Louvre Walking Tour

Bonne journée,

Phew, what a big day it turned out to be.  We were booked to do a walking tour of the Louvre this morning.  It was going to take us 45 minutes to walk to the tour meeting point so we decided to test the Paris' subway train system.  With Sean on the case, he quickly worked out train lines, ticket options and scheduling so a 45 minute walk turned into a 10 minute train ride.  Cheap, quick and easy.  

The Lourve Tour was certainly an eye opener.  Originally a palace, it is made up of 3 buildings with 800 rooms brimming with artwork and sculptures.  It is visited by 30-40,000 people a day!  The tour guide said if you spent 3 minutes looking at every piece, it would take 3 months to see everything.  Before we even got into the museum we had to go through 3 security checks.  The number of people already there at 9.30 am was overwhelming.  We had 'skip the queue' tickets so we didn't have wait to see anything.  The major attractions of the Lourve were of course the Mona Lisa, the statue of Victory and the statue of Venus De Milo.  The Mona Lisa is behind glass and roped off so you can't get too close.  I was amazed at the number of people trying to see her, the crush to get to the front was ridiculous.  The statues were the same, people everywhere trying to get a good selfie.  The artworks were my favourite, I am a sucker for realism.  It was interesting to hear the stories behind the paintings and how the artist structured the paintings.  It is not just oils on a canvas, there is far more depth that what what you first see.

After the Lourve we wandered around the grounds for a while and then headed out to the Champs Elysees.  There is a lot of construction along the road in preparation for the last stage of the Tour De France on Sunday.  Of course we will be there for that.

We managed to find the ornate bridge that features in all the movies shot in Paris.  It was a lovely bridge, not overly romantic for mid afternoon but gorgeous all the same.  From there we headed toward the Eiffel Tower.  I have worked out that the shopping district is around the Eiffel Tower as we did not see many retail stores in the precinct of the Louvre.  Anyway I think we ended up at the "ass" end of the Tower as it was extremely disappointing to see.  It did not look anything like the photos and postcards.  There was a large park directly behind the tower.  There were heaps of people lounging around but the grass was dead, the area was full of rubbish and there was quite a lot of temporary fencing around, not sure why.  The police and military were out and about as well.  Under the Tower itself was more fencing with lots of people queuing to go up.  It was not the romantic location I had pictured.

It was a huge day of walking (7 hours +) so we decided to catch a pedicab back to the hotel, which was a bit of fun.  When we eventually got back I had to google earth the Tower and it looks like we were at the back end.  The front appears to have a lake and is far more picturesque so I assume that is the side where all the photos are taken.  We are going back tomorrow to have another look and we are due to climb her on Saturday. Fingers crossed that is the case and if it is,they really should clean up her back end.

All said and done it was a great day.  We are off to Notre Dame and the Bastille tomorrow and then back to the Tower for a second look.  Thankfully the weather has cooled down considerably, had a little smattering of rain.  It was only 30 degrees today instead of 34 that was Tuesday.

Until tomorrow, I bid you 'adieu'.

Lorraine and Sean

Daily Links
2016-07-20 Louvre Walking Tour
2016-07-19 Au Revoir Geneve, Arrivee Paris
2016-07-18 Geneve
2016-07-17 Train Rome to Geneva
2016-07-16 Shopping Day Redux
2016-07-15 Shopping Day
2016-07-14 Vatican Day
2016-07-13 Vespa Day
2016-07-12.2 Walking Tour
2016-07-12.1 AM Morning Ramble and Lunch
2016-07-11.1 - Ramblings
2016-07-10 BNE-DXB-ITA

Others
2016-07 Euro Holiday (entire collection, includes Lorraine's iPhone photos I have previously missed)
Google Compositions