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Published: January 16th 2013
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We woke up particularly early today because we wanted to go to the Louvre. On the first Sunday of each month, the big museums in Paris are free to the public, including the Louvre. In France, a law has been passed to help the youth of France learn about the culture of France by allowing them free access into any public museum until they are 25. This means of course that the Louvre has been free for Lise the whole time but we decided to wait until Sunday so I could also get in for free.
While we were taking the free tour on the first day (It was great by the way, I highly recommend the Sandelman’s free tour), the guide mentioned that there was a “secret” entrance to the Louvre that we should use. We came into the Louvre through the metro and the line to get in stretched for days with mostly Asian tourists (the museum hadn’t opened yet). We made our way to the “secret” entrance and there was literally no line at all. We actually managed to rush to the Mona Lisa and take a picture of it before the other line had even started
to enter the museum (More on this secret entrance in the blog “Things you probably didn’t know about Paris”).
We took some silly pictures of us posing as pieces of art in the Louvre and made our way into the Egyptian artifacts area. Your average tourist can last about 2.5 to 3 hours in the Louvre before the sheer amount of stuff in it just becomes overwhelming. It would literally take 2 straight weeks of walking around the Louvre to see everything. During our stay there, I developed what I like to call the Jesus Principle. The principle goes as such:
When walking in a Large European museum with lots of paintings, regardless of which route you take, you can only see Jesus get crucified about 50 times before you begin to tire of the museum.
After the 57
th Jesus (Jesi?) crucifixion painting we decided it was time to head out. We didn’t buy enough food at the supermarket for lunch as well so we ended up eating at Mcdonalds in an effort to not break our budget. I actually had more trouble ordering chicken mcnuggets with a French accent then I did ordering authentic French food
at an authentic French restaurant. Also, we technically waited longer in line at Mcdonalds than we did at the Louvre on the busiest day of the month.
The next thing on our list was the musée des beaux-arts (Museum of Fine Arts), which I wasn’t particularly interested in except that they had a temporary Star Wars Display!! We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the display but it was a huge collection of Star Wars Toys, games, posters, and stuff in general. I’m not gonna lie, there was a certain magic that existed with the toys from the 4
th 5
th and 6
th movies that just wasn’t there for the toys from the newer movies. Highlights include: A toy set where you can re-enact Luke’s fight with Darth Vader (called Dark Vader in the French Star Wars), seeing Super Star Wars again (for Super Nintendo), and a mini star wars bike sweepstakes (the competition ended in the 80’s unfortunately). We then went to the gift shop where there were a number of awesome Star Wars gifts that I didn’t buy, but something that I really want to look into buying in the US is a book on Star Wars Crafts.
Lise bought a book that in English would be titled “advertisements that you will never seen again” that was brimming with sexism, racism, and all other kinds of bad –isms.
After Star Wars it was time to go the Lock Bridge. The Love Lock Bridge (also in Things you Probably didn’t know about Paris) was very close to the Louvre and Lise and I headed that direction to lock in our love to the bridge and throw away the key. An artist who was trying to sell paintings let us borrow one of his sharpies to write on the lock. There were guys who had bought a group of locks and were selling them individually on the bridge in order to make some money. We tried to count where our lock was and the best way to remember it was the 3.75
th light or the 6.5
th trashcan area from the island. Our small silver lock actually stood out pretty well when compared to the other gold locks.
Lise wanted to show me a shopping street in Paris so we took a metro there. Unfortunately, while the museums are free on the first Sunday, many other big stores are
closed on Sunday, so we didn’t see much. I decided that I wanted another macaroon before leaving Paris and we went macaroon hunting on the Champs-Elysées, but the only place that we found was hella expensive (as is everything on that street). We were pretty hungry and cold so we went to a French chain restaurant called Pomme de Pain for some hot, relatively cheap sandwiches. We stayed there for about 1.5 hours reading about old advertisements from the book she just bought. We then caught the metro back to the Train Station where we were to catch a train to Lille. Before boarding the train however, we found a small booth in the train station that sold crappy macaroons and we bought a hot chocolate from a coffee vending machine and had one last delicacy in Paris. We then walked all the way to the back of the train to get in one of the last cars and had a smooth ride home.
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