We Fought the Louvre and the Louvre Won

Museum day 2 dawned overcast cold and sprinkly, and only got wetter for several hours. We arrived at the main entrance to the Louvre, at the famous glass pyramid, at 9:30, opening time.

We waved our Museum Passports at the guard and walked right in. The central hall was moderately busy.

For comparison, here's what it looked like about 1pm:

We decided to get an audio guide, these having been useful in many other museums. The one at the Louvre is not the simple, "key in the number of the painting and press Play" device of other museums. It is a specially programmed Nintendo DS. Those familiar with the DS know it has four buttons, two joysticks, and two touch-sensitive screens. The Louvre audio guide uses all these interface widgets in a baffling combination.

A short rant by David. This piece of merde was a big disappointment. It is ultra smart, thinks it knows where you are in the museum all the time, but it actually has useful content for one or (rarely) two objects in any room, and often none. And the few commentaries we listened to were bland, generic and uninformative. Then the battery died after less than 2 hours. A complete waste of 5 euros.

We had a plan of sorts: to start with the historic progression of French painting from the middle ages to 1850, which curves through 35 rooms of the 2nd floor of the Richelieu wing.

Wait, how many rooms did you say?

So we strolled along surveying the paintings with glazed and ignorant eyes. Ignorant because, one, the DS had nothing to say about 99% of the images, and two, the Louvre provides only French explanatory labels, except in some rooms there is a rack of info cards in various languages but the English ones were often missing. So we bopped along, stopping in front of images that grabbed us to get what we could out of the painters' names ("Hey, I've heard of Fragonard!") and what we could construe of the French labels.

Which was ok, because it kept us moving at a good pace. We didn't have time to sit and have a lesson.

Half-way around we looked out a window to see the queue for the entrance as it was about 11am.

That line only got longer, curling around two more sides of the courtyard. On a rainy, cold, windy day. Lesson: get to the Louvre at opening time!

After two hours and 30 or so rooms, our common sense called a halt.

"Stop! Your legs are tired and your brains are toast!"

So we went and had lunch in the café and talked about what else to see. We decided to see some of the preserved royal apartments and maybe some statuary. And David wanted to see the hall of Large Format Paintings.

"I want BIG paintings!"

The apartments date to when this building was used as a palace by Emperor Napoleon III, and have been preserved with the original furniture. They are rather ornate.

On the way to the statuary hall we observed the crowd worshiping the Victory of Samothrace.

The two statuary halls are nice: large courtyards that have been roofed over in glass to make bright, airy spaces.

We were very impressed by the "Groom restraining a horse" by Guillaume Coustou.

And amused by the River God of the Marne who apparently has taken up electric guitar.

Then on to the Hall of Extremely Large Paintings, which was getting a bit crowded.

Some of these were really neat, and deserve a longer look. For high drama it's hard to beat "Scene from the Deluge" by Anne Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (not our image, from flickr by "magika42000").

Near the Extremely Large Paintings was the rugby scrum around La Gioconda:

Seriously, it's like this all day every day.

But by now we were about ready to...

So we headed out to take a look at the Garden of the Palais Royale, another tree-filled square with arcades around it. Parisian arborists are brutal pruners.

This would a very pleasant place on a hot day. There is a huge fountain in the center, there are several cafés around it and they put their tables out under the trees, there are trendy shops in the arcades for window-shopping, and so on. Today however it was not so nice. And so to home.

Museum Day #1

Today we put our museum passports to use. The way this deal works is, you buy the card and you write the date of the first use on the face of it. And it is good for the purchased number of days from then. Show the pass, skip the ticket line and go right in.

First use: the Rodin Museum.

Getting there was a small adventure; we had to use three different metro lines. There is probably a simpler way by bus but we didn't research it. Anyway, while waiting to get in (there was a queue for the security gate), David speculated that they would scan the big bar code on the Museum Passport, and enter the first use into a central database, so they could reject it starting next Monday. Nunh-unh. Two museums, two very casual glances at the red card, waved through. "I bet we can use these forever," Marian said.

So the first thing you hit in the Museum garden is Le Penseur,

...which we only today learned was meant to illustrate Dante, pondering on the human condition. And that the same figure appears top center in The Gates of Hell which was nearby. We'd seen another casting of this at the Cantor museum at Stanford (along with another Thinker and others).

See the Thinker over the top of the door?

Note the three little guys on top? They are the Three Shades, and Rodin also cast them full-size.

Marian likes the hands.

So we wandered around the garden under gray skies, with the view dominated by the Church of the Dome and the distant Eiffel tower.

It had been raining.

We were very pleased to find that this museum had no restrictions on cameras, except "pas de flash." Inside the building, only part of the collection was on view because of remodelling. There were a lot of art students sitting around sketching, and they were almost as much fun to watch as the sculptures.

Is she drawing from an image on her iPhone? Or just multi-tasking?

So, on to find out what that monster gold dome was all about.

Turns out, and we should have known this in advance, it's not so much a church as Napoleon's sepulchre. His heroic casket is the center of the building.

Under a dome that's prettier by far than Sacre Coeur's.

Observed by many.

Back into the metro for a couple of stops and to the Museé Jacquemart-André, which is more like a Stately Home than a museum.

M. André was a very rich guy who married Mme. Jacquemart, an artist, and over a long and happy marriage they travelled around collecting whatever struck their fancy, including the odd Rembrandt and wall-sized tapestry, and some complete ceiling frescoes by Tiepolo, to dress up their home. And donated it to the nation. There are lots of fine paintings and tapestries inside, and as many beautiful pieces of furniture. Unfortunately, this museum has a "no photography" policy—although they didn't prevent you from carrying a camera in. And in fact quite a few people were taking pics with their phones. We only took one, of this amazing marble staircase.

This is just the right half, there's a matching left staircase.

The real attraction of this museum is the Café Jacquemart-André, billed by the Rough Guide as "the most sumptuously appointed salon de thé in the city." Well, it has two huge tapestry panels on the walls and the whole ceiling is a Tiepolo fresco from a villa in Italy. Other than that it ain't so much... The waitress offered to take our picture.

From there we headed home, picking up a quiche at the next-door boulangerie to eat with fruit from the Sunday market. Tough life. Then we emulated the Jacquemart-André guard lion.

Rain day

Well, all the local restos were open. There are so many! Didn't actually count them, but within an easy walk of our front door there must be at least six; three facing Square Medard, a couple just up the Rue Mouffe', a couple more going up Rue Monge, etc. There are cafés everywhere in Paris, not just on the big plazas and along shopping streets, but up alleys and in side streets. How do they all stay in business? We asked each other that, over a light supper of omelets and salad.

It has to be population density. Although the streets are generally quiet, there are a ton of people around when you think about it. Every street is lined solid with six-story buildings (exactly six stories owing to a very old height limit). The upper five floors, at least, are all apartments. Two to a floor, ten flats per building roughly, maybe 50-60 families resident on each side of each block. OK, if they eat out only one night a week on average, the residents of one block could keep a small restaurant alive. And the other nights, buy enough baguettes and croissants to keep the local boulangerie going, and there's as many of those as cafés.

The online weather is certain that it's going to rain today, although at 7am the sky is almost clear. So what to do on a rainy Lundi when all the museums are closed? Go shopping, of course!

Walking toward the bus stop, noticed again one of the Velib' bike rental stations. These are all over town and judging by the number of the gray bikes we see on the street, they are a big success.

If you have a carte amathyste, a purple transit pass card, you just slap it against the bike stand, the bike unlocks, and off you go. Lock it up at any other bike stand and the time is charged to your card. Don't know the rates.

We rode the #27 bus today instead of the Metro. Yoli had recommended it; the #27 runs often and goes right through the center courtyard of the Louvre, up to the Opera and the big department stores, on its way to the Gare St. Lazare. The same little Metro tickets we bought a bunch of on Saturday are used on the bus.

So we got off by the old Opera (a.k.a. Opera Garnier, to distinguish it from the new Opera house on the other side of town). We put a picture of it crowded with tourists in the sun on the Saturday posting. Today it was gray, windy and cold and nobody was hanging around. So we snapped a couple of details of the statuary and went on.

This picture needs a caption. Put your suggestions in the comments!

So just down the street was giant department store number one, Galeries Lafayette. We had three items to look for: a light bathrobe, a drapey sort of sweater for Marian, and/or a stylish hat for David. Hit all the floors, no luck. Well, there was a fairly nice light bathrobe for €220. Merci, non.

However, the main store building (of two) has a central court with a dramatic glass dome.

Two more floors below not shown.

Next door is Printemps, another famous department store. This has three connected buildings, and the middle one has on its roof, a cafeteria with an open deck. We went up there for a break. By now it was windy and raining. A group of young women were not about to let that keep them from a picture.

This would be a great spot to nosh and look at the view, on a nicer day.

The fuzzy spots in this picture are from raindrops on the lens!

Having traipsed through all floors of two huge stores, payed €1.50 to use a toilet, and found nothing to buy, we went down into the wet streets to view La Madeleine.

This vast pseudo-greek barn was originally built to be a monument to Napoleon's army, a plan that was set aside after said army was defeated and nearly wiped out in Russia. So eventually it was converted to a church. Inside it is gloomy. But dry and warm, a definite recommendation today!

Outside, we noticed a stand where electric cars are for rent, on terms very similar to the rental bikes. This experiment (described in a BBC news report) is supposed to be expanded to 3,000 cars and 1,000 charging stations by year-end.

The rain was getting heavier.

So we beat it for home and spent the afternoon warm and dry. By suppertime it was again partly cloudy but distinctly colder. We ate at yet a different local café, having tartine which is sort of like... well, if you can imagine a bruschetta scaled up to dinner-plate size, or else a personal pizza with the pizza crust replaced by a big slice of toasted french bread, that's a tartine. With a little salad on the side, nice light supper. The clientele at this café was noticeably different from the last two in the same neighborhood: almost all young 20- and 30-somethings, rather studenty, talking loudly.

The Gallery Is Open

Oh and by the way: all the pictures we put in the blog, and more that we don't, are in the Smugmug Gallery. You can open that link and browse all the pics. There is a "Slideshow" button top right; if you click that, be patient. Even with Crowe's hot internet service, it takes several seconds for the full-screen slideshow to start.

An Easy Day

Got a late-ish start: had coffee at home and only headed out the door about 10. Today is officially market day on Rue Mouffe' and we determined to buy a few things for the house before the whole street shuts down tight this afternoon until Tuesday morning.

Marian avoids buying flowers from one of several itinerant vendors.

At the supermarket we bought milk, butter, kleenex and coffee. Out on the street we bought 100 grams of English Breakfast tea from one of the two tea vendors (merchants de thè) and fruit from one of four fruit vendors. Back to the flat to stow stuff, and finally out for sightseeing.

Carrying umbrellas, because the weather is increasingly iffy. The last couple of days have been grand, with big lumpy clouds blowing by and only rarely a shower. But the forecast is for increasingly crappy weather tonight and also the next four days. But today we only got rained on once.

We walked from Rue Broca up Mouffetard almost to the Seine to catch the fourth route of the hop-on hop-off tour bus line, the only route we hadn't ridden at least some of yesterday. Helped one french-speaking tourist with directions (she saw we had a map). Spotted a tourist couple on rental bikes getting directions.

The guy had just thrown his map into the bike basket in disgust when these people came along.

This bus went east past the Place de la Bastille and the National library, then back in toward town.

Notre Dame flaunts its buttresses.

This composition of living and stone figures tickled David.

Marian liked the two kids on scooters.

Mercury, on the column in the Place de la Bastille, tries to wave off the rain.

Back toward town we note some graffiti. There is lots of graffiti in Paris, little of it as artistic as this.

The bus was about to retrace scenes we'd seen yesterday so we got off to see the Place des Vosges ("vohzh" we think). We had no idea what this would be like; just mentions in the guidebook of a magnificent square with formal garden, "the first planned development in Paris" in 1612. Turns out there are brick arcades all around, populated by trendy art galleries and some restaurants. We walked all around and stopped for coffee and a crépe.

General view.

View from the garden.

From here, with rain threatening, we decided to see what Les Halles was like. The city's central market until 1969, the space was converted to the biggest metro station in Europe (Chatalet-Les Halles) and an underground mall "widely acknowledged to be an architectural disaster," to quote the Rough Guide. But still, a big mall on a rainy Sunday? Why not? So we found the nearest metro to Place des Vosges and three stops later got out. Very few stores open, confusing layout, and yes, pretty ugly. And the two (2) public toilets were bolted shut.

So we traipsed through the immense rabbit-warren of the metro station following the seductive lure of a 7 in a pink circle, the icon of the line that serves our place. At one point there was a whole Klezmer band busking away.

We walked and walked and walked and we also rode on two of the longest trottoir roulants (powered walkways) we've ever seen. Feeling a bit tired, we obeyed the Tenez Votre Droite signs and kept to our right, while what seemed like hundreds of people strode briskly past us.

Tenez votre droite or be run the heck over.

Back to the flat for a quiet afternoon, then out to find out which of the cafés around Square Medard have stayed open on a Sunday. If any.