The Lourve

Monday 12th July 2010

No matter how hard we try, we do not seem to get out of the apartment before about 11am.  Today as we finally made it out we firstly went in search of an internet cafe with aprinter to buy tickets to the lourve and the Eiffel Tower.  After a long walk, we found one.  Gave up on the Louvre web site.  The Eiffel tower web site was much better but there were no tickets left to pre book.  The frustrating thing was that I learned that I could have bought the tickets and forwarded them to my cell phone thus negating the need for a printer.

Took the train to the Louvre.  A short walk then we stood in the longest queue.  However it moved fast and soon we entered through that glass pyramid that forms the entrance to the Lourve.  They hax an X-ray machine scanning bags so I gave marcus the bag with lunch and particularly the knife in it but it all went through no problems.  Now as art galeries go, the Lourve is huge and I mean absolutely huge.  We were there for an afternoon but you really need several half days to wander through it.  I don't think I could stand a whole day in one hit looking at paintings of long dead people.  Mind you for those who like such things, there are a lot of bare breasts.  There is one painting of a topless woman leading the charge in some battle.  maybe we need to spice up our parlimentary buildings with a few such pictures.

After the lourve we walked toward the Arc de Triomphe.  Exhaustion caused us to stop for dinner.  After diner we continued on our quest.  When we arrived, we discovered that you can climb it for just a few euros.  So up we went.  We are seeing a pattern here that in Paris, you big tall things that you go up or into.  The view just on sun set was great.  We could see back to the lourve and off to the side was the yet to be climbed eiffel tower.