After a short sleep of around 10 hours, we were up and out at 7am ready for a big day at the Louvre .
It’s another one of those, we’re in Paris, we should do <blank>, type of decisions. Seriously though, I wanted to see both the buildings and the contents. Neither really disappointed but the crowds are horrendous and apparently we were there on a quiet day.
All the usual stuff, statues, paintings, objects d’art. We shuffled past the Mona Lisa, saw Venus de Milo and a whole bunch of other stuff. I’m not going to bore you with a long description about any of the contents. You can bore yourself stupid by looking at the photos.
The guide (what a strange little lady), told us that there were 360,000 items in the Louvre collection, and if we tried to stop and look at each one for 30 seconds, we’d be in there for 100 days. I didn’t bother checking the maths, I thought the allotted 3 hours was probably going to be enough.
It was very interesting, no doubt. Seeing some of the masterpieces up close was also interesting. Though some of the masterpieces are, quite frankly, bloody rubbish. The French and Italian painters couldn’t conceive of a painting that didn’t depict the life of a Saint, or some other biblical subject. Even if you are religious this seems like an absurdly small set of subject choices. You wind up with painting after painting of fawning scenes. By contrast the sculptures are excellent.
Of much more interest than some of the paintings, after we finished at the Louvre we found the Rugby fans area down the road a bit and went merch shopping. Not sure what it says about Rugby fans that most of the merchandise was sized XL or bigger. Not sure what it says about my food and drink regime that an XL seemed to fit better than the L…
Coffee at the same little cafe where we had breakfast and train back to Montmarte. It was still fairly early so we decided to explore a few more side streets and walk up the hill to see the Montmartre windmills. Nothing to tell, but plenty to see. Enjoy the photos.
Amelia was keen to try some cheeses, so we dropped into a Fromagerie on the way back to the flat. No blue cheeses I was told, also, don’t buy too much. So only half following those instructions we arrived home with a small set of four cheeses, including a Blue Shropshire.
The first comment when we got back to the flat was “what is that stench?”. Apparently it’s a Demi Livarot smell. Turns out all the debate and careful selection of cheeses was wasted, as neither Michelle nor Amelia would touch them. There’s a fair bit of cheese for one person, but I’ll give it my best shot.
Someone stopped Michelle in the street yesterday and asked if she knew where Van Gogh’s flat was. No, she didn’t. Amelia looked it up, 54 Rue Lepic. Literally straight across the road! No little blue plaques in France.
Not really much to see, not that that stops the tour groups traipsing past and taking photos. So we took photos too. I’m inspired to paint something, or maybe cut off my ear. We’ll see how the rest of the trip goes.
Stephen and Michelle
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