Louvre-y Tuesday, er, Monday

Today we tackle the Louvre.  We figured we could make good use of a 4-day Paris Museum Pass this week, but thought it might be a mistake to buy it at the Louvre.  We feared long lines at the ticket counter.  We took  the Metro to the Palais Royal - Musee du Louvre stop, which lets you off underground in a shopping mall attached to the museum.   We discovered that they have a special office just to sell the museum pass, and it wasn't crowded in the least.

The Louvre is so overwhelming that the only way to make it through alive is to prioritize what you'd like to see.  We had a few things on our list, culled from various travel guides and also from previous visits.   The "big four" for us were the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, Venus de Milo, and The Coronation of Emperor Napoleon.  There were signs on almost every wall pointing to the Mona Lisa, where every visitor to Paris can be found at one time or another.  She's a bit disappointing in that the painting is smaller than you expect.

Venus de Milo - a gorgeous size 14

A few other displays are fun to see, and aren't just more long galleries of paintings (beautiful though they may be!)  One is the Medieval Louvre, uncovered at the foundation of the current palace, showing the footprint of the castle or fortress in its first incarnation.  The other is the apartment of Napoleon III, which is very elegant and honestly very reminiscent of the opulence that the common folk resented prior to the revolution.  The Egyptian wing is also very nice, although Rick is insistent that the treasures should be sent back to Egypt, from whence they were looted long ago. 

Me, in front of a model of the Medieval Louvre

Our entire foray through the gigantic Louvre took only about 2-1/2 hours.  That was enough time to get a feel for the immensity of the place and to see more than a few of the treasures.

The pyramid entry to the Louvre

We headed out to the Tuilleries, which is a park and garden area in front of the Louvre.  We found a cafe in the park and stopped for lunch.  The food was simple and probably a bit expensive, but quick.  One of our favorite lunches is a croque monsieur, which is an open-faced grilled cheese and ham sandwich.

We were on our way to l'Orangerie, a small museum at the far end of the Tuilleries.  This fits my idea of a great museum.  It has some wonderful paintings, most notably Monet's circular water lilies, and the whole thing takes less than an hour to see.  Monet's water lily paintings completely fill two rooms of the little museum that have been built with circular walls to hang the paintings.

By now our "dogs are barking"!  That's enough museum-hopping for one day.

Back at the apartment we try to decipher the washer/dryer combination machine.  It's in the small kitchen, and there's some laundry detergent (we think) for us to use.  It's so hard to determine what a product is for by the label or by its proximity to a certain appliance.  Could it be that it makes your dishes sparkle?  Or does it make the floor shine?  Or is it to shine your shoes with?  Or is it to clean your clothes?  It seems our dictionaries just don't contain all of the words that a good advertising campaign might include for these wonderful products.  On past trips we've put floor cleaner in the dishwasher, laundry soap in the dishwasher, and hoped that our clothes were clean after using just fabric softener in the washing machine.  And this doesn't even include the world of personal hygiene, where a shower using moisturizer makes you feel "kind of" clean, and liquid laundry detergent does just an OK job on your hair.  Of course, our mistakes don't come clear until after each process is completed.  It all makes for a lifetime of memories.

So we start the complicated washing machine, and a load takes about 2 hours.  We're unclear if we've requested the drying feature correctly, so after another hour or so we take our very wet, yet very hot, clothes out and hang them on a drying rack in the living room.  This neighborhood is too classy for clothes hanging out the windows. 

Easy-to-use washing machine?

After the stress of laundry day, we have some wine, a baguette and cheese for happy hour.  Rick and Linda collaborate on a great dinner of chicken and mushrooms cooked in a creamy sauce, using some of the herb Boursin cheese we had for happy hour yesterday.   Some pastries from the local bakery finish up the meal.  The food doesn't make our feet hurt any less, but the stress of the day disappears.