Paris – Louvre and Love Locks

This was how our morning started:

The little tin roof you can see across the other side of the park is where the drummers were the other day. Magnificient!

Mmm French breakfast

It only got better from there. We headed out to the Louvre and you’ll be pleased to hear we dressed for the weather today! .. although we had to take all of our warm clothes off as soon as we got inside the museum of course so it wasn’t a complete win.

Adam and baba train pic

I had read up about the Louvre a bit before we went and discovered that it was free in winter on the first Sunday of each month. Guess what today was? This particular website also strongly suggested not to go on the free days because of the insane queues outside and crowds inside, but I think we have already firmly established that we are tourists first and foremost on this trip so queues and crowds are our natural habitat. There reason I loved that website so much, however, was that the writer had explained that there is a separate entrance for the disabled – including children in pushchairs. When we arrived to the museum it was already mid afternoon but still there was a slowly-moving line stretching all the way around the square. We decided it would be worth a try to see if we could enter a little faster and the only possible place to do this was right at the front door so we made a beeline for it. We were mostly testing the waters, incredulous that a pushchair could be the magic key to skipping the queue, but the guy boredly waved us all through a side gate and then we were in just like that!

We had already decided number one was to see the Mona Lisa but it took about half an hour to find her because of my confusion with the map. I thought the open spaces were walls and the walls were passages which made the going very difficult and meant we encountered multiple dead-end lifts and unexpected flights of stairs (pushchair fail) before finally finding ourselves in the right section. We traipsed passed the statues, merely glanced at the 14^th Century Italian art and sinfully ignored the frescoes until eventually turning one final corner and then beholding Mona herself in all her glory.

Fellow tourist’s phones and all.

I heard that the woman in the painting apparently was so unhappy with the depiction that she refused to pay Leonardo da Vinci for his work and I must say I don’t really see what all the fuss is about either. I don’t think that the artwork is particularly beautiful or that it should be worth gazillions of dollars but I’m no fancy art person so what do I know.

Look there’s the lady!

Fun fact: Did you know the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre once and wasn’t discovered missing for more than 24 hours? Everyone thought it had been moved for cleaning. It was missing for more than two years until finally an Italian guy tried to sell it to an art dealer. He claimed to have nicked the artwork on a whim when he saw it unattended and intended to return it to Italy, where he believed it belonged.

Hisham’s moment in the spotlight

The Louvre is massive. Like huge huge. Like you could easily spend a week in there and still be seeing and learning new things. I could anyway. We consulted the map which I had by now figured out and decided to head to the Islamic Art exhibit next. I love museums and history and any kind of informational displays and I take great delight in reading every single word on the signs that accompany each exhibit. The Louvre is in France, obviously, but what hadn’t been obvious to me was that the signs were also in French. Duh. So I couldn’t read them!* This meant I didn’t enjoy this exhibition so much because it was mostly just looking at stuff I had no clue about, but we all had a bit of fun trying to read the old Arabic signs and carvings and exploring their history a little.

 * Right at the end of our time there when everybody else was ready to move on, I discovered that there was a summary of each case of exhibits in English. Oh how great my longing was to stay in that room for hours after this revelation!

This was a piece from when they started using marble in their artwork. I wouldn’t mind having one of these incredibly intricate pieces sitting around to fill with trinkets.

And imagine having this to use as a feather duster! I wonder if it was intended for actual use or just as decoration. Either way that’d be pretty awesome too. I hope but highly doubt that the peacock died of natural causes.

Adam discovered some cool seats to play under

After the Arab History exhibition the others were tired and wanting a rest but I was filled with renewed excitement, having just discovered the English signs, so they agreed to wait an hour while I explored a little more of the museum. I decided to go back to where we had begun and properly explore the statues and frescoes and Italian art.

I started at the Borghese Gladiator,

worked my way along the sarcophagi, ascended the steps to the glory of the Winged Victory of Samothrace,

and then immersed myself in the frescoes for a while. There are so many beautiful artworks that inspire the heart to prayer but I usually find the simplest to be the most engaging, like this one.

I should definitely have taken more note of who the artists were and what these were called.

I really enjoyed being able to take my time and read whatever I wanted about the things I saw and am slowly learning that I would much rather see a few things properly than rush through everything and remember nothing.

Next it was on to the Italian art throughout history. A lot of it was theological in nature and they had everything from the beheading of John the Baptist to Mary feeding the (not so) baby Jesus.

I don’t think I would ever think to draw something so gruesome as a beheading but there were actually quite a few pictures like this on display. Definitely not my cup of tea.

Surprisingly though I quite liked this one. It’s of the four seasons and I was struck how unusual it is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before.

And then it was time to head out on our merry way. 

We were keen to try and find at least one lock bridge and I had read that there was one near the Louvre so we headed out to the river and wandered around a bit. Not long afterwards, we finally found one! This had been one of our missions the whole time we were in Paris and we were due to leave the next morning so we were quite elated to be there at last.

After waiting ten long cold minutes for some French girls to pose for a hundred photos we too posed, posed and posed some more. Oh and we put a lock on and threw a (tiny) key into the river as well. It was pretty cool actually. We made mental notes of where our lock is but I don’t think we’ll ever find it again because there are just so many locks there all jumbled together and layering over each other.

Paris: complete. Well, almost. We still had to navigate through the city in our hire car the next morning..