Louvre, Eiffel

Another delayed post...

Paris Day 2 - 13 June 2008

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/ParisDay22008613

We had grand plans of waking up at 7:30am to go stand in, what we thought would most definitely be (from the movie Eurotrip), an incredibly long line at the Louvre. We hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, as our train from London was at 7:30am, and we ended up sleeping until about 10:00am. At the Louvre, whose majestic courtyards, turrets, and castles make you almost forget about the masterpieces housed within, we were pleasantly surprised with a very efficient ticketing system. We then proceeded to get our audio tour devices, essentially Palm pilots with pictures and narrations of the notable pieces and maps of the entire museum, whose size is not to be underestimated.

We first went on the “Masterpieces Tour” on which we saw, in this order, the “Venus de Milo,” “Winged Victory of Samothrace,” and, finally, the “Mona Lisa.” The narration was very helpful in not only helping us appreciate the various aesthetic qualities of the works, but also explaining why these works have reached the exalted position in which they comfortably sit today. The captions on the pictures, which I’ll put up soon enough, will hopefully get at some of this.

After this tour, and the “Antiquities Tour,” whose estimated duration of 1.5 hours in reality became 4 hours, we went back to the apartment, legs aching from what must have been a few miles of walking in the museum. We met up with another group, consisting of one girl from Harvard whom Keone had met earlier in the year, and her two friends from St. Mary’s College. We went to meet up with our host, who was watching the France vs. Holland match, the unpleasant outcome of which would be the cause large volume of trash in the streets in Nantes, our next stop. After getting unbelievably lost, we found our way to the pub, minutes before the match ended. Walking within the throng of dejected French men and women, we went to get some drunk food – greasy kebab sandwiches at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Montparnasse. At about 11:30, we headed toward the last major tourist attraction, and arguably the most famous one, we had left to see in Paris – the Eiffel Tower.

While we were too late to go up the elevator, the dazzling light show, of which we got a small glimpse on the metro ride, along with the iridescent golden glow in which one’s bathed when standing at the foot of the structure more than made up for it. I’d be doing the description a great injustice if I didn’t mention Keone’s artistic emotional response to standing under the tower – “It’s like looking up a really big girl’s skirt. The shock and awe of it – c’est magnifique.”

We were back in the apartment at about 1:00am, and so ended our Paris adventures.