Paris - Day 51

Date: October 8th, 2009
Distance: None
Country: France
Song of the Day: Fists Up - The Blow

Got up today and saw Alexandra off. She is heading off to England to stay at the farm. I guess her folks are coming in. So it will be me and Zaheer here at the flat in Paris for the next couple of days.

Today my plan was to go to the Louvre. All day. So let me start of by talking about the place. It is really the Palace of the Louvre. And it is massive. Just a huge place. Frankly, it looks like the sole reason that France kept losing wars in the 17th and 18th centuries. Or another way to look at it is that it was the cause of the Revolution. You can just see Louis XVI going, "Hmmm, the peasants are mad enough. Could they be starved a bit more if we expanded that wing? Maybe add a third floor? Oh yes, they are quite pissed now."

How they got the people of France to pay for it, I will never know. It makes the recent british scandal of moat cleaning fees look like chump change. The kings must have been able to sell snow globes to eskimos. Or possibly guiotines to rioters. "Guillotines. Get your guillotines. Can't start a reign of terror without a guillotine. Robespierre, you look like you need one. I think we would both benefit from one of these babies." Marie Antoinette is there rolling her eyes, "I just have a feeling this is going to come back to bite us."

I just can't see how this would be a residence, either. Opulent yes, but how would you ever find anything? You can just image conversations "Dear, have you seen my keys?" "Have you tried the other room?" "There are three hundred rooms here. Which GOD-DAMNED ONE?" Guests would get lost and have to start eating each other to survive. I guess that is the way to impress foreign dignitaries. You can hear one of the Hapsburgs were saying, "Oh yes, the French are so powerful. My cousin went there, got lost for three months and had to eat his valet." That is just how big it is. Okay, enough silliness.

Once you are inside, it is just as amazing. Because they have filled that huge palace with fabulous works of art. Trying to see it all is like trying to drink culture from a fire hose. You find some masterwork and want to take it all in. Really you should just spend 20 minutes or so looking at it. But there is another masterwork right next to it. So you keep going. It was actually helpful that all the information about the paintings was in french. I could get the artist and possibly the name of the picture. But I really didn't spend much time reading the history of the painting. Just looking at the paintings and sculptures.

For the paintings I really liked Pierre Patel and Pannini. Both of whom seem to share my passion for ruins. Auguste Biard is good, and Canaletto. I also enjoyed Salvator Rosa and François-Joseph Navez. Plus some of the Dutch masters were good. I could go on for a while, but you get the point.

And yes I did see the Mona Lisa. It actually wasn't all that fun to see. Everyone was held pretty far back so you didn't get a great look. It wasn't as small as everyone had made it out to be. Then again it was sitting across from a huge painting by Veronese. The painting is something like you could commission to cover up a huge hole in the wall if you had accidentally fired off your new cannon inside the villa and your wife was coming back. "Veronese, yeah, this is Giorgio. Got a little problem. The misses will be back next week and I have a 14 foot hole in the wall. Can you make somethign that will cover that?" So back to my original point, the Mona Lisa may just look smaller in comparison.

Actually, there are four other Da Vincis in the Great Gallery. Much more fun to look at, in that you can actually get close. Look at the find detail, then step back again. Much better. Plus you aren't as mobbed by tourists.

The place was packed with people by the way. I don't know if there really is an off season here. So be prepared for crouds. For some reason people try to get a picture of everything they see. I don't understand it. No one wants to see your out of focus pictures of a Rembrandt. If you like an artist, get a book of their work. Also, taking a pictures of your wife in front of a fuzzy blob that might be a Botticelli will also get old.

Now, I will admit that I did break this rule on a few occasions. When I get my adapter I will try and post them. A couple of paintings, I felt, needed a caption. So I will post those tomorrow or something and see what you think.

Let me tell you, it does make for a hell of a day. It really was an all day museum affair. There were teenagers at the end of the day looking more bored and tired than during a lecture on participles. For those with young kids, under 12, leave them at home. For anyone with older kids, or who wasn't determined to go the whole day the Louvre, just do half a day. Pick what you want to see, then go elsewhere. If you really want to, you can come back on another day. For me, by the end my feet were hurting and I was pretty tired.

I ended up back at the Flat with some Chinese food and did some good sitting.

-Dravis