Day Four Part 2-The Louvre

I felt the Louvre Museum deserved its own little section. Everything I had heard about the Louvre is true--it's absolutely stunning, it's overwhelming, and yes, you will get lost(notice I didn't say "if" you get lost). However, what better place to become lost than in a former palace filled with 30,000 works of art---not including the buildings themselves. The Louvre covers the period from ancient times through 1850. The D'Orsay Museum takes it from 1850-1914 including the Impressionists, while the Pompidou Center covers the 20th century through today. This is all background info. I gathered from the many guidebooks I poured over before the trip. We did these 3 wonderful places a little out of order, but the Louvre topped them all for us. The buildings that make up the Louvre are in a horseshoe shape with the beautiful Tuileries Gardens in the open part of the horseshoe. I didn't get pics of the gardens as we spent most of the time inside, but again, save that for another trip back.
Here's one of the few pics of the outside that is actually taken from the D'Orsay museum across the Seine:




With the release of The DaVinci Code movie, the Louvre had its spotlight on film. We watched TDCode on the flight back from Paris and it was fun seeing the places in the Louvre used for filming that we had visited. I took a lot of pics in the Louvre of various works, too many to post here, so I'll just post some highlights.

We were told that we could avoid long lines by entering the Louvre from the underground Metro stop, so that's where we started. Remembe the inverted pyramids in TDVCode? Here it is and I almost caught it without a "body" in it, but not quite!





While many high-tailed it to the Mona Lisa, we decided to follow the "tour" in our guidebook that hit the "must sees", so we took our time. We started in the Ancient Greece area(that's part of the 6th grade curriculum), so I was interested in this section. We then came to our first main piece, the Venus de Milo:







We traveled through some ancient Roman sculptures and then came upon an impressive figure, The Winged Victory of Samothrace(this is TDVCode). I took several pics of this one as the view all around was impressive:













While making our way to Mona, we enjoyed the wonderful ceiling murals that decorate much of the museum, most left over from when the buildings were palaces. Here's a view out the window of the courtyard of the famous pyramid structure:

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We took a little side trip to see the various jewel encrusted dishes, etc. used by the monarch. Sadly, the crown wore by King Henry was out on loan. My pics on these didn't turn out as well as I liked since everything was behind glass and it was rather dark in this room. So, we continued on to some Medievel Paintings,many focused on Christian paintings, but the faces are all so serious:






Finally, we reached The Grand Gallery(again in TDVCode) which featured the Italian Rennaisance Paintings. Here's where all those people I studied in Art History finally came to life! I won't post all that I took pics of, but of course, here's the best shot of the Mona Lisa I could get:


The room that Mona is in is filled with some great paintings--this pic just shows the size of the paintings on one wall:




The most impressive painting in this room for us was The Marriage at Cana by Veronese. Why? It fills an entire wall from floor to ceiling and there's so much to look at in the painting. This pics gives you an idea of how large the painting is by the people standing looking at it:





A few details of this huge painting.
I loved the animals in the painting, especially the little dog on the groom's lap staring down the large dog sitting by the groom:





The musicians in this one are Veronese and his friend, another artist, Titien.Jesus doesn't look quite thrilled with whole reception though.





Here's another animal pic---a cat wrestling with a lion's face on this vase:




I used a guidebook by Rick Steves for our Louvre tour. He does put his own bits of humor in his descriptions. As we went out of the Grand Gallery, he stated in his book to look for the painting "Death of Walter Mondale" OK, I remember Walter Mondale and I didn't think he would be old enough to have a painting in the Louvre, but, here you go:




For comparison--current pic of WMondale:





Leaving the Louvre, you go back underground and go up an escalator to the outside courtyard---you're actually inside the large glass pyramid on the way out.







We went across the street to a nice cafe for dinner and decided we would come back to the Louvre early Thursday morning to finish up some pieces we didn't see from the French artists.

Day Four--Notre Dame-Louvre Part One

Wednesday was a big day for sightseeing, so I've split it into two parts. The weather forecast called for scattered showers, so we decided to head out early to Notre Dame before the rain. Plus, in the summer, you need to get to these "must see" sites as early as possible to help avoid huge crowds. We knew that we wanted to climb the tower of the Notre Dame, so when we arrived, we did a quick walk through the inside of the cathedral and then got in a short line waiting to climb the steps(400 total) of the towers. Pictures can only show so much, needless to say in person, Notre Dame is amazing.

You have to back up quite a bit on the front plaza to even get the whole front of the cathedral in a lens frame. When we passed NDame on Saturday, this square in front was bumper to bumper people---glad we went during the week and EARLY!To ascend the stairs, you begin on the left(using the pic below as reference). You walk up and come to the first level which is the connecting walkway you see for the left and right towers. Then after you take photos, etc. you continue right to the right tower which is the one you actually go to the top. For obvious reasons, all open areas in these places are enclosed with metal "fencing", but large enough space for you to stick a camera through to get a nice shot.Click on the pic:

For a cathedral this size and this old,(at least 200 years to complete) maintenance is ongoing. I captured workers refinishing one of the 3 huge wooden front doors.Notice the huge carved statues on the right in the second pic.
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The Chimera Gallery walkway(I was fascinated by the carved "beasts" in this area that were intended to guard the cathedral from evil spirits.
I believe this is the most famous, known as the "stryga".Looks a little bored with Paris-lol.Click on the pic to enlarge:

I did get carried away with the beasts/gargoyles--just found them fascinating.
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This shot gives you an idea of the "fencing" around the open parts as you walk, looking towards the tower we were going to climb:




View of a spire on ND with statues of the apostles descending from it--these are almost impossible to see from ground level, but were great from the Chimera walkway.










We began climbing the right tower, and took a little detour to see this bell.This is the cathedral's largest bell known as "Emmanuel". Weighs in at 13 tons. It's now only rung on major Catholic feast days. Other bells in the tower ring every hour and include a brief bit of a religious song. While we were there, they played "Ave Maria".






FInally, we reached the top of the right tower to enjoy the views. While wandering around the stairs and the area of the tower, I couldn't help but think of Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Views-I used the zoom for some of these.
Pantheon area:




Towards the Montparnasse Tower(highest building in Paris and considered an eyesore by many of the French---but then again, so was the Eiffel Tower many years ago!




Monmartre-on the hill in the distance, home of the Sacre-Couer church. Sadly, we never made it out there---guess we'll need to go back!




Misc. Views from the top:








Once we were on level ground again, we went inside the church which was just starting to get crowded. Since you can't use a flash, these pics are a little dark.
View towards the main altar from the middle entrance:








I tried zooming in a little on the altar:




One of the famous rose shaped stained glass windows:




Virgin Mary altar & frescoes along the walkway:













These are various outside pics of the cathedral as I was trying to get those famous flying buttresses in that help support the weight of the church. Click on the pic to enlarge:















We took a short stroll back around to the front of NDame to reach our next stop, St. Chapelle Cathedral. It was surprising that two beautiful Gothic cathedrals were so close to each other. St. Chapelle has the most beautiful stained glass I've ever seen in a church. If the day had been sunnier, we might not have been able to take the pics we did. However, from what I've read, when the sunlight streams through these stained glass windows, it's breathtaking. I was surprised there was so much more security at this cathedral compared to Notre Dame. I found out that it's because it's right next door to the Justice Dept. and you actually exit through the JD gates. We basically had everything searched and and had to have everything X-rayed as they do in airports. The cathedral was built for Louis IX in 1248. It's split into two levels, which we didn't realize until we were in the first level. Our firs impression was---what?--we paid money for this?-----until we found the second story that was used by the royal court and wealthy.

First level pics:








Seoond level entrance:




The inside is breathtaking and it's nice there are chairs along the sides so you can just sit and take it all in. From the info. we had, we learned there are 15 separate panels of stained glass that depict 1100 different scenes mainly from the Bible.I don't know how many times we said "Wow" while wandering through these great cathedrals.













Rosette similar to NDame:





At this point, it was mid-afternoon, so we stopped into a cafe for lunch. It just started to rain a bit, so we had a leisurely lunch. We decided to head back to the hotel and rest and then visit the Louvre about 5pm. It's open until 10pm on Wednesday night, and we had heard there would be less crowds. Louvre pics will be in Part 2.