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Very slow to get started this morning. Our little garret is in the fourth floor, and gets hot and stuffy during the day, but as soon as we open the windows we get a lovely breeze (though we do hear the devil chuckle more loudly). Last night the windows were open and it cooled down considerably, making my motivation for getting out of my cozy bed fade to the negatives. Fortunately, I have a kind and helpful father who bombed me with pillows to get me up, though he did seem a bit scandalized when I said I was a French monument and he was a nazi bomber. Really though, with all the Nazi talk between him and Geoff, and the wild hopes they'll come across a previously undiscovered motorcycle wreck from 1944 ("and maybe a Luger!") how could that not be the first thought that comes to mind?
We didn't have anything in the house for breakfast, so we went to the little bakery between ours and Geoff's place and had breakfast there. These little places are so charming with their regulars coming in to get their morning baguette. We all thought it would be very enjoyable and very
French of us to get baguettes for our leisurely stroll through the louvre. It's a good thing we didn't, however, because the louvre anticipated us and has a sign out front that shows no baguettes allowed .
The louvre is a ten minute walk away, and upon approaching the entrance at the pyramid it became definitively evident that our Paris museum passes are a very good thing. The line was about six hundred meters long, and contained a few thousand people. With our passes we could walk right in. We were all bound for the Italian wing, my mother to see things relevant to her thesis (which no one else would ever want to see) and dad and I were bound for the Mona Lisa. The way is well marked and packed with panting tourists. As you approach the Mona Lisa, the air temperature climbs to forty, just one of the many signs you're entering hell. She's a small painting in a big room with many other good paintings. She smiles out from behind a piece of glass, a wooden barrier, and then a rope to hold back the adoring throng. Once I was done with Mona I parted
ways with my father and drifted along away from the crowd, stopping at things I found interesting with no destination in mind. The louvre is enormous and defined thusly: one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, France, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement (district). Nearly 35,000 objects from prehistory to the 19th century are exhibited over an area of 60,600 square metres (652,300 square feet). The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace (Palais du Louvre) which began as a fortress built in the late 12th century under Philip II. Remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of antique sculpture. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum, to display the nation's masterpieces.
The Louvre is involved in controversies that
surround cultural property seized under Napoleon I and during World War II by the Nazis. After Nazi occupation, 61,233 articles on more than 150,000 seized artworks returned to France and were assigned to the Office des Biens Privés. In 1949 it entrusted 2130 remaining unclaimed pieces (including 1001 paintings) to the Direction des Musées de France in order to keep them under appropriate conditions of conservation until their restitution, and meanwhile classified them as MNRs (Musees Nationaux Recuperation or, in English : National Museums of Recovered Artwork). Some 10 % to 35 % of the pieces are believed to come from Jewish spoliations and until the identification of their rightful owners, which declined at the end of the 1960s, they are registered indefinitely on separate inventories from the museums collections.
When the d'Orsay train station was converted into the Musée d'Orsay in 1986, the collection was split, and pieces completed after the 1848 Revolution were moved to the new museum. French and Northern European works are in the Richelieu wing and Cour Carrée; Spanish and Italian paintings are on the first floor of the Denon wing.
I had a marvelous time wandering and admiring the usual weird paintings
that catch my eye. The only issue was that it was boiling in there, and I was dressed for the 14 degrees and rain outside, which included my overcoat. I ended up lashing the overcoat to my waist and scrambling out of the arms so the top of the coat was folded over behind me, and it probably looked like I'd stashed some flying buttresses in there. I found a really great modern art exhibit where someone had art-ified some fMRI brain scans of people reading and doing other activities, which was shown in a 15 minute video. If I had been scanned the part of the brain which contemplates an overheated ass would have lit up like fireworks.
The louvre mission had been started at 10:40, and we were to meet at one to go for lunch. At 12:45 I decided I wanted to find the venus de milo and upon consulting my map promptly went the wrong way. Once I was on the right way I also found some ancient sculptures of men with weenies that look like curly pig tails, and they're all standing there with their hands on their hips looking down with an expression
like "THAT'S not right...". I did find the Venus and she was very busy, but I'm glad I saw her.
I scampered my sweaty, doughy bread ass back to the meeting point and was just on time. The parents were eager to go, their sensitive souls not accustomed to such jostling crowds. After a spot of lunch at a delightful cafe we headed to the Bazaar de hotel de ville, a ritzy shopping mall, and looked at the wonderful jacquard linens. Braedon and I were given jacquard linens for a wedding present by our family friends Catherine and Lorne, and they're stunning. I got myself a tea towel as a souvenir, and they have a lovely system where the shop lady who helps you has nothing to do with the money, you go to a separate register and pay while your shop lady packs up your item. When I came back from paying, the shop lady was still selecting various containers and bags, very much like the well meaning Rowan Atkinson in Love Actually. After she'd dipped it in yoghurt and sprinkled it with chocolate buttons we went home for a rest before going to Montmartre in the evening.
I have been interested in going to Montmartre since it is the setting of An American in Paris, a movie I love and watched before I left. Of course, to Gene Kelly's chagrin it was filmed on a soundstage rather than on location, but they captured it pretty well.
On our way there we passed the moulin rouge ("red windmill") club, and most of what I know of that place is from the baz lurhman movie, and I'm too tired to look it up, so I will assume everyone is there to see some bloomers and catch tuberculosis, gonorrhea, or both.
We had a delicious dinner of French onion soup, mussels and French fries and chocolate mousse ( or if you're mom or Geoff, swap out "fried poulet" for mussels). We walked around a little after dinner but it was a bit chilly so we went home fairly shortly. Tomorrow we had planned to go to giverny to see monet's gardens, but it's quite a multihour trek and the weather won't be great so we'll stay in town and go to museums.
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