Paris: Days 4/5

On this morning, we got up and went straight to the Louvre.

We got off the Metro and walked through one of the Palace's wings to the central court yard with fountains and the pyramids. You enter through the glass pyramid in the center and head down into the museum. The Musee du Louvre is a huge museum that holds the art of ages. (It's in the Da Vinci Code.) It has over 35,000 pieces of art work.

I can't describe to you how fantastically large the Louvre is. There are 3 main wings. Each wing is an actual wing of this huge palace. And each wing has at least 3, if not more, floors. There is no way that you could see the entire museum in one day, and probably not all of it in one week. To give you an idea of the size, there is this map. At the end of the day I also took this video.

OJ and I decided to head towards the Mona Lisa, because if it's there, you might as well see it. (This is the only area of the Louvre where there is a queue. Fortunately it is not tourist season so we got to the front fairly quickly. I could not get a good/steady picture because this Japanese woman was violently elbowing my kidneys. I returned the favor.)

So we saw Renaissance paintings, then headed towards the Greek and Roman sculpture, saw the Venus de Milo. saw Egypt, Mesopotamia, the history of the Louvre, and many other things that I can not possibly describe because they were so numerous. The sad thing is, that we probably didn't even see a third of the museum.

After hoofing it around for several hours we decided we were starving and needed a break. So we headed out of the Louvre and into the Jardin, which was recently torn up for renovations, so was actually not all that much to look at. But we found a lovely cafe and have some delicious ravioli, some refreshing tea, and a crepe! I was totally satisfied.

Then we went to the Musee d'Orsay, and we saw a lot of Impressionist paintings, like this Van Gogh. We did manage to see all of this museum. And I recognized a lot of pieces of art. I don't know how I feel about taking pictures of art work, but regardless I took them to show all of you that look, I have seen such and such in person. There was also a very cool exhibit about how styles come back, and had furniture, posters, etc. from the 1890's and the 1970's. Art Nouveau.

Even after all this trekking around and art viewing, being very cultured and refined and exhausted. ( I don't know if my brain or my feet were more tired.) The day was not done yet. We got back on the Metro and went home, took a power nap and got ready.

Ready for what? Salsa dancing. Yes. We went out to a nice French dinner, then met OJ's friend Samy and his friends for some drinks (they ate dinner due to a small miscommunication due to OJ not reading the entire text message) and lots of teasing half-translated conversation. Then we all headed to a Salsa Club.

It was a bit expensive to get in, but the atmosphere of the multi-leveled club and the moving dance floor were really fun. I guess the only problem was that it could decide if it wanted to be a club or a dance place and would alternate between hip-hop music and salsa music. But there was no room to salsa dance because of all the people, and you can't hip-hop dance to salsa music. But I got a mojito and laughed and danced a lot. So I was totally content.

Then we went home, or rather tried to get home by hailing a cab, but they were all busy, and then miraculously caught a bus back. I immediately fell asleep, a smile still on my face.

The next morning I got up, showered, packed, had a last cup of tea with OJ and went back to Gare du Nord to catch my train home to London. (OJ walked me most of the way to the station. We were getting some food. She was in her PJ's. She went to McDonald's. I have never seen her look so stereotypically American. It was hilarious.) It was a very relaxing ride home.

I had so much fun in France, and can't thank OJ and her host family enough for letting me stay with them, and OJ for showing me around despite having a cold. I took more pictures than I usually do, bought no souvenirs, only good food, and ended up buying some Carambars (a left-over addiction from living with Rex) and ended up with 4 cents in Euros.

Great trip.