I did a LOT of research before our trip. And almost every blog post I read said to skip the Louvre. This is another place I have always wanted to see so I was pretty disappointed when all these people were saying to skip it. They made some valid points, the crowds, the size of the museum, etc. But I decided to ignore them and we planned to go anyway! I knew the crowds wouldn't be as bad as some of these people were saying since they were going in the summer mostly so we decided it would be worth it. And it so was! The Louvre was a palace wayy back in the day. So every detail was amazing. It reminded of Versailles actually. The paintings on the ceilings, the columns, everything. We planned to do like 4 or so hours here and we saw a fair bit, but we still only scratched the surface of everything they had there. The experience was well worth it for us. We bought our tickets Tuesday night so we wouldn't have to stand in line for tickets Wednesday morning (definitely buy tickets ahead of time, the line to buy tickets was really long and we walked right in). The only problem we ran into was they require printed tickets, so we went into a couple paper stores and asked in poor French if we could print stuff there. We got directions to an internet cafe that we were able to go and print our tickets. We also grabbed breakfast at a little corner cafe before going to the Louvre. We had a traditional French breakfast and I could so get behind eating that every morning. We had hot chocolate (the French hot chocolate is really rich and thick and chocolatey) and croissants to dip in our hot chocolate. Greg also had a very cheesy omelet that was delish! We walked about half an hour to get to the Louvre, walked right in, and got started. We saw some Greek and Roman statues, saw the Ancient Egyptian exhibits, saw the original walls of the Louvre which was really amazing (dated back to the 13th century!), and then we saw some of the Rococo stuff (18th century French movement, super ornate everything!). The furniture, jewelry, china, watches, everything we saw here was so over the top! Writing desks that were carved gold, silver and china for days, swords and guns with gold, silver and jewels all over, I mean this stuff was just crazy. We headed over to the Denon wing after this to find a cafe. The only bad thing about our whole trip was this cafe. We paid 7 euros each for ham sandwiches and they were terrible! If you ever go to the Louvre, eat outside of the Louvre. We found a little place in the Tuileries that had crepes and baguette sandwiches for much cheaper than in the Louvre. I digress though. After eating we walked through and saw the Mona Lisa, Da Vinci works, and lots of other European works from about the 13th-16th centuries. I don't really get what the big deal with the Mona Lisa is, there were a ton of people in front of it the whole time we were in that area. It was cool to see in person, but people were camping in front of it seemed like. After deciding there was no way we could see everything in the Louvre, we headed out into the Tuileries Gardens. Since our ham sandwiches were pretty terrible we went and got some crepes and sat and enjoyed the gardens. Again, not much was in bloom, but they were still beautiful!
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| The original walls |
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| Denon wing |
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| Book of the Dead |
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| On our walk back from the Louvre |
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