The Louvre

Oct. 26th. Sunday — Dimanche

First things first, Chaize for caffeine, and then our familiar jaunt down the Rue de la Roquette to the Place de Bastille (this is basically a huge roundabout with a tall column in the middle commemorating three days in July of 1830 which removed one king and began the reign of another — kings, what can you do? ) and a right on a different boulevard which would take us to the Seine and eventually the Louvre for another small group tour.

You can see a method here of Kathy having booked small group tours and they do have their advantages.  At all of these big ticket item places you can just show up and stand in long lines and go in at some point, but the small group deals provide tickets and a lot less waiting.  Also, way more focus.

Along our route to the Louvre we passed along the outside of the Hotel De Ville — the city hall of Paris — and again, you can’t really take in the size and extravagant workmanship and effort that went into creating these functional monuments.  All along the walls are arrayed statues of once famous writers, artists, politicians, and what have you, whose names are just below their very detailed and accurate statues.  The front of the place is fairly difficult to take in as it is a hundred feet high or so and several hundred feet across.  Magnificent and detailed statuary, gorgeous and varied stonework characters and iconography.  Like a man-made mountain of meaning and statement of “Yeah, we’re the fucking French! Deal with it, Jefferson.  Sure, we’ll help you kick Britain’s ass.  Here have some francs and ships and we’ll let you have Lafayette and whatever.”

Right around the corner from another place just like it. Also, I think this is where they set up the guillotines.

Of course as time passed and the people rose up, they set up the guillotines right in front of the building, but the building remains as if to say,   “We might have endured some losses and shifting sentiments over time, but you will not get over here and not be impressed.  Plus, the food.”

Anyway, we made it to the meeting site at the Louvre where we were met by our pleasant Indian guide, “Mo” who set us up with ear buds and, talking a mile a minute in excellent English, took us for a two hour tour through the very crowded museum — think of the Smithsonian but with better decorative stone work — where we hit some of the highlights and got a nice primer for the Museum (Napoleon established it as the first public museum in the world) and some sense of how the places is laid out and works.  You could spend weeks visiting if you were not there just to take a selfie with the Mona Lisa which, according to Mo is what over 80% of the visitors to the Louvre do.  So much so, that as of next year, the Mona Lisa will have her own separate room and ticket.  Humans are idiots, in that regard.

One side of the Louvre. And it has many such sides.

Speaking of stupid things at the Louvre, Mo took us to the spot where the infamous heist happened and showed us pictures of what got stolen and gave us her opinion that it was an inside job based on how it all happened.  While the tour with her was moderately simple, that is, talking us through a couple of TV monitors’ stories, she was ensuring that we got the lay of the land as it were and also the story of the  place itself which included a path through the restored moat structure — walls of 12th century stone work.  She then took us on to ancient statuary, acquired and installed by that rascal Naploleon, which included one of a hermaphrodite laying in a bed, Athena, Zeus and the various mythological characters immodestly dressed to reveal enough genitalia to scandalize a small town, followed by the Venus De Milo, Winged Victory, several DaVinci paintings — which are bigger and better than his famed smiling lady — just before diving into the absurd Mona Lisa room which is a small glass covered painting hanging above a ridiculous throng of people taking selfies and pictures and filing out to assume they have seen it all now and can go find something to eat.  This was followed by the absolutely astonishing paintings by Jacque-Louis David commissioned largely by Napoleon and others of that era.  It is probably safe to say that David’s level of work and art does not exist in the current day.   You might compare it to the work of great filmmakers, but the devotion and artistry are relics of the past.  The famous painting he did for Napoleon’s coronation is at least 30’ X 18’ and was painted in two years.  Napoleon liked it so much he had him do another.  The first is at Versailles, the “copy” is at the Louvre.  Mind blowing.  At that point, Mo left us to our own devices.  We lingered for a few minutes as the Louvre shut down and we walked out into the night.

Our guide Mo called this a "spinx" thanks to her accent. So we called it Leon. You can kinda see that, right?

Our guide Mo, and everyone's favorite god Zeus. You don't have a choice. Otherwise he throws lightning. He's holding it right there, though it looks more like a footlong from Subway. So...

The restored 12th century moat. Guys had to put their "marks" on the rocks to prove they actually installed them to get paid. Gig work IS history.

You've see the pictures, you sort of know the history, here she is, straight out of the ground, Venus De Milo! (don't clap, she gets triggered)

A sense of the crowd which jostles inanely to get close to one of DaVinci's mid-level works. Probably a picture of his mum he carried around and is famous because it got stolen in 1911 (Took 2 years to discover it was gone) and, well, social media. There are much better DaVinci's just outside this room which no one really cares about. Except we discriminating art lovers and crowd haters.

When you see winged victory you know you are about done. That and some sense of how you are supposed to look at sculptures. Basically, carefully and from different angles.

A long stroll took us through the evening Tuileries Gardens and across the Alexandre Bridge, the sparkling Eiffel Tower off in the distance.  This took us past the Grand Palais, a beautiful glass domed structure from which a crowd was leaving a special event.  We had meandered off the Champs-Elysées there and found ourselves in an area vacant of people but filled with art galleries and fancy hotels.  A lovely gendarme pointed us to a Metro stop and we rode the jam packed car all the way back to our neighborhood.

Tired but starving, having eaten only a croissant, we stumbled into a restaurant called L’Office and ordered up two specials of cordon bleu and a bottle of wine and bracketed that with a goat cheese entrèe and a lava cake and 50 more cl’s of bordeaux.  IYKYK.  Damn good dinner served up by our winsome waiter named Guillaume whose father is a globe trotting journaliste currently working in South Africa.  Guillaume wants to open a restaurant, but not in France as it is too difficult.

That conversation and ample meal allowed us to stumble up our four flights of stairs and the one remaining flight that gets us in bed.