Paris: Part 3

Okay, we're almost through - just a couple more days of photos to go! It's actually been kind of fun to relive the trip this way :)

Our third day in Paris was dedicated to 2 things: 1) Finding tickets to some kind of play/opera/show, and 2) the Louvre. We got up bright and early and started by looking around for a tourist bureau, since they tend to have information on all the happenings in the theatre world. Did you know that there is only one tourist bureau in Paris? And that it has virtually no useful information in it? We ended up traveling to every theatre icon on our map of Paris to see what was showing there, which actually turned out to be a good way to see more of the city. By noon, we'd found a play that TC wanted to attend so we bought the tickets, had some lunch, and made our way back to the Louvre.

If it isn't already there, make sure that visiting the Louvre is on your list of things to do before you die! Incredibly amazing, beautiful and overwhelming.

Even the courtyard when you first walk through the gates is beautiful, but then so is the rest of Paris, so I should have expected it. I know there are mixed opinions about the glass pyramid, which is where you enter the Louvre, but I quite like it. It's one of the few examples I've seen where modern architecture complements, and even adds to the existing structures, unlike the horrific ROM here in Toronto.

We were impressed by how efficiently the entry is run - it took no time to get our tickets and a map, and once we'd figured out what we wanted to see (because there's far too much to see everything in one visit) we set off. First up...

...the Cour Marly, a massive indoor courtyard filled with very impressive French sculpture. It was a really beautiful space, and one of the quietest sections of the museum.

This is the Code of Hammurabi, which is one of the most ancient examples of written law. We had studied about it in university, so it was quite exciting to actually see it. Can you imagine how long it took to carve all of that into the stone?

Here we have a statue of Ramses II, who is believed by some to have been the Pharoah of "Let my people go" fame.

Picture this guy, along with 35 of his friends, staring down at you from the top of a 21m high cedar beam as you entered the audience hall of Darius I of Persia. (Remember the king in the story of Daniel and the lions' den? That's him.) Methinks it might have been a little intimidating, yes?

We realized as we were climbing these stairs that they've obviously had a lot of visitors at the Louvre over the years! I wonder how long it will be before they wear through?

My favourite part was the section containing Roman sculpture. Before leaving for France, TC and I had just finished watching the BBC mini-series I, Claudius, which traces the history of the Roman imperial family from the perspective of Claudius, the emporer between Caligula and Nero. It's really quite excellent - I highly recommend it! Anyway, we were walking through the collection and lo and behold, there were the busts and statues of all the characters we'd been watching! Working clockwise from the top left, that's Claudius himself, Marcus Aurelius (who wasn't in the mini-series, but is the famous Stoic philosopher-emporer), Tiberius, and Livia (who did have a head, but the collage maker cut it off for some reason).

We visited some of the more famous exhibits as well, but as you can see in the picture above, they were quite crowded, which made it difficult to actually see whatever it was. That's as close as we were able to get to the Mona Lisa (it's behind the guy with the white shirt's head) without elbowing through the lot.

And, of course, the inverted pyramid of Davinci Code fame. I wonder how many of these people actually think the remains of Mary Magdelene are hidden below? Whatever else it may symbolize, I thought there was a nice symmetry in ending our visit to the Louvre here, since it began in the upper pyramid.

We were rather tuckered and culturally overloaded by the end of the day, but it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip!