Paris, France - Part II

30 September

After hearing from Mark that I would at least need a day or two to fully appreciate the Lourve, I decided to dedicate this entire day to visiting it. The weather was gloomy with the heavy black clouds threatening to pour down and so I was glad that I would be spending most of the day inside.

Arrived at the Lourve and managed to buy my ticket without having to stand too long in the queue, still too early for those Japanese tourists I guess, muhahaha! Once inside and armed with my audio guide and detail plan of the museum and its specific exhibits (slowly turning into a seasoned museum tourist I know...), I was ready to be cultured and educated. Beam me up Da Vinci!! That's right, amongst many other things, the priceless Mona Lisa IS IN DA HOUSE!!

Just to give you an idea of what I was up against, the Lourve museum is divided into 3 different sections, namely Sully, Denton and Richelieu. Each section has 4 floors and each floor has different exhibition(s) and there can be up to 20 rooms on each floor. So basically, if you do the maths, we're talking about 240 rooms of history, art, culture and priceless artefacts. I was in heaven! The genre on offer on the day of my visit was Art of Islam, Sculptures, Egyptian Antiquities, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities and the Medieval Louvre on the ground floor, Oriental and Egyptian Antiquities, more Roman and Greek Antiquities and arts of Africa; Asia, Oceania and Americas on the first floor, Objects d'art, Italian and French paintings and prints & drawings on the 2nd floor and on the 3rd floor, we have German; Flemish and Dutch paintings & drawings and Russian; Belgian, Swiss and Scandinavian paintings & drawings...yeah, that's all, not much :P

Words could not describe all the amazing things I saw, especially the Greek & Roman sculptures. I also confirmed my theory that Greek & Roman men took steroids, that's the only fallible explanation to why they've such muscular and big bodies but with small errr..you know...not that I was looking too closely of course *cough* (sooo glad they're not ice sculptures). It was endless series of facinating piece of history, one after the other..each time you think you've seen the most amazing sculpture, you then walk into the next room and there's the gigantic statue of Diana, Goddess of War that just blew you away.

Also equally impressive was the Crown Diamonds Room filled with the royal crowns and jewellery belonging mostly to Napoleon Bonaparte and his first Queen, Josephine. Talking of which, just like in Versailles, we were treated to Napoleon's apartment which in my humble opinion, was even more opulently and luxuriously decorated than his predecessors' chambers. Like many of the rooms in his apartment, the dining room was probably the most impressionable with 8 grand and large chandaliers lighting it, fully convincing me that the largest French import during that time must have been candles.

Then there were the paintings and drawings. Goodness me, room after room of incredible lifelike paintings by famous Italian and French artists. One of the more notable one was the coronation ceremony of Napoleon Bonaparte as painted by the royal artist to His Highness, David. Nothing obviously though could even come close to the hauntingly beautiful Mona Lisa, the room of which this painting was kept I saved for last...A funny incident took place here too. There was a sign in front of the picture that says no cameras allowed, obviously for fear of what the camera flashes would do to the lighting of this old painting. They have this Morrocan staff worker whose job was to walk around telling ppl off if they do decide to try and take any pictures. So I felt sorry for her when this incident happened. She walked across to one end of the group to tell them off for taking pictures but while she was doing that, at the other end, the flashes were going off as ppl used this opportunity to take some on the other side. This lady would then walked to this group and tell them off for taking the pictures and the other end would then start clicking away. So this poor lady just walked left to right constantly yelling out "excusez-moi, no pictures, s'il vous plait" to no avail.

I must confess towards the 5.5 hour mark of my visit yet to another room full of paintings, I began to lose interest and started to just skim through the paintings and walk out again. I liken this 'overdose of information' to when you see a Bargain Bin during a clothing Sale and there's tonnes of people rummaging through hundreds of clothing. They might be good quality clothing but somehow seeing so many of them in bulk and so easily available seemed to make you appreciate them less, a case of 'less is more' definitely. The wow factor took a hit and I knew then that I've seen enough that day and it was time to call it a day.

Venus/Apphrodite, The Roman/Greek Goddess of Love. Yes I know she pales in comparison when taken next to me...oh woe is her... :P

From the outside, The glass pyramid in front of the Louvre. Took more pictures, but afraid I'm running out of disc space to show all. Maybe when I get back...

That evening, Raphy cooked me dinner, not altogether French but I did try the 'foie gras' which is a goose liver pate, a specialty here in France, an appetizer normally favoured by the high class society, sharing the limelight with other fancy appetizers such as salmon or caviar. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate liver with a passion but for some reason, I really like this but Raphy assured me that I don't want to know how they're made or I'll never eat them again. Once again I opened my mouth and then thought better and kept on eating...

Tomorrow, will be walking to the Arc de Triumphe, Champs-Elyseé and all around the city to take in the general view of the city.