So after the long ass night, we finally got up and got dressed and headed for the Louvre. Today was a first day trying the Metro. Well, of course we screwed up and got out at the wrong place, and had to walk quite a ways to the Louvre. Luckily it was sunny and wasn’t too cold, so it wasn’t so bad.
We saw the pyramids, which I didn’t care one way or another about until I read the Da Vinci Code. hee.
We went down and got our tickets (the cashier loved my Darth Vader credit card, as many of the cashiers did), and now… it was time to start!!
The first gallery we went into was full of Davids and Ingres. There was one portrait by Ingres that I was dying to see, but unfortunately it was out for cleaning or something. It wasn’t there, just an empty spot on the wall. But the Davids made up for it! By god!
It wasn’t too crowded, actually. We got there just as it opened. There were quite a few people but not as many as I expected. Lots of school groups, and lots of people trying to take pictures. It got really annoying sometimes, because I’d wait on people to stop taking pictures so I could scoot up and stick my nose up against the painting to look at every inch I could see. Finally I got tired of waiting and just walked up and looked without worrying about people taking pictures. It’s a museum not the red carpet!
We went to find the Mona Lisa then, since that was all Kristie cared about seeing. On our way there we came across Winged Victory. So pretty! Hard to get a good picture of, though.
There was quite a crowd around her, but we managed to get our picture in front of it. I wasn’t disappointed by her, because I already knew what to expect (Kristie was). It was still something to stand in front of the most famous painting in the world. I, personally, was more interested in other things. In particular I wanted to see this one portrait by Raphael, and there was supposed to be a Durer self portrait somewhere. I saw lots of other things I liked, too.
It was so over whelming. There was so much. When I was on the phone with dad later that night, telling him about it… well, it may have been the jetlag, but I was almost in tears. How much of a nerd am I??? After a while we took a break and went and ate lunch. I had a kickass chicken and bacon sandwich. It was sooo good. Then we went back. I have no idea what we looked at when, there was so much.
I saw most everything I wanted to see. It took me a while to find the Durer (it was hidden in a little alcove with some bland, nameless things! bah!), and we had to double back several times to find some others I’d missed. I wish I’d taken more pictures, but I was too excited most of the time.
We got behind Venus De Milo and told Kristie, “crack is whack”
Anyway, I was impressed with the Rembrandts – I’ve never been a fan, but it’s true what they say, they don’t reproduce well. The room of the series Rubens did for the Medici woman blew me away. Yay, Rubens! Also saw Michelangelo’s Dying Slave, which cracked me up. It was so sexy, lol.
We went and found the cafe and ate again (I had the same sandwich!) By then it was around 3, so I finally consented to leaving, even though we hadn’t seen everything yet. We went into the little mall area behind the museum, and found a Virgin Megastore. They had lots of cool DVDs that we couldn’t buy because they were the wrong region!! Then we found this cool little hobby store. And.. I found styrofoam eggs. The kind of styrofoam that doesn’t have holes!! The kind you CAN USE FOR JEWELS IN COSPLAY!!!!!! I’ve NEVER been able to find those! I bought those suckers!!
So then we figured out how to use our calling cards and called home. My parents didn’t answer. (turns out our caller ID said “out of area” when I called, so they assumed it was a sales call and didn’t answer. What did they think it was going to say when I called from paris??)
I had a huge headache. We got on the metro and tried to get back, but again got off at the wrong exit and had to walk a looooooong ways back to the hotel. It was horrible. I was just holding onto Kristie and stumbling along. We got back to the hotel and I took a nap.
Then we got a taxi and went to the Eiffel Tower!
We didn’t go up in it. It was actually quite annoying, because of all the vendors walking around trying to sell you crap. They just wouldn’t leave us alone! I just ignored them eventually and concentrated on taking pictures. I took LOTS. Especially once it started sparkling. After standing underneath it a while, we walked across the bridge and took more pics.
Then we went and got some hot chocolate and sat around for a while and then went back over to a phone booth to try and call home again. Again, no one answered at my house. So I took pictures while everyone else was on the phone.
Ash called her parent’s cell phone, and as it turned out they were headed to my house. So once they got there they put my parents on and I yelled at them for not answering the phone. I hadn’t wanted to call home in the first place, but it was nice talking to them (I don’t know why I didn’t want to call home, just didn’t feel like it, I guess… I didn’t call home again after that, either.) Then we headed back to the hotel, and crashed.