Paris, Day Three: I Lurve the Louvre

One of my favorite things about traveling is that even when you intend to get up at 5 am and beat the crowds, you totally don't get up until 7 and then Henry screams his head off unless you feed him three croissants in a row. (For the record, I can only eat two.)

I know you thought there was no downside to having pastries for breakfast every morning. If you're single, you're home free, eat yourself sick baby. If you're married, you have to share with Mr. Bottomless Pit. And if you have the world's most gluttonous offspring, good luck to you. It turns out that even when Henry is stuffed full of milk and cereal and baby food, he just can't watch us eating French food unless he gets some.

All attempts at punctuality being shot, we strolled across the Isle de la Cite and took our time looking at the Seine and showed up at the Louvre about 9:30 or 10. Traditional photos of the Louvre are not accurate. They make the Louvre look like it has an open-air plaza, but the truth of the matter is that Paris monuments are crammed together like kids at a stake youth dance. The Louvre takes up two or three city blocks just by itself, and it's completely enclosed--it's a rectangular building with a courtyard in the center. This is where the famous glass pyramid is located. You can't see it from the outside. But you can see lots of other famous monuments and buildings like Notre Dame, which is pretty much across the street, and the Musee d'Orsay is within spitting distance if you're an Olympic spitter. (And if this somehow describes you, please don't ever show me visual evidence of your exploits because, sorry, but you're gross.)

Anyways, so the Louvre has all its open space in the middle, whereas most pictures of the Louvre will make it seem like there is a square out in front. It was still cool, just different.



We were also amazed by the sheer hugeness of the Louvre. It started as a medieval castle, then some king or other knocked the whole thing down because he wanted to be hip and with it and all the hipster kings had Italian pleasure villas. So he built himself a modest-sized Italian palace. You know, only one city block. Only hundreds of sculptures instead of thousands. Only embellished with gold leaf instead of completely covered in it.

But every successive generation has to outdo the previous to avoid being laaaaaaaame, so the next king tacked on another wing, the next king tacked on two more, pretty soon the queen was all like "I want a palace toooooooo" and BAM! Next thing you know, the Louvre is freaking huge. Louis XIV was born and raised here. He was such a pure, simple soul. It ended up being too big and fancy for him. So he thought it might be nice to move to his quiet little hunting lodge in the country and get back to his roots (HAHAHAHAHA.) More on Versailles tomorrow.

But the glass pyramid is nice, way to go I.M. Pei. The French kings would have appreciated it because it has simple lines and is extremely sparkly like a giant diamond (well one out of two ain't bad.)

The line wasn't terrible. Or should I say, the line wasn't terrible for US, because HALLELUJAH the French have NO babies, so we and the only other reproductive couple actually got to skip the entire line and take a special elevator. There are some people who actually have children for a living in this country because of all the discounts, subsidies, and special benefits you get, no lie.

We also got free admission because we're both under 26. Double whammy! Poor French politicans, they never imagined that two foreigners under 26 might possibly have a child already, let alone come live in their country with said child and proceed to take advantage of all the awesome freebies. But we have done it. And it is oh-so-good.

We decided to take a tour because if left to my own devices I will systematically go through the Louvre with a fine-toothed comb and attempt to sleep there overnight hidden inside one of the exhibits like a creepy hobo.

Our tour guide was nice, but holy thick accent Batman! I barely paid attention to what she said at first because I was so overwhelmed by all the epic artwork everywhere. Seriously, I grew up looking at this stuff in books! Sadder yet, I've spent the last four years living in P-town just so I could look at this stuff in books. If that isn't dedication, I don't know what is. Anyways, here's what we saw:

The freaking VENUS DE MILO.

The freaking NIKE OF SAMOTHRACE.

A whole gallery of Jacques-Louis David, which is amazing up close:

And of course this one painting by some famous dead guy.

At this point it became extremely helpful to have a guide, because when somebody asked "So what's so special about the Mona Lisa anyway?" she, (after nearly passing out) recovered nicely and explained that Leonardo, for various reasons, is one of the best artists who ever lived. And he made it very public that he considered this painting his ultimate masterpiece. He spent 15 years agonizing over it and changed it completely, so that it no longer looks like the woman who sat for it.

Da Vinci always taught his students that there are three areas of the body that act as windows to the soul: the eyes, lips, and hands. So the Mona Lisa is in 3/4 pose instead of profile, which was still a novelty at the time. She also has the face of the painter's "perfect woman," and nobody knows who she is, but he infused her facial features into just about every female figure he ever painted.

The guide also mentioned that researchers at the Louvre have recently x-rayed the Mona Lisa and discovered that underneath her dirty layers of varnish, she is wearing a small transparent veil on her hair and another veil wrapped around her shoulders. The hair veil was worn at this time to indicate a married woman with religious belief. The small transparent shawl was worn to announce a pregnancy.

Yep, that's right. Mona's got one in the oven.

So, there you have it--Mona Lisa is the perfect woman of her time. She's married, pious, pregnant, a hotshot artist is obssessed with her, and in my opinion she's got rather nicely shaped fingers, so it's win-win all around, isn't it?

We also saw the winged bulls of Babylon and the CODE OF HAMMURABI. I thought I might fall over dead from sheer joy. After a short break where I learned how to breathe again we got lunch in the museum cafeteria and even though it looked weird (side note: ironic) it tasted awesome. The USA needs to more fully discover the joy of fresh green olives as opposed to nasty old pickled black ones.

Anyways, we spent the entire day at the Louvre and I have to admit I wouldn't mind living in Paris if it had nothing else in it but this museum, cause A) admission is free for the next couple years and B) unfortunately we didn't have time to go see Titian.

Dang, I guess we better go back.