Day 13 Picture perfect Paris

What’s Paris without its museums? We decided to hit two of the big ones – Louvre and L’Orangerie, both within an easy walk of each other.

The Metro goes from our hotel to the Louvre, but we had to hop off at the Louvre - Rivoli station to take photographs of the museum objects on the platform. Then back onto the train to the next station, which leads you directly into the underground entry into the Louvre. The inverted little pyramid from the DaVinci novel is there.

The queuing system is great from main underground courtyard – into one of the three buildings – of course Mona, Venus and Winged Victory are all accessed via the Denon escalator.

Italian art galleries are jaw dropping – seeing paintings from art in school amazing.

The fresco of the crucifixion by Fra Angelico moved Liz. Iit is the subject of so many icons and holy cards, and was looked at in Liz’ masters studies of religious art.


The Mona Lisa – called "La Joconde" by the French – was a small painting in a big room on a big wall in the middle of the room. There was a huge crush to see it and it wasn’t even 9:30am. We got up close, then turned around to see the gigantic Wedding Feast of Cana by Paolo Veronese – 6.66m by 9.9m. Wow.

Then down to see the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Impressive at the top of a set of stairs. It is hard to believe that it used to sit on the prow of a stone ship in a temple to Nike the goddess of Victory.

The Louvre was a royal palace both before and after the French Revolution. The ceilings are highly decorated as are the walls. The Gallerie Apollon is highly decorated with tapestries instead of paintings. It contains the Coronation crowns and scepter of Napoleon III.

The Egyptian antiquities are fascinating. We saw the remains of a wooden door lintel from 4000 years ago. And very large stone sarcophagi.

A surprising find in the basement was the foundations and moat of the original palace, carefully restored and protected but visitable.

No visit to the Louvre is complete without viewing the most famous of Greek statuary, the Venus de Milo. So perfect.


There were other great exhibits, but then the day was passing quickly, so we had lunch in the Café Richelieu. Nice mains, but the piece de resistance was the pyramid shaped mousse cake with crème brulee inside and dark chocolate drizzles – yum. Eating this whilst staring out the window at the glass pyramid was a moment.



It was time to leave the Louvre. WE walked through the Tulleries gardens to the Place de Concorde – for you Tour de France cycling tragics, eat your heart out. The L’Orangerie museum contains Monet’s Waterlilies. Imagine two quiet large oval rooms with white walls and ceiling, and 2m high paintings stretching the full circumference of each room (minus doorways). Utterly evocative and easy to lose yourself in. Wonderful.


Domestic duties dragged us away as we had to do our laundry before leaving Paris. The lavage (Laundromat) was a short walk from the hotel, and it only took about 1½ hours.

How to finish off a stay in Paris? How about a concert in Notre Dame cathedral in honour of Our Lady. Organ improvisations, 13th and 14th century motets and period instruments – uplifting.

Unfortunately we had to pack to leave Paris. A great stay, lots of sights and experiences, but more adventures to follow.