly quickly so we were out of the museum by about 5:00. But still, ladies and gentleman that amounts for a whopping 7.5 hours in the Louvre!

You'd think we'd be museum-ed out by then, but no! Our stamina! I spent the next afternoon at the Museé D'Orsay. This is much more my style. Of course there's the impressionist painting which it is known for, but I was also taken with the art on the first floor which is mostly naturalist and symbolist work. My favorite piece of the day was Dante et Virgile aux Enfers by William Bouguereau. From far away it looks like it may be lovers locked in an embrace but close up you can see one man in the depths of hell having the life sucked out of him. What made it so striking was the action that was evident. The man's body has been completely drained lifeless, except for his face which maintains its human color. Trapped in time, he remains with own drop if humanity left in his body. It's very striking. I could go on for pages about all of the work that was incredible, but I suppose one day, you will have to visit the museum yourself.

Alexis passed on the Museé D'Orsay preferring modern art over it and visited le Centre Pompidou. As I did not accompany her I can't tell you how it was but I think she liked it.

Cheers,
Liz

**Note from Alexis: Centre Pompidou was a great experience. I arrived near dark, and went up the series of escalators encased in tubes on the outside of the building to get a spectacular view of the city. The top floor explores modern art from the early 1900s-1940s, featuring artists like Picasso, Kandinsky, and Braque and styles such as cubism and dada. The next floor down had collections of photography, large scale and interactive works, and more paintings. A must see! Go inside the building even if you don't go to the museum.